Previous ⬅ Faces of Frankenstein: Holiday Edition
Categorizing Frankenstein films from the Modern Era is no easy task and will become practically impossible when Post-Modern films, which I am delineating as films made from 2000-present, are discussed. Sometimes the four streams — reclamation, parody, subversion, and metanarratives — flow into, and become barely distinguishable from, one another, often making categorization a matter of personal opinion. For example, some may call The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Weird Science (1985) parodies, which is perfectly legitimate, but I have chosen to place the former in subversion and the latter in metanarratives for reasons that I will clarify in those installments. The parodies discussed here are all films that specifically spoof Frankenstein films, both official and adjacent, for comedic effect, playing on audience familiarity with the story and style of the films that have been established over time. This category also does not limit itself to the 1970–2000 timeframe of The Modern Era but reaches back well into the Classical Era, beginning almost immediately after the first talking Frankenstein film was released in 1931.
When Worlds Collide
In 1932, Universal released its own spoof of the horror movies it made famous with a one-reel comedy called “Boo.” It features clips from Dracula, Frankenstein, and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu overlayed with a wisecracking narrator making fun of these, even by then, famous frights. The following year, Walt Disney got in on the action with Dracula, Mr. Hyde, and the Frankenstein monster laughing at Mickey’s on-screen antics along with other stars of the era, including Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers in “Mickey’s Gala Premiere.” That same year, “The Mad Doctor” sees Mickey Mouse saving his dog Pluto from a mad scientist that wants to graft his canine head onto the body of a chicken.
By 1935 Warner Bros. joined the fray with a version of the Frankenstein monster appearing in a Merrie Melodies cartoon entitled “Hollywood Capers” which features largely forgotten WB cartoon characters Beans and Oliver Owl. In 1938’s “Have You Got Any Castles?” a very Karloff-looking Frankenstein monster dances in tandem with Mr. Hyde, Dr. Fu Manchu, and a skull-headed Phantom of the Opera. In the Bugs Bunny years, Warner Bros. introduced a pile-of-ginger-hair-in-tennis-shoes monster character that became known as Gossamer in plots that bear striking similarities to Frankenstein. Of particular note are the cartoons “Hair-Raising Hare” (1946) and “Water, Water Every Hare” (1952) in which this monster character serves as a henchman to a mad scientist trying to capture Bugs Bunny’s brain for his experiments. These early shorts demonstrate just how quickly the Universal interpretation of Frankenstein entered into the cultural zeitgeist with the lurching, flat-headed monster practically ubiquitous within a year of the release of the 1931 film. Perhaps the most enduring comedy-horror success of the age, however, came from Universal Studios itself spoofing its own monstrous legacy.
I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello met on the Burlesque circuit in 1936 after each had labored with nominal success at best in showbiz for years. After teaming up, they graduated from the Burley-Q to radio, perfecting routines like “Who’s on First” before Hollywood came calling, making them huge stars in the early 1940s with films like the Army comedy Buck Privates (1941) and their first comedy-thriller Hold That Ghost (also 1941). The latter introduced Lou’s “scared” schtick which proved immediately popular and became a mainstay for the duo throughout their film career, proving vital to their most famous film and the first great Frankenstein parody feature, the unassailable classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). In truth, the term “parody” does not exactly describe this film. It is an uproarious comedy to be sure, but it does not make fun of the monsters or the genre itself. Those characters and trappings are there to provide genuine scares while the antics of Bud and Lou make us laugh.
The film was not the first time Universal played the Frankenstein Monster for laughs in a feature film. The Creature made a brief cameo in the climactic sequence of the anarchic Hellzapoppin’(1941), featuring the studio’s other, though now largely forgotten, comedy duo Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. After the huge success of Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello considered a Broadway stage show featuring the monsters around 1943 but abandoned the idea likely due to their demanding film schedule and the probable expense and makeup issues that would be involved in such a live show. After the War, Abbott and Costello’s immense popularity had begun to wane and producer Robert Arthur began throwing around ideas as to how to revive the duo’s appeal. The idea of teaming them with Universal’s other great wartime success, the monsters, was brought up, though not everyone was enthusiastic. Lou Costello apparently hated the script, telling Arthur “You don’t think I’ll do that crap do ya? My little daughter can write something better than that.”
In 1946, Universal was sold for the second time (the first being in 1936 when the Laemmle’s lost control of the studio) and the new head of the studio William Goetz planned to make the newly renamed Universal International “the prestige studio of Hollywood” according to film historian Gregory W. Mank. He put an end to “all serials, B-westerns, and horror movies.” Abbott and Costello were also on the chopping block but for the fact that, by 1947, the studio lot was going bankrupt. So, Goetz gave the Abbott and Costello monster vehicle then titled “The Brain of Frankenstein” the green light and a “good luck and God bless you.”
The shoot itself was a mixture of professionalism and buffoonery with director Charles (Charlie) Barton quipping, “All three of the monsters were the nicest. The real monsters were Abbott and Costello.” Being an experienced director of the duo, Barton meant this primarily in jest. Barton knew very well that Bud and Lou’s process involved keeping the energy up during the arduous “hurry up and wait” filmmaking process by involving themselves and a friend, professional clown Bobby Barber, in antics that often involved breaking up actors during takes, pretending to be a dog complete with on-set doghouse, and pie fights. Some on the set were more open to these antics than others. Glenn Strange, reprising his role as the Frankenstein Monster, could barely make it through scenes without laughing. Strange told collector Bob Burns that Bela Lugosi was not so fond of all this, reportedly saying in his heavy Hungarian accent, “Ve should not be kidding vhen ve are vorking.” Though Lugosi’s fourth wife Lillian Arch, who was married to him during the making of the film, disputes this, telling Greg Mank that he was quite relaxed and enjoyed himself on the set.
The plot of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, such that it is, involves Dracula (1) seeking a new brain for the Frankenstein Monster with the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.) getting involved along the way. The real purpose of the film, however, is to give the comedians the opportunity to work their craft as the greatest goof and straight-man combo in film history while the monsters scare the living daylights out of Lou as Wilbur Grey. Of course, Bud, playing Chick Young, does not see the monsters until the madcap finale and consistently scolds his partner for making up stories despite Wilbur’s continual insistence that “I saw what I saw when I saw it.” Like most of Universal’s monster mashup movies of the era, the film is largely a Wolf Man vehicle, but the balance of screentime here is fairly democratic, giving Dracula and the Monster plenty of time to interact with Bud and Lou as well. Some of the film’s best bits involve a candle sliding down the rising lid of Dracula’s coffin as Lou reads about vampires, Lou sitting in a large chair without realizing he is sitting on the Monster’s lap, and Lou, strapped to a gurney, caught in the middle of a face-off between Dracula and the Wolf Man.
The film was a huge success upon its release, rocketing Abbott and Costello back into the top ten box office draws of the year. The team would go on to meet up with Universal’s other great monsters (and a few that did not belong to the studio) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). They also met the Creature from the Black Lagoon on their television series in 1954 in what amounts to a publicity short for the film that hit movie houses in 3-D that year. Despite the objections of its stars and the fact that they never really cared for the film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein has gone on to become arguably the duo’s most recognized and beloved film and is regularly named the greatest horror comedy of all time.
As naturally as night follows day, success leads to imitation and the “Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters” films had their share of them. In Mexico, comedian Antonio Espino, known as “Clavillazo” teamed up with Evangelina Elizondo to stay the night in a castle filled with all kinds of monsters including the “Frentenstein Monster” (with a design that surely would have gotten a better-known studio sued by Universal), a vampire, and a gill man in Castle of the Monsters (El Castillo de los Monstruos, 1958). In 1962, Benito Alazraki directed Frankenstein, the Vampire and Company (Frankenstein el vampire y comañia), starring Manuel “Loco” Valdés and José Jasso as a pair of bumbling delivery men who deliver a pair of wax figures, one of the Frankenstein Monster and the other of a vampire, to a spooky old castle and the figures come to life. The plot also features attempted brain-swapping and a werewolf for good measure.
Back in the U.S., director Jack Hannah along with producer Walter Lantz, who is believed to have been responsible for the animated opening credit sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, delivered a Frankenstein-themed entry in the long-running Woody Woodpecker cartoon series, “Franken-stymied” (1961). In it, Woody meets up with a robotic Frankenstein creation during a thunderstorm that destroys his home tree. In 1967, Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, best known for their series of stop motion Christmas specials, created Mad Monster Party?, (2) a madcap Claymation romp that stars Boris Karloff voicing Baron Boris von Frankenstein, a mad scientist who invites all manner of monsters to his retirement party along with his nephew Felix, who he intends to make his successor. Various creations, including Francesca (Gale Garnett) and the Monster’s Mate (Phyllis Diller), make independent pacts with Dracula (Allen Swift, who also voices Felix, the Invisible Man, and most other voices and sounds needed for the film) to try to kill Felix and take power for themselves. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a werewolf, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and King Kong all make appearances in this monster mash to end all monster mashes.
Hammer Gets Hammered
By the mid-1960s the Hammer brand of horror had become fertile ground for parody, and in some cases self-parody. Many of these featured vampires, such as Roman Polanski’s inspired snowbound bloodsucker spoof The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Christopher Lee appearing in his most repeated role as Dracula in Dracula and Son (1976) and in a cameo as the Count in the scathing satire The Magic Christian (1969). Frankenstein fell firmly in the sights of Britons seeking to poke their thumb in Hammer’s eye at least twice. For the first of these, the long-running Carry On series turned to Frankenstein for its horror parody Carry On Screaming! (1966).
The Carry On series began in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant and ran to 1978 (with a postlude of sorts in 1992, Carry on Columbus) churning out thirty-one films in all, making it the most prolific British film series in history. Only the James Bond series has a longer run, though there are fewer films in that franchise to date. Every film was produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas and featured a poorly paid stock company of actors in various combinations, often headed by Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Jim Dale, Joan Sims, and Angela Douglas among others. The stock-in-trade of the franchise was either poking fun at British institutions (the Army, the National Health Service, the police) or various film genres all told with a great deal of innuendo, slapstick, burlesque-style bawdy humor, and very little political correctness.
Carry On Screaming! concerns a pair of detectives, Sidney Bung (Harry H. Corbett) and Detective Constable Slobotham (Peter Butterworth) (3) investigating a series of disappearances from nearby Hocombe Woods. Along with the companion of one of the missing girls, Albert Potter (Jim Dale), they find their way to the spooky old house of Dr. Orlando Watt (Kenneth Williams) (4) who has “been dead for fifteen years” but is revived by his sister Valeria (Fenella Fielding), when necessary, using a jolt from a pair of cables attached to his ears. Other residents of the house include the butler Sockett (Bernard Bresslaw) and a lurching, flat-headed henchman named Oddbod (Tom Clegg). Along the way, another slightly mad scientist played by future Dr. Who Jon Pertwee creates a clone of Oddbod that Dr. Watt takes in and dubs Oddbod Junior (Billy Cornelius). Eventually, Dr. Watt’s devious plans become clear when one of the abducted women turns up as a mannequin sold to a department store. Hilarity ensues in the form of rapid-fire, innuendo-laced dialogue along with some physical slapstick and nods to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Mummy along the way. The whole proceeding is of the “Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” school of humor, and I imagine it helps to be British to really appreciate the Carry On films, but it certainly contains plenty of slightly naughty laughs and nails it when it comes to sending up the Hammer House style.
A far more scathing parody of Hammer, however, came from Hammer itself and one of the key players in its early success in horror, Jimmy Sangster. Though he had been instrumental in reviving gothic horror at Hammer with the writing of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Sangster quickly moved on to different kinds of thrillers and filmmaking roles both at Hammer and other studios in the UK and US. While producing a film in America, he was asked to do a rewrite on a script by former actor Jeremy Burnham that had been intended to restart the Hammer Frankenstein series with a younger actor in the role of the Baron. Not particularly interested in returning to gothic horror, Sangster declined. Hammer countered by offering that he produce the film as well. Again, he turned it down. Sangster then asked if he could direct it as well and Hammer agreed, a decision that in hindsight, even Sangster thought might not have been the best idea as there are no checks and balances on a writer/producer/director, especially when it was his first time in that third role. Sangster set about rewriting Burnham’s script, simply titled Frankenstein, infusing it with pitch black humor to set it apart from the other films of the series.
This new version featured a version of Victor Frankenstein even colder, more matter-of-fact, outspoken, and psychopathic than Cushing’s interpretation. When played by Ralph Bates, who was being groomed by Hammer to take over for its aging and increasingly disinterested stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, this psychopathy is juxtaposed against the actor’s inherent charm and likeability. Though brilliant, he has a childish mischievous streak that lends itself to the film’s underlying humor. The final film, eventually titled The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), also gives bodybuilder-turned-actor David Prowse, in the first of two turns as a Frankenstein monster for Hammer, (5) a chance to show off his impressive physique before it would be encased in a black leather jumpsuit, helmet, and cape for his most famous role as Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy (1977–1983). Prowse’s makeup is also Hammer’s most clearly Karloff-inspired look for the Monster since Evil of Frankenstein (1964), with a built up, squared-off head held together by clamps.
The Horror of Frankenstein is not an all-out parody in the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein or Carry On Screaming! sense but it does rely on humor, though more subtle than the other films mentioned, to send up the gothic Hammer horror films of the first wave. (6) It rarely relies on jokes but instead upon the audience’s knowledge of these films and slightly twists the expectations built from that knowledge and infuses these with a comic edge. Veronica Carlson, who plays Elizabeth in the film, in particular objected to this approach and felt that Sangster “demeaned Hammer” with “silly bathroom humor” including a severed arm giving a two-finger salute (one finger in the American cut) and lusty shots of Alys’s (Kate O’Mara) cleavage. She also mentioned in an interview a raised finger beneath a sheet apparently simulating an erection, but this does not appear in the final film, though there are plenty of racy (for the time) bedchamber scenes. These kinds of teenage gags, however, are relatively rare to this film in favor of more subtle and dark humor such as Victor crossing obtained body parts off a life-size diagram of his intended creation, wiping his brow of sweat but only adding blood to his face in the process, and a quip about there being no need to be disgusted at a body missing a head as its owner was no longer using it. Other notable ironies of the film include the quite accidental destruction of the Monster at the hands of a little girl, who feels “he was quite a nice monster,” and the fact that, in the end, Victor gets away with everything.
Despite its rather savaged reputation from Hammer purists, including film scholar Jonathan Rigby, author of English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema, The Horror of Frankenstein is better than many have suggested. One of its greatest difficulties is also among its greatest strengths: the deep unlikability of the Victor Frankenstein character. It is something of a double-edged sword as he is simultaneously magnetic and horribly repellant, making the viewer’s feelings toward him complex to say the least. But Ralph Bates manages to make this dark and soulless character work in a way that few actors, outside Peter Cushing, can. His portrayal alone makes the film worth revisiting, for the unconverted, and discovering for those who have avoided watching it due to its status as the “red-headed stepchild” of the Hammer Frankenstein cycle.
The Frankenstein monster made some smaller appearances in British film as well while Hammer was still churning out product. Three years before The Horror of Frankenstein, David Prowse appeared as the Creature in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) which also featured Hammer regulars Caroline Munro and Veronica Carlson in “blink and you miss them” bit parts. The Creature in this film is clearly patterned from the Universal look down to its dark suit and heavy boots as it helpfully gives David Niven as James Bond a lurch in the right direction. Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford teamed up sans the rest of the crew for One More Time (1970), the sequel to the Richard Donner helmed Salt & Pepper from 1968. This time, under the direction of Jerry Lewis, the duo heads to a castle in the English countryside and run afoul, however briefly, of Christopher Lee’s Dracula and Peter Cushing’s Dr. Frankenstein. A flat-skulled Monster and a hunchback also feature in the scene and in true Abbott and Costello fashion, only Davis’s Charles Salt sees the monsters while straight man Lawford, as Christopher Pepper, does not.
The Italian film Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (Il castello delle donne maledette, 1974) attempts, with varying degrees of success, to capture the look and feel of latter-day Hammer and not just the Frankenstein series. It also drops in elements of the studio’s prehistoric movies like One Million Years B.C. (1966), so famous for Raquel Welch’s leather two-piece, and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970). The 19th Century countryside where Frankenstein’s castle resides is inexplicably populated by club-wielding cavemen including Ook the Neanderthal Man, played by actor Salvatore Baccaro credited as Boris Lugosi, just in case you expected this film to contain any subtlety. Ook befriends Count Frankenstein’s (Rossano Brazzi) exiled dwarf assistant Genz (Michael Dunn) as another neanderthal, Goliath (Loren Ewing) ends up on Frankenstein’s table. Frankenstein’s daughter Maria (Simonetta Vitelli, credited as Simone Blondell), her fiancé Eric (Eric Mann), and her friend Krista (Christiane Rücker) are thrown into the mix when they arrive at the castle. Soon, Count Frankenstein and the much younger Krista fall in love and the Count invites her to assist him in his experiments.
It is a strange movie with a sometimes straightforward, sometimes confounding plot that culminates with an angry mob of villagers, a fire, and a moral delivered by the town Prefect (Edmund Purdom): “There’s a bit of a monster in all of us. Especially where there’s fear.” One question worth asking is “was the comedy intentional?” and it is a difficult question to answer. (7) The tone seems to shoot for somewhere between Carry On Screaming! and The Horror of Frankenstein but lands in a place that makes it worthy of the Something Weird label that would eventually release it on DVD and make this otherwise forgotten film available to future generations, for better or for worse.
There is, of course, one Frankenstein parody that towers above all the rest and stands among the greatest comedy films ever made. That particular film is so important to the history of Frankenstein movies that it deserves its own installment of this series. It is, after all, one enormous schwanzstucker. 🩸
Footnotes
(1) It’s hard to believe as he is so iconic in the role, but this was only the second time that Lugosi played Dracula on film.
(2) Yes, the question mark is part of the title.
(3) Pronounced Slow Bottom.
(4) In a nod to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine, he assures Detective Bung that Dr. Who was his uncle.
(5) The other being in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) discussed in the “Bringing Down the Hammer” installment of this series.
(6) This film is an example of the difficulties inherent in parsing out “parody” from “subversion” in this series. Some films that will appear in the subversion section of this series are far more overtly funny (such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Re-Animator) but because The Horror of Frankenstein is an intentional send-up of Frankenstein without overt political, cultural, or counter-cultural themes, I have chosen to place it here.
(7) I will leave it up to those who have seen the film to decide whether it belongs here among the parodies or in the previous installment of this series titled “The Weirdos.”
Sources
A Perfect Carry On (1998) directed by Rory Sheehan
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein audio commentary by Gregory W. Mank
Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters (2000) directed by David J. Skal
“Gallows Humour: Inside ‘The Horror of Frankenstein’ (2018) directed by Marcus Hearn
The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror Edited by Phil Hardy
What’s a Carry On? (1998) directed by John Highlander
About
Brian Keiper is a featured writer for Manor Vellum. Brian’s also written for Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, F This Movie!, and others. Follow him on Instagram @brianwaves42, Threads @brianwaves42, and/or X @Brianwaves42.
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