Lecture Four
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein

One of the more complex questions in film studies has to do with the way films are analyzed. There is always a serious question about whether a person is reading something OUT of the text, or reading something into the text. Is the analysis, in effect telling us more about the viewer or the author of the work? If an analyst can show why the interpretation is made it is certainly preferable to an analysis which is based on a kind of “I feel that…”

Theories of aesthetics abound and different approaches yield different results. In a sense this is one of the reasons that definition is important as we discussed earlier.

The anthropologist Clyde Kluckholn, writing at a time when “man” and “human” could mean the same thing, made the following statement:

The first of these implies things which are found in all humans and which all humans share. The second implies that there are things people share as a result of being in the same culture and the third that each person is unique. When a film maker makes a film all levels are in operation. In some ways there will be something at some level which is intrinsically human (e.g. grieving over the death of someone close); some parts will be intelligible to people from the same culture but other people might not understand the implications. The less closely related the cultures the more likely things will be interpreted differently. Even in closely related cultures there can be problems. In Brigadoon, the town appears mystically every 100 years. The American writers set the towns disappearance 200 years before 1947 when the play opened. So the town vanished in 1747 a year right after the Battle of Culloden, one of the most significant events in Scottish history thus giving a very different meaning to the Scots than to Americans who may be only dimly aware of the battle. When dealing with “foreign” films the problems intensify not only because of cultural meanings but also because the audience is working through a translation which may lose a huge amount of meaning. Hence the audience may be reading INTO the film things that aren’t there or not reading OUT of the film things that are there. This leads to problems involving whether or not it is reasonable to approach works of art from a different culture by imposing one’s own attitudes and outlooks on the work.

Since all works of art will have universal, cultural and individual aspects to them, which are film analysts trying analyze. Are they trying to find what the individual author has to say or make some statement about the aspect of the work that is there because it is an artifact of the culture itself. Are film analysts playing at being dilettante social scientists when they look for references to patriarchy and other current interests, or are those the things that the author of the work was interested in? It would hardly be a revelation to discover that in America there is a strong tendency for people to have family names and for children to use the family names of their fathers. This is not of current interest to people. But to find examples of patriarchy, that is seen as significant. If the audience is interested in a topic it may very well find it even if it has to impose it on the work.

In The Passenger, a writer asks if he can interview an African shaman who attended a prestigious university in England. The man says he can interview him, but the questions will tell him more about the writer than the African’s answers will tell him about the Africa. The ”discourse”, as we know say, is being structured by the interviewer. So is it too with film analysis. Does in analysis tell us more about the analyst and less about the film or is there a way to deal with the text per se. Gender is certainly a “hot” topic now, and one suspects that it is for many film makers. Hence there will be films about gender issues. But this may not have been the case at all times so it is important to see the films in their historical context and make some connections.

For example, one can examine American culture and come to some conclusion about the idea that dogs tend to be thought of as “masculine” (having associations with men hunting with dogs and so on) while cats on the other hand seem feminine. So it becomes interesting to note that in Cat People the transforming character is female while in The Wolf Man the transformer is male (wolves being dog like).

Vampires tend to be male and their attacks are basically on women, even to coming into their bedrooms at night. The sexual (somewhat predatory) nature of the vampire is clear. The association of the vampire with sickness and death may even suggest the idea of sexually transmitted diseases. The Wolf Man is an interesting reversal. In the film, Bela, the gypsy bites Lawrence Talbot who lives and becomes a wolf, although he kills the woman he attacks.

In many of the films, the transformation implies a dual nature to the individual of a good and an evil side. This is most evident in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where the good/evil opposition lies directly on the surface in the text of the film. The Wolf Man too, has a similar split in character and the film suggests strongly that lycanthropy is really nothing more than the mind creating the wolf to account for an animalistic side (as happens in Cat People as well). The idea of a kind of id vs. ego idea is found in some science fiction films like Forbidden Planet where there are “monsters from the id” that destroy the civilization.

The etiology of the monsters is also interesting in that in Frankenstein the monster is created by the doctor, vampires and werewolves are created “through no fault of their own” (as The Wolf Man film tells us) One is forced to wonder where the first werewolf and vampire came from in some ways the way we are forced to ask how a disease like AIDS could have started.

The Wolf Man, made the year before Cat People, leans in one sense on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in that the “Monstrous other” has two identities which reflect good and evil sides of the same person. Textually the split is obvious in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wolf Man, and Cat People, while Frankenstein locates the duality between the monster and the doctor.

Cat People has a textual message about frigidity (hence sexuality, in here and in Frankenstein, repressed and with homosexual overtones). Even Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has some sexual implication in it which imply something about repressing sexuality being a dangerous thing. This theme repeats itself in films like Psycho, which lacks the supernatural elements or science fiction elements of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Similar themes can be found in Portrait of Dorian Gray, where a painting plays the double.

The Wolf Man on the other hand deals with lycanthropy or wer(e)wolvery where a physical transformation from human to wolf and back occurs. Even though such a shift from human to animal occurs in Cat People the transformation is not shown. There is a slight shift in the lighting as Irena starts the transformation, but the transformation is certainly not specularized the way it is in Wolf Man

None the less, The Wolf Man seems to have much less problem with repressed sexuality, although the fact that Lawrence has been away for years and has no wife, but immediately becomes attracted to a woman he sees through the telescope. There are however some interesting sexual implications in the film and some Biblical and mythological references that can be found – albeit in somewhat altered form.

The nature of the werewolf is a transformation in which certain specific changes take place – the voice deepens to a growl, hair grows on the body, and in fact many of the changes associated with growth from childhood into adult status can be seen with a kind of uncontrollable lust.

There are some questions about the story of the death of Lawrence’s brother in a hunting accident which can be seen as referencing the Cain and Abel story along with that of the Prodigal Son.

Then there is a mythological inversion of the Oedipus story wherein a son kills his father. In this the father kills the son.

Some questions can be raised subtextually about the growing tensions between father and son as the son attains manhood and looks to replace the father.

The attempt at mythic or at least folkloric status is textually stated with the “folk type or ritual sayings” which are repeated regularly throughout the film by various people

This is altered in later versions to be

Additionally the repetition of the line "The way you traveled is stoney through no fault of your own...",

Two of the “Big Four” sparked not only series of films about them (as did The Creature from the Black Lagoon) but they and the others appear also in a number of films in which the monsters got to meet one another. There were spinoffs like the very odd Dracula’s Daughter and Werwolf of London

The Werwolf transformation is certainly one of the most difficult. Interestingly enough, the gypsy Bela is seen as an actual wolf when seen in the murderous attack on Jenny. When found he is back in human form, dressed except for his shoes and socks.

Talbot’s transformation is into something quite different; an animal which walks on two legs and remains dressed except for his shoes and socks. It is not until later films like The Howling and American Werewolf in London that the humans transform into something more wolflike and which the problem of clothing vs. nudity is addressed.

Even in Cat People one is forced to wonder how Irena’s transformation back to human as evidenced by the cat paw prints becoming shoes was accomplished. (Note a similar scene in The Wolf Man where the wolf paw prints lead up to Talbot) That is to say, Do the clothes disappear in the transformation to animal and then reappear when the return transformation is accomplished?

HUMOR AND HORROR

The mixing of genres in not unusual, although some genres seem more amenable to mixing in the same way that some ethnic foods seem more amenable to fusion than others. Humor and horror are closely related in a number of ways. One is that they both often deal with tabued subjects (refer to Mel Jacobs book on Clackamas Chinook Mythology where he claims myth to be the repository of repressed tensions).

The second is that the passing of the horrific element leads to some sort of release – a scream, laughter. People talk about “nervous laughter” which sometimes occurs in tense moments. (Whale claimed that there was meant to me humor in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. But he never made fun of the monsters. Hitchcock called Psycho a “black Comedy”)

The build up of tension is often part of both. See Q 54 in the monster quiz

54. Ok - now we get harder. In what film does the following exchange take place?

Crew Chief
Barnes flushed a polar bear!

Barnes
Sure did.

Dr. Chapman
Scare you?

Barnes
Not after I saw it was only a bear!

There are many comics who have been involved in mixed genre horror/comedy. Many have been made. Abbott and Costello were two famous comedians who came out of vaudeville and liked doing “routines”. Costello had developed a comic response to terror which he exhibited in a “horror/comedy” film called Hold That Ghost (The Bowery Boys of East Side Kids had also made some horror/comedies as well)

Costello had himself thought of trying to do a Broadway show with monsters but contractual problems and the difficulties of doing this on stage was too daunting, so the project fell through.

Neither of the duo was particularly enthusiastic about the script to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) because of the lack of their routines in it. None the less, Costello’s respect for the director Charles Barton caused him to go through with it. Their lack of enthusiasm for the project is certainly not evident in the film.

The film brought back all of the Big Four except for the Mummy (Additional films would involve both Abbott and Costello with the Mummy, the Invisible Man and “the Killer, Boris Karloff). They were able to get Chaney and Lugosi for the Wolf Man and Dracula, but Karloff refused to come on board as the Frankenstein monster. There is some discussion as to whether that was caused by his feeling he didn’t want the monster made fun of while he was playing him, or whether he had already divorced himself from the part having played it three times already (Frankenstein (1931) (when he was 44); Bride of Frankenstein (1935) (when he was 48) and Son of Frankenstein (1939) (when he was 52) – the last some 9 years earlier and may have felt it was too physically demanding at this point when he would have been 61. Instead the role was taken on by Glenn Strange who had played the role earlier as well and who was 49 when Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was made. Interestingly enough his was injured during the shooting and for some scenes Lon Chaney picked up the role. He had also played the monster in some earlier films.

One thing here is that like Whale, Barton treats the monsters basically with respect. Only the one scene where the Monster reacts in a frightened way to seeing Costello is there some fun made with the monster.

In this film Jack Pierce who did much of the original make up for the Universal studios horror films has been replaced by Bud Westmore, who had worked under Pierce but was more interested in using new methods which reduced the time it took to get the actors into make-up and also shortened the time needed to do the transformations.

An indication of the comic nature of the film occurs in the opening credits with the cartoon of the creatures (probably done by Walter Lantz who did Woody Woodpecker).

Also appearing is Jane Randolph from Cat People.

There is a good deal of sexuality in the film from the textual level of Costello have 2 girlfriends through double entendre lines such as:

Chick:
Frankly, I don’t get it.

Sandra:
Frankly you never will.

Both comedy and suspense building (as happens often in horror films) rely heavily on timing and in this film also on the Hitchcockian idea that it is frightening for the audience to see something about to happen that the characters in the film do not. There are many scenes where the audience is quite aware of things the characters are oblivious to. Dracula opens the coffin while Costello is looking the other way. Talbot’s transformation in the apartment across from Wilbur (Costello) and Chick (Abbott) results in the audience knowing he has already transformed and Wilbur’s entrance into the apartment endangers him. Costello’s comedic performance merges the horror and humor. The audience can fear for Costello as the wolf form of Talbot stalks him, but there is little doubt he will escape.

The sound design continues with both off screen sounds but also contrast with what the character sees – that is it is a kind of “out of character’s view” sound. The sound of Dracula’s coffin opening is heard by Wilbur before he turns his head to see what is happening – but the audience already knows.

Once again the rational and anti-rational appear with Talbot and Wilbur both arguing for the existence of the supernatural elements while Chick argues against it, but in the end must concede, anti-rationalism triumphing over rationalism.