Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)

Peter Lorre in Mad Love

Cast: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy, Sara Haden, Edward Brophy, Henry Kolker, Keye Luke, May Beatty. Screenplay: Guy Endore, P.J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston, based on a novel by Maurice Renard. Cinematography: Chester A. Lyons, Gregg Toland. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Hugh Wynn. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.

Peter Lorre's American debut made him a specialist in creepy roles. He's Dr. Gogol, a mad physician, obsessed with a lovely actress (Frances Drake) married to a concert pianist (Colin Clive) who, when his hands are injured in an accident, allows the doctor to operate on them. But the doctor replaces the pianist's hands with those of a murderer, a specialist in knife-throwing, who has just been guillotined for his crimes. Naturally, this means that the pianist can't play anymore but develops a new talent for throwing sharp objects. And so on. It's a pretty well made piece of hokum that gained some late notoriety when Pauline Kael accused Orson Welles of stealing from it when he made Citizen Kane (1941), largely because both films had the same cinematographer, Gregg Toland.

Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner, 1933)

Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner, 1933)

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Colin Clive, Billie Burke, Helen Chandler, Ralph Forbes, Irene Browne, Jack La Rue, Desmond Roberts. Screenplay: Zoe Akins, based on a novel by Gilbert Frankau. Cinematography: Bert Glennon. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Charles M. Kirk. Film editing: Arthur Roberts. Music: Max Steiner.

The Horror, The Horror

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)

Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye in Dracula

Count Dracula: Bela Lugosi
Mina: Helen Chandler
John Harker: David Manners
Renfield: Dwight Frye
Van Helsing: Edward Van Sloan
Dr. Seward: Herbert Bunston
Lucy: Frances Dade

Director: Tod Browning
Screenplay: Garrett Fort
Based on a play by Hamilton Dean and John L. Balderston adapted from a novel by Bram Stoker
Cinematography: Karl Freund
Production design: John Hoffman, Herman Rosse
Film editing: Milton Carruth

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)

Dwight Frye, Colin Clive, and Boris Karloff in Frankenstein

Henry Frankenstein: Colin Clive
Elizabeth: Mae Clarke
Victor Moritz: John Boles
The Monster: Boris Karloff
Baron Frankenstein: Frederick Kerr
Fritz: Dwight Frye
Dr. Waldman: Edward Van Sloan
The Burgomaster: Lionel Belmore
Little Maria: Marilyn Harris

Director: James Whale
Screenplay: Garrett Fort, Francis Edward Faragoh
Based on a story treatment by John L. Balderston of a play by Peggy Webling adapted from a novel by Mary Shelley
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Art direction: Charles D. Hall
Film editing: Clarence Kolster
Music: Bernhard Kaun

Tod Browning's Dracula and James Whale's Frankenstein have a lot in common. Both were based on stage plays adapted from celebrated novels; together they established the Universal studios as specialists in horror movies, the way gangster movies seemed to characterize Warner Bros. and musicals became identified as an MGM specialty; both launched the careers of actors known almost exclusively for their roles as monsters -- a millstone around the neck of the very talented Boris Karloff, an alternate identity for the less-gifted Bela Lugosi. There are some other incidental similarities: Both feature performances by Dwight Frye, a rather ordinary looking character actor who became a specialist in creep roles. In Dracula he's the vampire's stooge, Renfield, marked by a wheezing laugh that sounds like a cat trying to heave up a hairball. In Frankenstein he's the hunchbacked Fritz, stooge to the titular scientist. Both feature Edward Van Sloan as professorial types: the vampire expert Van Helsing and the ill-fated Dr. Waldman. Both have ingenues preyed upon by the monsters and handsome juveniles who try to be their stalwart defenders but mostly just get in the way. But Frankenstein is by far the better film than Dracula. It may be that James Whale was a more gifted director than Tod Browning, although Browning had a long career in silent films. including some standout Lon Chaney features, before Whale made his mark in Hollywood. Or it may just be that Dracula was made first, so that everyone working on Frankenstein could learn from its mistakes. Browning, I think, hadn't quite gotten used to making talkies, so that the pacing of Dracula is off: Scenes and speeches seem to halt a little longer than they need to. Dracula also betrays its origins on the stage more than Frankenstein. Apart from the spectacle of the storm at sea, there's little in Dracula that couldn't have been put on stage, whereas Frankenstein is loaded with spectacle: the opening funeral and grave-robbing scene; the sparking and flashing laboratory equipment and the thunderstorm; the murder of Little Maria; the torch-bearing villagers and the burning of the old mill. One thing they don't have much of is actual scary stuff, especially as compared to today's blood-and-gore horror movies. To contemporary audiences, Dracula and Frankenstein seem bloodless and gutless, and Dracula in particular has been deprived of its shock value by Lugosi's lack of sex appeal -- vampirism is a sexual threat, given its preoccupation with the exchange of bodily fluids, which is why vampires have gotten hotter over the years. The monster in Frankenstein on the other hand elicits sympathy: It's alone in a world it never made, which is why some think Whale, a gay man, betrays an identification with the character.  

Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

Funny, campy, occasionally scary, and featuring over-the-top performances by Ernest Thesiger, Dwight Frye, and Una O'Connor, Bride of Frankenstein may also be the saddest of all horror movies. Much has been made of a perceived subtext of the film, based in part on the knowledge that its director, James Whale, and Thesiger were openly gay, and it's possible to see the plight of the monster (Boris Karloff) as analogous to that of the gays of their time, subject to ridicule and repression from a hostile society. In this reading, Whale and Thesiger adopt camp attitudes as a way of thumbing their noses at a hostile, uncomprehending society. But that's an unnecessarily reductive interpretation. The monster is the ultimate outsider, an anomalous and inarticulate being, whatever his sexuality. He briefly finds companionship in the blind hermit (O.P. Heggie) who begins to teach him to speak -- including the word "friend" -- but their relationship is doomed by the intrusion of the world of ordinary humans, a world he can never be part of. In the end, when the mate (Elsa Lanchester) who has been created for him rejects him, his only recourse is self-destruction. "We belong dead!" the monster proclaims. To see Bride of Frankenstein as some sort of parable about gays in society would then be an endorsement of suicide as the only option. Subtexts often reside only in the mind of the beholder, and Whale was too much of an artist to turn his film into any kind of message, however latent in the fantastic tale he is telling. Better instead to relish Karloff's ability to give a subtle performance that shows through pounds of makeup. Or Lanchester's remarkable control and timing in bringing the bride to life, including the squawks and hisses that she claimed to have developed by watching swans in the park. Or John J. Mescall's classic black-and-white cinematography, Charles D. Hall's set designs, and Franz Waxman's score. Yes, Colin Clive and Valerie Hobson are a most improbable couple as the Frankensteins. Clive was far gone into alcoholism and looks it, but nobody could have delivered the line "She's alive! Alive!" more memorably.