Lugosi is magnificent in the oft overlooked Murders in the Rue Morgue

 

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As the reader can note above, Plan9Crunch recently received a PDF copy of Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us! More Dark Alleys of Classic Horror Cinema, McFarland, 2024, by genre author Gregory William Mank. It's an excellent read. Mank's style of blending history, film news, drama, gossip -- and impromptu profiles of film principals -- is on display.  However, there's too much information to write a simple book review. Over the next couple of years, I'll review a chapter on a film, with links to purchase the book. Here's the McFarland link.

Mank can surprise us with gathered facts. Take Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1932, the first chapter of the book. I always thought it failed at the box office. But I'm wrong. It nabbed a modest profit, $63,000, for Universal after the big hits of Dracula and Frankenstein. But nevertheless, it caused professional decay to Bela's career. His inability to get a major role in Frankenstein, followed by the major success of Frankenstein and subsequently Boris Karloff replacing Bela as Universal's top horror star, was the embryo of his troubled screen career.

Mank notes that in post-Dracula Hollywood a serial assaulter/killer of women called "The Ape Man" terrified Los Angeles. The killer was never caught. The author compares this historical anecdote with the emergence of Charles Gemora's creepy gorilla in Murders in the Rue Morgue. Lugosi, after James Whale froze him out of Frankenstein, was assigned the title role of Doctor Mirakle. Robert Florey, edged out of Frankenstein, directed. He replaced the Spanish Dracula's director George Melford, also edged out of a plum directing assignment.

In the essay, Mank relates that Murders in the Rue Morgue caught the attention of the Hollywood code police and state censors. I had always thought that it seemed a tamer film but Mank notes that in its release form it is very pre-code. At the Grand Guignol opening scene, Lady Fatima and her Arab Angels perform a revealing "strip dance" that focuses on the middle front portion of the dancers' bodies. Men leer openly. Various censors scissored this scene.

Also, more provocative is Arlene Francis' short performance. After Mirakle snatches her streetwalker character from the dark streets, we quickly cut to Francis, terrified, screaming, in agony and dying, on an X-shaped cross. A crazed Mirakle is hoping that her blood will match with the blood of Erik, his gorilla. Although it's never specifically mentioned, it's clear today -- and I'm sure in 1932 -- to audiences that Mirakle plans to mate the gorilla with the woman. It doesn't happen, as a furious Mirakle accuses the streetwalker's blood of being "rotten." The death then occurs and Lugosi tells his black servant Janos (Noble Johnson) to drop her into the Seine, which flows below. This scene was scissored by some censors too in 1932.

One more pre-code scene later is when Erik attacks the mother of the film's heroine in her home. The gorilla kills her brutally in a manner that suggests a rape, as Mank notes. The gorilla then stuffs her corpse face first up the chimney and escapes with her daughter, Camille (Sidney Fox), back to Mirakle's lair to possibly "match" her blood with Erik's.

According to Mank's research, Lugosi was withdrawn and mostly silent during film production. Mank surmises that Lugosi may have sensed that Florey didn't like directing him. The director, we learn, would have preferred less Doctor Mirakle in the finished product. Another reason may be that Bela resented Sydney Fox being the nominal star of the film. Fox was alleged to be the current mistress of Universal honcho Carl Laemmle Jr. She's pleasant to look at, but her acting is poor in the film, in my opinion.

Readers may note that I have not mentioned most other principal actors. The reason is nearly all are mediocre and offer virtually no quality to the film. Leon Waycoff (later Leon Ames) is the romantic lead and he is just terrible. He makes David Manners look like an Oscar-quality actor. He giggles and preens with his love, Camille, which is appropriate since Fox's acting trends the same. Later in the film he whines when Camille is in mortal danger.

Ames did enjoy a long career in film. He was an established character actor. I once noticed him in a 1967 The Andy Griffith Show episode, playing a prudish high school principal.

Sidney Fox, as Mank relates, had an unhappy future. She was out of films by 1935 and spent her personal life in an unhappy, on-again-off-again marriage. In 1942 she was discovered dead in her bed with an empty prescription bottle.

Some actors with small parts who are good are D'Arcy Corrigan as the morgue keeper, Noble Johnson as Janos, Lugosi's strong man, and Arlene Francis in her small role as the streetwalker. Gemora is effective as the gorilla, but Florey made the post-filming error of using shots of a real gorilla in facial closeups. It's a big mistake. It looks forced and lessens the screen impact of Erik.

Lugosi, as mentioned, is magnificent in the film. In the opening scene, viewers can't help cheering the crazed doctor as he defends "science" against the religious intolerants in the audience that boo his Darwin theories. As a mad doctor, he is implacable, full of mad righteous fury in his desire to grab the comely virgin Camille to experiment with. He delivers his dialogue, not just vocally but with strong facial expressions and body movement. Lugosi is the reason this film, which suffers when Bela is not on film, earned a profit.

Florey, as Mank notes, showed off his skill at creating scenarios that matched the plot. He writes: "Cinematically, the film is still a dazzler. Florey and Freund (Karl Freund is the cinematographer) make Paris so Caligari-esque that one almost expects Conrad Veidt's Cesare to step out of the myriad of shadows and join Erik during the rooftop chase. While the film is set in Paris, it as the scent -- perhaps more than any other 1932 Hollywood movie -- of depraved and decadent Weimar Berlin."

Even with the colorless Fox and Waycoff, Florey's scene of Sidney being pushed on a swing is an act of cinema elegance and beauty. Even the scene with Francis, dying in a skimpy garment and tattered boots, crucified on an X-shaped cross, has a dark beauty.

To avoid the stretches of needless comedy and poor acting, I've thought that Murders in the Rue Morgue might have been improved -- and perhaps retain a better legacy -- had Florey began the film with the streetwalker scene and profane crucifixion. It's a well-shot, fascinating horror scene. Its early inclusion would not have hurt the pace too much as the Grand Guignol sequence is very impressive.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is easy to find and buy inexpensively. It occasionally pops up on Turner Classic Movies. Mank did a fine job of telling its history in Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us ... and we will explore more films in the book in the future.

-- Doug Gibson

How do the texts Frankenstein and A Werewolf Remembers: The Testament of Lawrence Stewart Talbot represent the literary archetype of monsters?

The following (see title above) is an essay from Joseph Gibson, 17, a student at Ogden High School, in Ogden, Utah. It is the completion of a yearlong project, part of his International Baccalaureate high school program. Joseph is the son of Plan9Crunch blogger Doug Gibson

Category 1 - Language and Literature

Word Count [3999]

Contents

1.  Introduction…
2. Investigation

a.                   Is a Monster Born or Made?...

b.                  Sympathetic Monsters...

c.                   Capacity of Monsters For Moral Growth/Accountability…

d.                  Monsters and Predestiny…

      3.  Conclusion…

      ----

 Introduction

 

Fiction has the power to provoke readers into questions they might not otherwise ask in a scenario where it is acceptable to agree or disagree with anything and experience anything within a surreal sphere.  Even so, audiences can tend to stay most comfortable watching their heroes prevail over monsters and villains. Though such stories are important, their battles pose an interesting question: are these conflicts against monsters and villains equal?  When a human is evil enough, he or she is called a monster.  Does that mean that any monster must face the designation of irredeemable villainy?  What even is a monster?  What do certain texts indicate about the morality of monsters?  A Student's Dictionary defines “monster” as “an animal or person with a strange or unusual shape,” and that is a rather standard explanation.  However, this does not fully explain the archetype of a monster in those traditional stories.  It is better to say a monster is any sole individual that is incompatible with the culture and society viewing it and one where interactions between that culture and the monster will lead to a dangerous conflict.  Any number of animal species are this to each other; it almost stands to reason monsters should have no culpability for their actions if those would follow a separate natural order.  Yet, the most enduring monsters have an intimate relationship with humans, and, as most authors are human, the texts will take a distinct stance on the culpability, responsibility and morality of such monsters. It is best to examine two narratives -- what some consider the original modern monster story: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, specifically the 1831 version, and a novel that biographizes the Universal Monsters series under the lifespan of the Wolf-Man: A Werewolf Remembers: The Testament Of Lawrence Stewart Talbot by Frank Dello Stritto.  

The former provides a historical insight to the relatively recent publication of the latter.  The benefit of examining these two texts is how the texts specifically show two similar character arcs for their monsters that deserve more specific analysis, which can encompass the following: origin, sympathy, comparison to other monsters, development, and significant themes to explore each monster.  Another benefit to examining these two texts specifically is that Mary Shelley’s work, in some ways, defined the genre and archetype, whereas Dello Stritto, in crafting his work, sought to stick as close to the movies’ story as possible while repurposing werewolf tropes from other media to construct his monster story (Dello Stritto, 494).  Dello Stritto’s work has merit over other examples, because his novel charts the entire lifespan and character evolution of a famous monster.  Therefore, every rhetorical choice these texts make is deliberate; consequently, these are two of the best texts to examine here.

 Are Monsters Born Or Made?

 

            The question of someone being born a monster or nurtured accordingly pervades The Monster’s journey in Frankenstein, while tinging the edges of Talbot’s in his novel.  By that earlier definition for monster, the large frame and watery eyes indicate that he is a monster, but he shows no deliberate malice or instinct for wanton destruction.  Based on the preconceived notions of monsters in the first definition, The Monster has a greater potential to be one simply because of his stature (even though Victor especially designed its extraneous features due to his interpretation of attractiveness).  Similarly, while Talbot’s curse is something he acquires, one of his mentors, who studies his affliction on page 214, says, “The moonlight interplays differently with everyone….But it only ignites what is inside you.”  His mentor is not even incorrect in this; Talbot pursues an engaged woman named Gwen Conliffe at the beginning of his story in a somewhat predatory manner.  The lycanthropic curse only brings to the surface what is inside of him, just as the later ostracization of The Monster will awaken its cunning and darker urges.  Once again, though, these behaviors do not spring forth from a vacuum, and there is a very provocative implication in their origins that warrants further examination.  The Monster’s relationship with his father, Victor Frankenstein, fuels the novel, and Talbot spends a significant portion of his novel bouncing between alternate father figures because of a complicated relationship with his own father.  These alternative father figures almost invariably end very poorly, a fact frighteningly intimate with The Monster’s own experience with the blind man.  Strangely, it does not even end there, as the creation of these characters excludes women in a significant way. 

The Monster’s creation comes solely from man, withholding any female influence, and Dello Stritto meets this by recycling the other film roles of Talbot’s actor and Talbot’s father’s actor into more Talbots.  He thereby weaves a family tree that emphasizes the men in the lineage and strips women of any power by supposing the Talbot lineage bears no women and by killing off Talbot’s mother early into his life.  Thus, the texts insinuate that monsters are monsters due to complicated family dynamics.  Talbot’s negative qualities are possibly the result of his exploits with other Talbots he meets in America after his father sends him away there, where his main Talbot mentor teaches him to read people and treat most conversations as if they were a complicated game.  It is a mindset that informs some of his thoughts he describes when he was around Gwen.  The main maternal insert for Talbot ends up a gypsy woman Maleva, whose son infected him with lycanthropy.  Their partnership in trying to cure Talbot comes across as the least ambiguously positive as they travel together between the first few attempts at cures.  She seemingly devotes the rest of her life to helping him and confirms at one point that he has become a surrogate son.  Her early influence on him could be wholly responsible for the positive traits that manifest despite his curse.  She, also, is his primary tether to humanity for much of the novel.  The Monster lacks this kind of reprieve, any companion to stay with him through his journey.  This lack of any consistent mother figure or friend in particular outside of the blind man and Frankenstein himself add to the tragedy and inform The Monster’s fixation on his loneliness that drives his every action.  These interpersonal relationships or lack thereof generate much sympathy for The Monsters as well as creating them and forcing their trajectory in a specific way.  According to these texts, monsters lack familial stability and support systems.

 Sympathetic Monsters

 

            An audience’s sympathy for a character is triggered for any number of reasons, but this is a more delicate balance when the character kills human beings.  Indeed, The Monster and Talbot are sympathetic characters; it can be difficult to understand why without comparing other monsters.  Luckily, Dello Stritto’s text, summarizing the latter half of the Universal Monsters film series, yields such other monsters: the film versions of Dracula and The Frankenstein Monster.  Meanwhile, the novel Monster best compares to the literary Dracula, who is essentially the same character as the movie character with more textual similarities to The Monster.  Talbot meets his versions of The Monster and Dracula in an afterlife scenario, describing them in this passage.  “The Dark One radiated evil...I could feel his thirst for revenge.  He was plotting...The Big One waited.  I watched and remembered” (Dello Stritto, 230-231).  Here the intent is the key difference between the appropriate sympathy levels for these three monsters amidst the result of their similar crimes.  This version of The Monster mostly lacks agency, and Dracula has always derived pleasure from preying on humans.  Talbot’s monster is the monster within himself, but what makes his character compelling is his eternal battle with the self.  Most of his surrogate father figures are ones he enlists to cure him of his lycanthropy.  He regrets his murders and feels depression over them and takes responsibility in trying to cure himself.  Evidently, a monster archetype can feel remorse.

Talbot´s testaments absorb other vampires of the times into Dracula to further color the latter’s resume as a monster and villain, but the most intelligent scheme the character has enacted is the novel original.  Dracula puts evident thought into his movements in his novel, and here arises the comparison to The Monster.  He abducts and murders a child and tortures their female caretaker.  He meticulously preys on his target’s mental states through many targeted attacks.  He even frames his enemy for actions necessary for his plan, forcing them to act in ways that benefit him before that person defies him.  In response, he attempts to take away their new bride.  The significance here is that The Monster does all these same heinous actions in Frankenstein, showing the same level of intelligent thought and foresight.  There is no tangible reason why one should appear more sympathetic -- and therefore excusable -- than the other except the audience's understanding of the tragedy of The Monster and the comparative lack thereof of any nuance to the character of Dracula in either story.  The Monster justifies its motives thusly.  “I am content to reason with you.  I am malicious because I am miserable.  Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?...tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” (Shelley, 104).  This demonstrates the importance of the backstory The Monster has just divulged to Frankenstein and the reader, and Frankenstein understands it.  The Monster asks for Frankenstein to build him a mate so he is no longer lonely.  There is the honest interpretation that had Frankenstein honored this request, The Monster’s terror would have ceased.  Shelley seems to be implying, then, that monsters can have emotional motivations like humans.  Frankenstein’s abortion of his Bride project incurs some of The Monster’s more malicious actions and evaluates The Monster as the monster that man makes as opposed to the monster whose nature is to prey on man.  In these ways as related to these other monsters, the texts clarify the instances where monster archetypes are sympathetic.

 Capacity of Monsters for Moral Growth and Accountability

 

            Sympathy is important for audience engagement, but growth and change -- if at all possible redemption -- has a more lasting impact and justifies the sympathy.  Talbot´s novel repeats a motif that directly links to his curse.  "Even a man who's pure in heart And says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms And the autumn moon is bright." At first, it seems like a condemnation and a resignation to his curse, but it transforms into much more with the realization that Talbot was not pure in heart at the beginning of his journey and later grows into a man who is pure in heart because of his affliction.  Talbot´s actions and attitudes in similar situations shift over the course of the novel.  In the beginning, he struggles and gives into his impulses to hunt Gwen and, later, Elsa Frankenstein with comparative ease.  By the time the narrative reaches this relationship with the gypsy woman Illonka, though, there is a difference.  Dello Stritto had set up a scenario to foreshadow this turn in Talbot’s early years with a woman named Consuela.  At first, he goes along with the woman’s advances immediately, but he is a lot more wary of Illonka and how he could hurt her or how her attraction to him may be a result of her unsettled internal issues (Dello Stritto, 298).  It is not as if he is suddenly immune to his beast self’s fantasies about her or his own overwhelming attraction to her, but he recognizes the underlying circumstances in the situation and handles the situation with more maturity and care.  This level of self awareness from a monster is a specific choice to underline his growth in the narrative.  Still, he wants nothing more than to be cured, and she becomes a part of that fantasy.  Another important byproduct of this relationship is Talbot’s scheme to rescue her from his “beast-self” by drugging her and locking her in a room when his murderous impulses battle him over her.  Notwithstanding that he still ends up killing her the next day, this marks immense growth for the man.  Where he was previously powerless to his impulses and role as a monster, he is able to fight effectively against himself.  However, for the narrative to still focus on monsters, the redemption cannot be to a state of total humanity, and it can be to any degree of subtlety.  Talbot is a tragic character fundamentally that is cursed to lose control and kill, but he changes along the way to combat this.   He powerlessly follows his impulses to later seek death and after, a better life, deliberately battling his darker half.  Talbot further evolves with his later hunt of Dracula, learning to use the full scope of his abilities toward a good end.  

        At the end of Frankenstein, The Monster outlives his creator in a worldwide hunt that provides a catalyst for a change.  The Monster has likely already understood that without his creator, he is nothing ,and that has likely been an underlying motive.  In that regard, The Monster’s resolution to end his miserable life is not a surprise. The more important realization for The Monster is that what he did was wrong with his apology to Walton.  This is significant.  The monsters of the animal kingdom -- what the cat is to the mouse -- have no responsibility to do anything less than what they do to each other.  They do what they do to survive with no real morality.  On the surface, a monster like Dracula is the same, and it becomes hard to disprove the sentiment that monsters are wholly incompatible with humans and human society, doomed to villainy.  But the texts surrounding Frankenstein’s Monster and Larry Talbot offer a more nuanced perspective through the respective growth in accountability and limiting the impact of their actions.  It can never be a perfect redemption for them as society will not allow The Monster a place nor his creator allow him a mate.  Similarly, the final successful curing of Talbot´s condition only lasts for under a year, but this is a redemption of their characters that demonstrates the standards and responsibilities of even monsters.  Their remembrance is as monsters, but that only drags them down so far, as monsters can have the agency and intellect required to grow and change as a human.  Or, perhaps given their close proximity to humankind and aforementioned evolution and character development, the core of these texts’ representation of monsters is to imply that they are indeed human in terms of functionality.

 Monsters and Predestiny

 

            As aforementioned, there is a cure for Talbot at one point in the novel, though temporary.  This is because the film series had the penultimate installment approach that angle and the final one completely ignore that ending. Yet, Dello Stritto illustrates another undercurrent of his interpretation of Talbot’s journey through this.  This is the idea of destiny.  The framing device of the novel initially is Talbot writing his memoirs, cured and about to marry his fiancee.  The story progresses to that point from his beginning into his curse and search for viable long-term cures.   Amidst all of that, there are implications of a rigid fate. On the hands of his victims, there is always a pentagram to mark his hunt for them.  Maleva insinuates predestiny in her eulogies and lamentations she recites at certain intervals throughout the novel.  She turns out to be vindicated.  After each of his deaths, he finds himself in a place he calls “The Deep Darkness” with Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula.  The souls of the dead pass through that place into the afterlife, and Talbot, Dracula and this interpretation of The Monster are unique in that they are stuck to that place.  While Mannering’s machine could functionally drain the life energy of both him and The Monster, there is no indication that their afterlife connection is due to anything other than the supernatural.  A gypsy named Bela infects Talbot with lycanthropy, and Talbot, in turn, infects a couple of people, who infect more.  The story never mentions any of these werewolves being trapped in The Deep Darkness beyond Talbot’s questions about it.  They did not have the same destiny.  Furthermore, Talbot’s travails in this novel join him with several mad scientists who would, in their respective films, create beings similar to The Wolf-Man and The Monster that never gain any mention in The Deep Darkness either.  Therefore, these three do have a specific fate to necessitate their presence up to a certain point.  It is provable, because the story does end with circumstances that satisfy whatever is keeping them there as they never reappear again despite incurring deaths that were tame compared to their previous ones.  Destiny leads him to Edelmann, (Dello Stritto, 317), the man ultimately responsible for finding a cure for Talbot´s condition.  Talbot is cured and The Monster and Dracula die once more, but that is still not enough to keep them retired.  Destiny and his own character arc demand Talbot find Edelmann, receive his cure, fall in love again, and kill a Dracula-corrupted Edelmann.  Around page three hundred comes a major turning point as the appearance of Dracula coincides with the reappearance of his “beast-self”, serving to obliterate the ideal life he had finally achieved.  Dracula seduces Talbot´s fiancee into one of his own Brides, and The Wolf-Man has to destroy her.  After that point, Talbot’s drive is not to live a human life but to end the unnatural life and legacy of Dracula.  This is Talbot’s ultimate fate, and it is his arc but also destiny that leads to this (Dello Stritto, 483).  Talbot’s experiences made him into a monster able to exact a deadly force, and his struggle against his impulses after revival made him a better man.  His evolution in romantic circumstances makes him able to court Miliza Morelle.  Losing her and the remains of his normal human life as a Talbot is essential for completing his destiny.  A werewolf with nothing left to lose and no more illusions about regaining humanity is Dracula’s most permanent nemesis.  Talbot understands and cooperates with the Wolf-Man inside himself in detecting Dracula’s victims through scents.  The text is demonstrating that Talbot has the required abilities for an ultimate destiny of ridding the world of evil.  Evidently, monsters can be used for good in the grand scheme of things.  Talbot had soliloquized about being “permitted to die” (Dello Stritto, 179), which reaches its natural conclusion when the Wolf-Man’s murder of Dracula appeared to end both permanently, as well as The Monster, who he rescues from Dracula’s influence.  Talbot could not find permanent peace from the monster inside of man through anything except joining with that monster to end the reign of the monster that exclusively preyed on mankind and rescuing The Monster that man made.  The text portrays a divine, predestination streak.  

The Monster in Frankenstein exists in an opposite sphere.  The novel more prevalently concerns itself with the debate of nature and nurture.  Whereas destiny had a role that nobody can define in the fall and redemption of Lawrence Talbot, in his travels, The Monster encounters situations where the nurture of people around him warps his nature.  This harkens back to the earlier proposed working definition for a monster that is fundamentally contingent upon the society viewing it.  Frankenstein´s Monster appears too large and grotesque to his European beholders.  They instinctively view him as a loathsome and lesser creature and pass fierce judgements.  This is similar to the novel Dracula, wherein the viewpoint characters, mostly contemporary Western Europeans or highly respected and scientifically minded people, pass a series of judgements and assumptions on the motivations of Dracula and his brides, their morality and on the natives to the community Harker travels through on his way to Dracula’s castle.   It is human nature but also highlights another nuance that the definition of strange is subject to all sorts of preexisting bias.  In that respect, the nature and nurture of The Monster take more meaning as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The Monster learns beautiful and eloquent language skills from the blind man and also of the kindness of man among each other through the blind man’s family.  He introduces a nature to help people in need when he helps them, but they will not repay him with kindness and generosity when they can see him.  As aforementioned, people such as Felix and William view The Monster as vile and hideous and do not allow him to prove otherwise, first meeting him with violence and fear.  It is easy to understand why he then sinks into vile schemes.  Once again, The Monster’s primary motivation is still loneliness, and his hunt with his creator is mired in desire for that creator to accept him or create him someone who can.  Terrorizing Frankenstein´s life is all The Monster has and all anyone has allowed him to have in their society.  The predestination of The Monster is through human biases and actions, rather than some divine aim, but his final action allows him to somewhat escape the prewritten.

 Conclusion

 

            To conclude, Frankenstein and A Werewolf Remembers: The Testament Of Lawrence Stewart Talbot, challenge perceptions of the monster archetype through telling two similar stories comprising the birth, life and death of two famous monsters.  These texts examine a monster’s morality.  Though Talbot and The Monster are ultimately monsters and will not be able to function within the confines of human society without heavy casualties, they are still beings that have the capacity for growth and change and self-awareness and self-discovery and can accomplish good, or end bad, if they choose it.  Other monsters can show the other lane to that choice, a senseless, unprovoked and well thought out crime.  It is the same choice every human has; thus, it lends understanding to the notion of terrible people being monsters.  This is remarkably a rectangular relationship, for these novels also prove not every monster is a terrible man and that becoming a monster and redemption are not mutually exclusive terms.  Still, this analysis has left several persisting questions however.  In the event where monsters do not have to be the villains, in what place does that put man in their stories, especially in being responsible for The Monster and ambition?  Until the turning point near the end of the novel, Talbot considers the closest thing to a villain in his story to be Dr. Frank Mannering.  Mannering is the first of a few to propose a solution to cure Talbot of The Wolf-Man.  He is also the first of a few that Talbot recognizes the obsession start to form with reviving The Monster.  Doctors Niemann and Edelmann follow in this pursuit.  The latter ultimately debates with an assistant if humans have any responsibility to The Monster or to their fellow selves.  The obsession and fixation that seems to infect those doctors has some roots possibly in Frankenstein, where the title character has the same feeling toward his construction of The Monster.  What is interesting is that Walton too bears that toward his own exploits and that Frankenstein must tell him not to indulge his ambition.  Mannering also masters the secrets of eternal youth through Frankenstein’s notes rather than the destiny that Talbot has to die and return at intervals.  It would be warranted to compare Elizabeth Lavenza and Miliza Morelle, the respective main love interests for each book that suffer unpleasant ends and to compare also what they accomplish, as characters, beyond furthering the protagonists’ and antagonists’ characters and rivalry in their stories.  Another questionable consideration is how much Victor Frankenstein himself qualifies as a monster through sheer comparison to Talbot and his own monster, given several similarities in personality and lifestyle with Lawrence Talbot.  The open sexuality of Talbot´s book deserves analysis, as many monster books, especially the older ones, aim more for a celibate outlook or otherwise comment on restrictive sexuality.  Dracula, in particular, has an interesting exploration on its culture’s sexuality through Lucy and Mina that seem to contrast with Talbot´s experiences.

Works cited:

Dello Stritto, Frank J., A Werewolf Remembers: The Testament of Lawrence Stewart Talbot. Cult Movies Press, 644 East 7 1/2 Street, Houston, Texas 77007, 2017

Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 1831, London, Dover, 1994.

Stoker, Abraham, Dracula, 1897, London, Barnes & Noble Inc. 122 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10011, 2011.

Dictionary Project, Inc. A Student's Dictionary & Gazetteer, 21st edition ed., USA, 2013, p. 209.

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Gutter Auteur an interesting criticism into work of grindhouse filmmaker Andy Milligan

By Doug Gibson

"Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan," McFarland Press, 2012, is the latest subject of film criticism from Rob Craig, who earlier tackled "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" for the same press. To be honest, it doesn't really matter much if readers agree or not with Craig's comments and criticisms of the late grindhouse filmmaker, Milligan, who completed about 30 very low-budget films over nearly three decades, the 60s to early 90s. (Most of his films were completed prior to 1975). What's important is that Milligan, and his films, are receiving this depth of examination and commentary. Milligan, 1929-1991, made unique films which developed tiny cult interest prior to his death. In the past generation, thanks largely to an excellent biography by Jimmy McDonough, articles from Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog) and more critiques from Sleazoid Express author, the late Bill Landis, his cult has grown, albeit very slowly.

As good as McDonough's biography is, if focused more on his life than his films. Craig's effort -- despite some introductions -- including a thin one from Milligan contemporary Robert Patrick -- and background information on grindhouse cinema and the culture of sleaze that defined the now-gone 42nd Street theater district, where Milligan's films flourished, -- focuses on the films, describing them, deconstructing them, and even providing some information on how they fared commercially. For those who have seen enough of Milligan's films, "Seeds," "Torture Dungeon," "Bloodthirsty Butchers," "Nightbirds," "Blood," "The Ghastly Ones," "The Weirdo," ... and so on, it won't be a surprise that Craig views Milligan's work often as harsh, dysfunctional deadly attacks on the traditional family, motherhood, heterosexual relationships, heterosexual oral sex and happiness, which simply is not an approved ending in a Milligan film. Sex is twisted in a Milligan film, which often features incest.

To find the reasons for this pessimism, Craig hearkens back to McDonough's biography, which revealed the extremely dysfunctional family that Milligan grew up in. It included a morbidly obese, probably insane mother and a hapless, enabling father. The early films of Milligan are lost, thanks to a producer who destroyed them. However, a surviving early film, "Seeds," probably is representative of Milligan's early "sex" films, that dealt with life in the city and family. Craig regards "Seeds" as both a sex film and a horror film. Perhaps, but the horror is not traditional; it's comprised of a family literally rotting from hate and dysfunction, where violence and murder seems a natural result rather than a plot twist. (In the Seed DVD extras, there is a "working print" of Seeds that is far better than the main film, which is slowed down considerably by 35MM sex inserts. (Milligan shot Seeds and most of his films in 16MM blown up). The inserts almost ruin the film.

Milligan's "horror" films are better described as period pieces produced -- mainly for producer William Mishkin -- that fit a particular commercial need for 42nd Street fare but still enabled Milligan to produce his Genet-like and Grand Guignol-type attacks on traditional values, including the family and sexual relations. A dressmaker by trade, his films include garish colors, elevator music, and roses. They include "Torture Dungeon," his version of Shakespeare by way of Staten Island, "The Man with Two Heads," his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which Craig aptly notes may be the best version of Stevenson's classic tale, "Bloodthirsty Butchers," his take on Sweeney Todd, "Blood," his monster-mash of Universal's creations, "Monstrosity," his take on "Shelly's Frankenstein, "The Body Beneath," his vampire take, and "Guru: The Mad Monk,: his dark riff on religious dogma. (And to think I've only mentioned a few of his films!)

Craig understands that sampling Milligan, while not exactly a pleasant experience, is time well spent intellectually. They provide a glimpse into a world where positive results are simply not possible due to the ugliness that dominate human relationships. Take the recent BFI Flip Side DVD release of the once semi-lost Milligan film, "Nightbirds," which Craig critiques. In it, a young man meets a beautiful woman who enraptures him with sex, then casts him away. He dies and the predatory woman goes after a new man to ruin. As Craig mentions, it's a claustrophobic film, with most of the action confined to a single room. The male protagonist is a pathetic figure, a mere fly for the evil woman's web. It's also impossible not to keep watching.

Milligan was literally a one-man filmmaker, doing everything from directing to gaffer work to music scoring in order to make his films cheaply for Mishkin and others. Most of his films cost about $10,000. It's a tribute to his ramshackle skills (perhaps mostly learned as a director for the iconic, tiny Caffe Cino in the early 1960s) that Milligan could create these haphazard agitprop worlds on the cheap yet create characters and situations that hooked viewers.

By most accounts, Milligan could be a very unpleasant man. He drove away potential investors and friends and railed against Mishkin and other producers, although he seemed to live comfortably enough for more than two decades. He bought homes and a small hotel in Staten Island, and an off-off broadway theater in New York City. He eventually moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, and capped off his career making films for William Mishkin's son Lew, who was not as bright as his father. Lew Mishkin hated Milligan so much that he, as mentioned, deliberately destroyed copies of his earlier films. To this date, film sleuths are still looking for titles such as "The Naked Witch" and "Tricks of the Trade," and others that Mishkin Jr. melt for copper and spite. From time to time, Milligan films are discovered. Examples include "Vapors," his first film, a pre-Stonewall short about life in a gay bathhouse, "Seeds," and "Nightbirds."

It's interesting that Craig also did a book on Ed Wood. Both Milligan and Wood died in poverty. Milligan and Wood are diverse in that Wood was a likable chap with limited skills who destroyed himself with booze.  Milligan was a very skilled filmmaker who made his films in slapdash fashion. Milligan, although a prowler of gay night sex (he would die of AIDS) was not a drinker or drug abuser. His harsh personality drove away relationships that might have improved his finances.

Craig's criticisms  are interesting. He takes a somewhat contrary view of some films. He's less enthusiastic of "Vapors" and "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" than other critics are, and he likes later Milligan efforts such as "Legacy of Blood," and "Blood," more than many other Milligan enthusiasts. I appreciate his strong thumbs-up critique of "Monstrosity," the Frankenstein knockoff starring Milligan actor Hal Borske, that is a terrific, satirical comedy that deserves more notice. (In fact, memo to the folks at TCM Underground -- there are a wealth of Milligan films that deserve late-night Friday showings on your series.) One nice piece of observance by Craig is how Milligan, in his later films, "Carnage," "The Weirdo" and "Monstrosity," appear more kind to the protagonists than in earlier films, although the films still retain the customary dysfunctional endings. Craig, like McDonough, has only scorn for "Surgikill," Milligan's final hospital horror comedy. While the movie is very crude and juvenile, it does have some positive moments, and a Milligan touch, a drag queen nurse.

"Gutter Auteur" is a good read, and an improvement on Craig's otherwise OK book on Wood, which relied too much at times on feminist theory. I agree with Craig that Milligan's films are better on the big screen (I have yet to see one that way, unfortunately) I hope "Gutter Auteur"  takes a place as a work that contributes to Milligan's slow-but-baby-steps-consistency march to greater cult status. His films are fascinating slap-dash pieces of dysfunction, and Craig understands that, and provides some interesting commentary. Despite this book, a great biography and other works, I suspect there's more to learn about the fascinating life and work of Milligan.

For those uninitiated in Milligan, here's a great scene from Torture Dungeon (below).

Book review: Ed Wood, Mad Genius

Review by Doug Gibson

(Ed Wood, Mad Genius: A Critical Study of the Films, by Rob Craig, 2009, McFarland, Jefferson, N.C., 306 pages, www.mcfarlandpub.com and (800) 253-2187. The reviewer received a review copy from McFarland.)

Although some fans of Ed Wood may take issue with me, I think Woodmania has gone through four distinct phases:

The first was the "tiny cult" phase, as Wood fan Fred Olen Ray described it. This was the pre-Medved era, where small groups of fans would stay up late to watch "Bride of the Monster" or "Plan 9 From Outer Space" on Movies 'till Dawn. On NYC's 42nd Street, Wood's mysteriously delirious "Glen Or Glenda" would play at midnight on the weekends to surprisingly full houses. This is where Wood pop biographer Rudolph Grey first witnessed a Wood film. I myself first caught Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" on LA's Channel 9's Movies Till Dawn about 30 years ago. It was followed by "The Creeping Terror." (What a delightful double feature!)

The second Woodmania phase was the early '80s Medved-inspired "Golden Turkey Awards" smarmy hysteria, which lifted Ed Wood into the pop culture consciousness. Wood became famous, but his films were mocked with deliberate glee. "Bad" film festivals featuring Wood films popped up everywhere. Long-forgotten Wood associates such as Vampira, Conrad Brooks, and Paul Marco were lifted out of obscurity and into second careers. Wealthy Wood fan Wade Williams paid a long overdue editing lab bill and rescued Wood's "lost" film "Night of the Ghouls" from probable destruction. There were a few perceptive critics, such as Danny Peary, author of Cult Films, who saw more than just easy-to-mock foolishness in Wood's films during this time, but most of us laughed at Wood, and the early documentaries on his life, such as "The Incredibly Strange Film Show," were mostly condescending and disrespectful.

The third Woodian phase occurred in the 1990s and lasted into the early years of the new century. It was the Wood-as-tragedy era and it included Grey's respectful oral biography, "Nightmare of Ecstasy," There were also the much-celebrated Tim Burton film, "Ed Wood," and two feature-length film documentaries on "Plan 9" and Wood's career, Web sites that celebrated Wood's work sprang up, and there was the emergence of a tiny film journal, "Cult Movies Magazine," that treated Wood with genuine respect. Also, small printing presses, such as Four Walls Eight Windows, began to re-print Wood's pulp novels from the '60s. You could actually go into a Barnes & Noble and buy "Death of a Tranvestite." That era faded away; Wood's novels left bookstores and Cult Movies Magazine folded. But Wood's cult remained strong enough to survive.

And that brings us to the fourth and current phase of Woodmania -- Ed Wood-as-literary-and-film-criticism fodder. Yes, it's true -- Wood's work is of interest to the learned. Rob Craig's "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" is an extremely detailed and provocative academic criticism of just about all of Wood's film work, whether, director, writer or adviser, the author is able to track down. It's a fascinating read for Woodphiles, but I wouldn't recommend it for Wood beginners. The book can be very ponderous at times. It defines dreary academic prose at times. Due to its depth, though, I wouldn't be surprised if "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" makes it onto the reading list in institutes of higher learnings' film studies classes.

Truth be told, there's a lot of academic folly in "Ed Wood: Mad Genius." It's tough to swallow Craig's claims that Wood's low porno is full of deliberate jabs against male-female relationships. The sad truth is Wood's porno efforts were only concerned with meeting male sexual fantasies. There's nothing to deconstruct. The actors have no clothes. And the book veers into silliness with its claims that "Plan 9" heroine "Paula Trent" is coyly suggesting to her worried, sexist pilot husband "Jeff" that she may engage in adultery or masturbation while he's gone flying in the "wild blue yonder."

But literary and film criticism are full of "throw-every-theory-in-including-the-kitchen-sink" approaches. The Wood fan who plows through the denser parts will encounter observations on Wood's films that are fascinating, unique and indeed, at times on-target. Take "Glen Or Glenda," for example. Craig accurately cites it as Wood's most personal/political film, but he also draws comparisons on psychiatrist Carl Jung's theories of the destructive conflict that can arise when the inner self competes with the outer self. That is at the heart of "Glen's" dilemma with fiance "Barbara." Through Wood's film and a comparison of his early years, Craig also presents a good case that the film is a harsh criticism of Wood's mother for raising him to prefer women's clothing.

Critic Peary opined that Wood made his films so ridiculous as a means to mask his provocative personal and political statements that were really too extreme for the conservative 1950s. If his films were more understandable, Peary argued, they'd never get shown. Take "Plan 9," which Peary saw as a brave critique of the 1950s U.S. military buildup. But Craig interestingly takes that theory a step further and argues that Wood used many of the tactics of minimalist director/producer Bertolt Brecht. The ridiculous special effects and sets in films such as "Plan 9," "Jail Bait," "Bride of the Monster," and "Night of the Ghouls," may have had a lot more thought attached to them than we previously thought. They unconsciously create a believable scenario for the audience through the surrealistic, almost agitprop-like sets. The bizarre dialogue of a Wood film creates a dream-like state -- almost a dream world, unique to the viewer.

Rather than be considered a joke, Wood is closer to a Luis Bunuel in his ability to suspend our normal world and draw us into a cinematic other-world for an hour and a half.

Craig makes a strong case that Wood used the absurdity of Brechtian theater to seduce the audience into accepting his alternate reality that was on the screen. Wood's characters, the dolt Kelton the Cop, the drunk in the police station, Lobo the monster, the military men in "Plan 9," etc., the dysfunctional nuclear family, existed in their own world or time, separate from our realities. There's never a clear evidence in a Wood film where something is occurring, or even if it is occurring in our world. If we take these Brechtian ideas, Craig argues, it's easy to accept that night and day intermix so often in Plan 9, or that a photo enlarger in "Bride" can be an atomic growth machine, or that the very, very low-budget, slapped together "Night of the Ghouls" can be as fascinating as "Waiting for Godot" in its bewildering minimalism.

There are other examples of the singular, alternative universe of a Wood film. Until reading Craig's book, I had not realized that Wood's "Jail Bait" occurs only at night, or that Wood's "The Sinister Urge" has detectives who both rail against and obsessively look at the criminal pornography. We need to watch these films more than once to notice this, or to note that "Plan 9" has a lot of dialogue that bravely attacks the popular 50s conservative military buildup jargon. For all his slapdash, low-budget, one-lung procedures, Wood, Craig argues, deliberately created a different world for his viewers, no matter how pitifully few were in theater audiences when his films were released. This alternative universe, mixed with the provocative ideals espoused in the cross-dressing "Glen Or Glenda" or bizarre sci-fi tale "Plan 9," guaranteed that a long-time, never-ending Wood cult would eventually form and not go away. How could it? His film are pleasant narcotics for his devotees.

Indeed, the strongest argument for Craig's alternate universe theory is the iron hold Wood's films have on viewers 50-plus years later. Other low-budget sci-fi horror hodgepodges of the 50s don't have this hold, no matter if they are occasionally watched fondly by genre fans. Ten minutes of "Bride of the Monster," that Craig accurately pegs as an homage to the Bela Lugosi Monogram films of the 1940s, are more interesting than any film Roger Corman ever directed.

That's simply a fact.

While reviewing this book, I watched six Wood films, "Glen," "Jail Bait," "Bride," Plan 9, " "Night of..." and "Sinister Urge." I noted the critiques of Craig, and I witnessed many of his observations in "Ed Wood, Mad Genius." Craig's book, which throws in hundreds of critical theories, some wild, some sound, regarding Wood, his movies and screenplays, (the book is very thorough) is worth having because it offers unique, important ideas about Wood that are new ideas.

The truth is we have not plumbed the depths of our Ed Wood obsession. There is a new criticism book of his novels and short stories, "Muddled Mind," that has been published. There's room for more critiques of Wood, and Craig is right in saying that despite Grey's very interesting oral bio of the director (1924-1978) we are still waiting for a definitive biography of Wood.