I love this movie. Love it. Not as over-the-top or rich as “Bride,” but it has a visual style I just love. The architecture was all designed in Nightmare Mode – this lightened version of a night-shrouded scene shows how mad everything is. One unending hallucination in the land of big clomping square-headed monsters:
First we meet the local officials, and I had to laugh at this:
It’s Count Pikelfahrt from a 100 Mysteries entry. As usual for a Frankenstein movie, it’s raining when Herr Doctor arrives in town. Look at this – the way the rain is caught by the light, the way the figure is caught by the headlights:
Composition is perfect in every single scene, but when the movie enters Frankenstein’s house the architecture goes absolutely mad:
One hell of an entryway, eh? Well, it has nothing on the hallways:
The dining room features dual walk-in fireplaces:
The obligatory animation sequence isn’t as dramatic as the others; no one’s hoisted through a hole in the roof, interrogated by lightning. But we do have lens flares worthy of the latest Star Trek movie:
Electricity, the Animating Spirit! Six years away from the atom bomb, and the movie still echoes the author’s 18th century-derived fascination with the elemental power of electricity.
The movie gives us a few things we haven’t had before. Oh, we’ve had a hunchback assistant, but now we have Lugosi as Igor, and he brings a filthy mad joy to the role. At one point he’s brought down to the village for questioning, and I love this short excerpt. Be careful, Igor!
As for the fellow who plays the latest iteration of the Mad Doctor: no more of Colin Clive’s alcoholic hysteria. Now we have Sherlock:
Basil Rathbone masticates the plaster as usual, and he’s fine – but for my money, the best part of the movie goes to Universal stalwart Lionel Atwell, playing the town’s chief of police. If you’ve seen “Young Frankenstein,” this may come as a bit of a surprise: (Flash video)
One more detail: there’s the usual kid-in-peril, but this time it’s the doctor’s kid. He has a wonderfully genuine kid’s voice. He grew up to be a Marine; while he was in the Corps, he was the youngest DI in the history of the Marines. Never told anyone what he did as a kid, apparently, because he didn’t want to be nicknamed “Bambi.” That’s right: he was the voice of Disney’s deer.
