out for revenge
by
Douglas Messerli
Wyllis
Cooper (screenplay, based on the novel by Mary Shelley), Rowland V. Lee
(director) Son of Frankenstein /
1939
It’s
hard when commenting on Rowland V. Lee’s rather clumsy Son of Frankenstein, to want to mention all the scenes that were
portrayed so much more charmingly in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein—a desire I will try to resist.
The great moment of this film, however,
returns to Karloff when, discovering the dead body of his friend, he strokes
Ygor’s body and screams out in pain, intimating that their relationship had
been far more than a simple friendship.
Similarly inexplicable is the local
visits of Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) to the Frankenstein manor. From the
beginning this would-be general—despite the fact that as a child he, himself,
lost his arm to the Monster’s fury—insists he will protect the Baron and his
family. And, even though he strongly suspects the Baron of nefarious
activities, he returns to speak to him, his wife, and their son, time and
again, sharing drink, food, and a game of darts. Indeed both he and the
Burgomaster, despite their druthers, seem determined to treat the interloper
better than their fellow townspeople, the inspector, by film’s end, appearing
to have practically moved in with the Frankensteins, much
to the delight,
clearly, of the lonely and fearful Elsa.
And, finally, we are faced with yet an
odder set of relationships in the Baron’s somewhat explicable admiration for
the father he had never seen and to the Monster who, because created by his
father, is here described as his “brother.”
Unlike Brooks’ son, this film’s Baron
hardly needs any prodding to help bring the Monster back to full life. Even his
father more strongly resisted the threats of Pretorius—the later of whom shared
a relationship with the monster similar to Ygor’s.
Without pushing this too much,
accordingly, Lee’s film hints at homosexual love, pederasty, inherited madness,
and, even potential infidelity, all wrapped up in a tale of several personal
revenges: Ygor’s, the Monster’s, the Baron’s, and Krogh’s.
It is, quite obviously, the theme of
revenge which drains the film from its previously hubris-driven themes. These
figures are more driven by what they have lost as opposed to what the two other
tales of Frankenstein suggested were misplaced dreams and aspirations. Imagine Hamlet without any of his imagination
and meditations, or even his ability to fear for his “dreaming” after death.
Here nearly everything seems neatly
predetermined, as if the Catholic world of this formerly idyllic German village
had been taken over by the Calvinists. Indeed, we discover—another oddity
difficult to explain—that the Frankensteins built their original castle upon a
bed of Sulphur which over the years has heated up to, symbolically, match the
heat of hell. In other words, their whole world has been built upon their own
eternal damnation.
How empty the Baron’s parting words
appear, accordingly, as he merrily bequeaths the castle and its grounds to the
people of the village while he darts off with his wife and son into the train
that will take back to a far safer place. You can almost hear the villagers,
under their breaths, muttering “good riddance.”
Los Angeles,
October 24, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment