All language subtitles for BBC A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss - 01x01 - Frankenstein Goes To Hollywood.MVGroup.org.English.orig.Addic7ed.com

How do you do?

Mr Mark Gatiss feels
that it would be unkind to present

this programme without just
a word of friendly warning.

We are about to unfold
the story of horror films,

of the men and women of
the motion picture community

who sought to create monsters,
without reckoning upon God.

I think it will inform you,

it will entertain you,

it might even horrify you.

So if any of you feel that you do not wish
to subject your nerves to such excitement,

now's the time to...

Well, we warned you.

The cinema
was made for horror movies.

No other kind of film offers that
same mysterious anticipation

as you head into
a darkened auditorium.

It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!

No other makes such powerful
use of sound and image.

The cinema is where we come to share
a collective dream, and horror films

are the most dreamlike of all, perhaps
because they engage with our nightmares.

I hear something. Stop! Stop!

CHAINSAW SOUNDS

In this series, I'm going to revisit

the three greatest eras
of horror pictures

and explore what made
their finest films so special.

I'll venture onto the locations
of unforgettable horror moments,

and invite leading actors, writers
and directors to share their stories.

There's a little shrine to me here.

This should be an eternal flame.

Or a huge knife! So whether you're
a dyed in the blood horror fan

or a nervous newcomer,

I bid you welcome.

Of all the things that have inspired me as a writer
and actor, horror films have been the most important.

I still have very vivid
and very happy memories

of staying up late in the 1970s to watch double
bills of Hammer films and old Universal films.

I was always, as my mam used to say, a very morbid
child, and I was totally crackers about horror films.

I even used to watch
Pro-Celebrity Golf

just in case Christopher Lee used
to pop up, as he occasionally did.

I think what always
appealed to me most

was just the sense of going into a different realm,
a realm of shadows and suggestion and spookiness.

Because horror is such a personal passion of
mine, this series will be unashamedly selective.

I'm going to build my account around
my favourite films and periods.

And I'd like to start with the era
when I believe horror cinema

really came into its own - the
first great age of Hollywood horror.

An age which begins with this moment
from 1925's silent Phantom of the Opera.

The Phantom, played by Lon Chaney, has warned Mary
Philbin's character never to look beneath his mask.

It's a classic, shocking reveal.

And it captures the essence
of being a horror movie fan.

It's about knowing you
shouldn't look but wanting to see.

And then maybe getting more
than you bargained for.

Horror cinema is replete
with pioneering film -makers.

Few more so than the man beneath the Phantom's
make-up, Lon Chaney, the godfather of horror actors.

Chaney was one of the giants
of 1920s Hollywood,

and among his few surviving
contemporaries

is a fellow cast member
from the Phantom, Carla Laemmle.

The niece of the founder of Universal
studios, she's now a spry centenarian.

I can only say he was a genius.

Whatever part that he played,

he was that part.

There's a story that Mary Philbin
fainted when she took off his mask.

It could have been true because
it was enough to make anybody faint!

Lon Chaney, the man
of a thousand faces,

played a succession of maimed
and monstrous characters

during the silent era,

in films like The Hunchback Of Notre
Dame and London After Midnight.

His self-taught make-up skills drew on his
background in travelling vaudeville and theatre.

Chaney described his talent as
"extraordinary characterisation. "

He did all his own make-up
and it was pretty horrible.

Yes, all that! I don't know

how he did it himself, but he did.

Exactly how Chaney achieved his
make-up effects has always intrigued me.

Fortunately, just as the Phantom lurked below
the Paris Opera, the relics of Chaney can be found

in the bowels of the Los Angeles
Natural History Museum,

under the custodianship
of Beth Werling.

So Beth, what treasures
do you have for us here?

We have Lon Chaney's make-up kit.

There he is, Lon F Chaney,
Hollywood, California.

Wow, it's extraordinary.

Holy relics.

What's in here? This is one of
the glass eyes

that Chaney had especially made.

It's particularly gruesome
in its own little box, isn't it?

Mm-hmm! When I was a kid, I kind of grew up
with the stories of the lengths he went to

to create these things. He put himself
through an unbelievable amount of pain.

And that's an example of that.

To wear something that thick, covering over almost
your entire eye, couldn't have been comfortable.

It's not exactly a permeable lens,
is it! No, definitely not.

It's like putting a billiard ball
in your eye.

It's now believed that Chaney achieved
the Phantom's famous missing nose effect

using thin wire to pull his own nose back,
creating that truncated, snout-like look.

Remarkably, he did much of this
working on his own,

but it turns out
he had something to practise on.

Wow...

This is a life cast that Chaney
had made of his own face,

with glass eyes inserted.

He used this to practise
some of his make-up techniques.

He would take a look, see if he needed
a little more here, a little less there.

If he didn't like the look entirely,
it was much easier to scrub it off

and to decide, looking at
yourself in a mirror, so to speak,

than to actually apply it
on his own face.

It's quite fitting that someone so
obsessed with bodily dismemberment

ends up with his own head in a box!

THEY LAUGH

According to Hollywood legend,

Chaney's ghost still haunts the
Paris Opera set at Universal Studios,

which, remarkably, has survived as
a grand monument to the silent age.

It's also a reminder that for all
Chaney's astonishing transformation,

The Phantom of the Opera is as much an exercise in
epic spectacle as it is a claustrophobic horror picture.

That's probably because
Universal's founder, Carl Laemmle,

was no fan of horrific material.

But The Phantom's success helped
his ambitious son and partner,

Carl Laemmle Junior,
to persuade him otherwise.

Carl Laemmle Junior
now set his sights

on an even more chilling property,

Bram Stoker's sensational
vampire novel, Dracula.

Junior envisaged another
extravagant production.

But he was about to
have his wings clipped.

1929 saw the Wall Street Crash and
the beginning of the Great Depression.

Like other Hollywood studios,
Universal had cash flow problems

which meant it had to
scale down its productions.

Fortunately, Junior came across another, more
cost effective way of telling the Dracula story.

Stoker's novel had been adapted for
a modest British touring production

which had gone on to
become an unexpected hit.

For ease of staging, this was a kind of drawing-room
Dracula, set largely in a Hampstead house.

And the play had transformed Stoker's
hairy, moustached, rank-breathed old count

into a more elegant figure who could
be welcomed into London society.

As for me,
I am a stranger in a strange land.

Yet I have grown to love this great
London with its teeming millions,

so different from
my own land of Transylvania.

After all, the walls of my castle
are broken, the shadows are many,

and the wind breathes cold
through the broken battlements.

The play ruthlessly
cut back the action

and locations of Stoker's novel
and added rather a lot of talking.

But that didn't bother
Junior Laemmle.

Dracula was going to be the
first horror picture with sound.

You're in the very
first scene of Dracula.

Oh, yes, the opening scene, and I
say the first lines of dialogue.

Can you remember them? I'll try!

"Among the rugged peaks that frown
down upon the Borgo Pass

"are found crumbling castles
of a bygone age. "

Among the rugged peaks that frown
down upon the Borgo Pass

are found crumbling castles
of a bygone age.

Hooray, I did it! I can't remember lines
that I was supposed to learn yesterday.

As well as basing itself
on the play's script,

the film also took on the play's Broadway
lead, a Hungarian actor called Bela Lugosi.

I am Dracula.

A veteran of Budapest's leading
theatres, Lugosi's American career

had previously been limited
by his accent.

Listen to them.

Children of the night.

What music they make!

Lugosi's somewhat drawn-out delivery

helps render the film's many
dialogue scenes rather ponderous.

Hollywood was still getting the hang of talkies,
and director Tod Browning was on surer ground

in the film's wordless sequences.

Here Lugosi becomes a shadowy figure
who comes to get you while you sleep.

You can see why people might have found this
terrifying and in some cases, illicitly thrilling.

Were you aware of anyone finding him

exotically attractive
in a Valentino way?

He had a charm.

I mean, you could call him handsome,
his dark eyes and all of that.

He had this tremendous power of

attracting you. Almost, you
couldn't resist the guy, you know?

Lugosi's charisma aside, the film
rarely rises above its stage origins.

We never even see a drop of blood
or the flash of a fang.

That's why it's a particular treat to get a
closer look at another surviving cast member.

Not so frightening looking now.
I'm not so sure!

What's it made of?
It's basically a wire skeleton

or frame and over it they stretched
some heavy duty cotton fabric.

I assumed it would be rubber
or something.

No, it gave it a much more realistic
look flapping in the wind

with the fabric
than it would with rubber.

No, Master,
I wasn't going to say anything.

I told him nothing.

I'm loyal to you, Master!

Do we know what this hair's made of?
No, but I wouldn't be surprised

if it turned out to be some kind
of domesticated animal.

One of Chaney's old hairpieces!

For all its limitations, Dracula had the
supernatural, it had sound, it had Lugosi.

The combination
was a box office smash.

You could say Dracula was the first
modern horror film. But it lacks something.

Dracula features some atmospheric settings -
dark, decaying castles and cobwebby crypts -

but it doesn't really capture that
gothic sensibility, the heightened

atmosphere of romance and morbidity
that makes the novel so thrilling.

Now take a look at this.

The moon's rising.
We've no time to lose.

CLANGING

Careful! Within the first
minutes of Frankenstein,

we find ourselves in one of
the grimmest graveyards in cinema...

Here he comes.

.. watching a freshly buried coffin exhumed,
and caressed with necrophilic tenderness.

He's just resting,
waiting for a new life to come.

This is a film with no inhibitions
about embracing the dark and macabre.

Frankenstein was shot only
a few months after Dracula.

But in its daring tone and stylish
execution, it's a massive leap forward.

It's alive. It's alive.

It's alive. It's moving.

It's alive. It's alive! It's alive!

It's alive!

In the name of God,

now I know what it
feels like to be God!

THUNDER

But exactly who was alive
under all those bandages?

Universal originally wanted
Bela Lugosi to play the creature,

even promoting the film with him in
the role before it had been shot.

But after what would now be called "creative
differences", Lugosi left the project.

The picture was handed to an up and
coming English director, James Whale.

He needed to find a monster.

Fast.

Sitting in the Universal canteen one day, Whale
spotted a fellow diner and beckoned him over.

"Your face", he said,
"has startling possibilities. "

The owner of that face
was another ex-pat Englishman,

whose birth name
was William Henry Pratt.

Pratt's distinctive features owed
something to Indian blood in his family.

After more than two decades of
theatre work and bit parts in films,

he'd become resigned
to never having a major role.

His stage name was Boris Karloff.

It was my father's 81st film.

And no one had seen
the first 80, essentially.

So, after 20 years in the business,

my father became
an overnight success.

In August 1931, James Whale began filming Frankenstein
at Universal, on sets such as this very one.

But for the first week of shooting
at least, one key player

was conspicuous by his absence -
the monster himself.

He was undergoing a fittingly
gruelling process of creation.

But the result would be
one of cinema's most enduring icons.

Here he comes.
Let's turn out the light.

APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS

Karloff had been placed under the auspices
of Universal's head of make-up, Jack Pierce,

who spent two weeks working
directly with him

on top of the six months he had
already spent researching ideas.

Pierce's monster is surely one of the
greatest make-up designs in cinema.

Visionary, but credible.

Thought through
with a chilling logic.

The top of the head
is misshapen and stitched

because a different brain has been
placed in another man's cranium.

It also adds to Karloff's height.

The bolts in the neck,

often thought of simply
as screws holding the head on,

are in fact the electrodes
used to reanimate the corpse.

This is a face
which really does tell a story.

But the heart of the film, what has made
it immortal, is Karloff's performance.

In his hands, the monster becomes so much
more than just a brilliant piece of make-up.

It understands this time.

It's wonderful. Frankenstein,
Frankenstein! Where is it? Where is it?

HE SCREAMS
Quiet, you fool!

Get away with that torch!

Initially childlike and gentle,
he's only later goaded into violence

Do you think he identified with
the monster as society's outsider?

I think that, probably due to
his own personal experiences...

.. as a young boy in school, he experienced a
lot of prejudice because of his dark colouring.

He understood that looking
different makes a difference.

I think he brought some of his own personal
experience to his interpretation of this role.

He always said that children got it.

They understood that the creature was
the victim and not the perpetrator.

The little girl in Frankenstein was
never afraid of him in his make-up.

Ah, yes. The little girl.

This was where James Whale's risk-taking
got a little too far ahead of the times.

Malibou Lake is scarcely half an hour's drive from
Hollywood, but it feels like a different world.

And it was in this idyllic setting that the first
truly controversial scene in horror cinema was shot.

I can make a boat.

See how mine floats?

HE GRUNTS

No! You're hurting me! No!

Even today, the killing of
a child on screen is shocking.

Back in 1931, it was considered
by many to be wholly unacceptable.

Censors in several American states
and countries, including Britain,

insisted on cutting away before
little Maria is thrown into the lake.

Universal themselves re-edited all the prints of
the film when it was reissued a few years later.

The original scene wouldn't be
restored for another 50 years.

Frankenstein's heady content didn't
stop it from storming the box office.

With two hits in a row, horror was now well and
truly established as a proper cinematic genre,

and Lugosi's Dracula and Karloff's monster were
the twin pillars upon which it had been built.

Other Hollywood studios were quick
to respond. The result was a flowering

of imagination and innovation.

Paramount's Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde featured a dazzling,

single shot transformation
sequence,

heightened by a subjective camera that enables
us to experience it through Jekyll's own eyes.

HE CHOKES

The secret to the trick
was a rotating filter on the camera

which revealed layers
of different coloured make-up.

The sequence helped Fredric March
win the best actor Oscar in 1932.

Warner Brothers were best known for their gritty
gangster pictures, so it's not surprising that they

broke with the gothic tradition and set
their horror films in the present day.

Mystery Of The Wax Museum
was shot in early Technicolor,

which gives disturbing,

lifelike flesh tones
to these melting wax figures

in the film's striking
opening sequence.

In a sensationally creepy plot which would
later inspire the wonderful Carry On Screaming,

Lionel Atwill plays a sculptor who steals corpses
and embalms them in wax to exhibit in his museum.

When Atwill decides to try his
technique on Fay Wray,

the film achieves a memorable
variation on The Phantom's unmasking.

It still makes
my hair stand on end today.

Let me go! Let me go, let me go!

SHE SCREAMS

Splendid films, both.

So why aren't they as well
remembered as Universal's?

Perhaps it's because their monsters just weren't as
rich and nuanced as Dracula and Frankenstein's creature.

Universal also had another great asset, one of the most stylish directors of his time
- James Whale.

To use a much later term, I think
that Whale was the first horror auteur.

He followed up Frankenstein

with a series of increasingly
idiosyncratic films

which reflected his own
rather complex personality.

In 1932,
Whale made The Old Dark House,

perhaps the definitive take
on that classic scenario

in which lost strangers stumble across an
isolated house, and open a Pandora's box of menace.

The road's blocked on both sides,
landslides.

HE GROANS

Even Welsh ought not
to sound like that.

The brutal butler
was played by Boris Karloff,

once again unrecognizable
under Jack Pierce's make-up.

And the film's leading lady
was Gloria Stuart.

She remembers how,
unlike many directors of the day,

Whale exerted exceptional control
over the production.

He had said several times,
"I go over the script

"the night before
the morning I shoot. "

He made it very clear to all of us
that he had prepared the script.

And it was unusual.

He took very special care of me
and was very critical.

Hurt my feelings a couple of times.

He was very sharp.

What sort of things
did he criticise you about?

Diction, approach to the speech.

He could stop you cold.
"No, Gloria, that's not it. "

SHE WHIMPERS

Whale's cultivated precision
belied his origins.

He'd been born into
a working-class family

in the black country town of Dudley, and he carefully
concealed his background behind a sardonic manner.

He was also gay, and this may have further
encouraged his arch and rebellious sense of humour.

As a result, The Old Dark House
is both menacing and blackly comic.

You're wicked, too. Young and
handsome, silly and wicked.

You think of nothing but your long, straight legs
and your white body and how to please your man.

You revel in the joys
of fleshly love, don't you?

That's fine stuff. But it'll rot.

That's finer stuff still,
but it'll rot too, in time.

Don't! How dare you?

I think Whale was pioneering
what we now think of as camp -

a knowing excess which is
as much about humour as shock.

Maybe somewhat off-putting if you're just
expecting a straightforward horror film,

but it may also explain why Whale's films have aged
so well compared with those of his contemporaries.

THUNDER

Mr Penderel! Miss DuCane!

Mr Penderel! Miss DuCane!

SHE SCREAMS

This is a very famous scene
in which Boris menaces you.

How was it to actually
make that scene with Boris Karloff?

How do you get grabbed
by Karloff and look happy?

HE LAUGHS

You don't look happy. You look like
you've been grabbed and you're scared.

I wouldn't know how to do it
any other way. It's acting.

SHE LAUGHS

Did you feel frightened
by being approached by him? Boris?

He was a pussycat. Come on!

No, I didn't feel frightened at all.

He was always very gentlemanly.

Carl Laemmle Junior now pleaded with Whale to make
a follow-up to their most successful collaboration.

But Whale laid down a key condition.

January 1935 saw James Whale
back on the Universal lot,

making another
Frankenstein movie.

He'd been tempted back
by the promise

of complete creative control.

It's hard to believe the studio knew
what they were letting themselves in for.

Whale wasn't interested
in simply repeating himself.

The film he had in mind was highly
personal, eccentric and quite extraordinary.

In Bride Of Frankenstein,
Whale makes the monster

an even more sympathetic victim
of a brutal society,

at one point bringing this home with a scene
that's almost blasphemous in its blatant symbolism.

But Whale's main focus
of interest in the film

seems to be neither the monster
nor Frankenstein,

but a new character -
a masterly camp creation.

He's a very queer
looking old gentleman, sir.

"I must see you, on a secret
grave matter", he said.

"Tonight. Alone. "

Bring him in. Henry, who is this man?

Dr Pretorius.

Baron Frankenstein now, I believe?

Pretorius was played by Ernest Thesiger, an old
friend of Whale's from his theatre days in England.

Between takes on set, Thesiger practised
needlepoint, at which he was highly accomplished.

Alone, you have created a man.

Now, together,
we will create his mate.

You mean...?

Yes. A woman.

That should be really interesting.

Pretorius is one of the most
subversive figures in 1930s cinema,

a quite obviously
homosexual character

pursuing a grotesque substitute for heterosexual
reproduction and loving every minute of it.

To a new world of gods and monsters.

The film builds to the climactic
unveiling of the bride,

heralded by Pretorius
with a suitably queenly flourish.

Resplendent in Jack Pierce's
Nefertiti-inspired make-up,

she's a perverse idea of womanhood.

The Bride of Frankenstein.

A stitched together combination

of daughter and mate,

the bride is beautiful -

in a wholly insane way.

Bride Of Frankenstein was Whale's
greatest achievement as a director.

It was also his last horror picture.

Having pushed the genre as far as he wanted, Whale
was perhaps happy to let it symbolically collapse.

And Hollywood horror really was in
an increasingly unstable position.

In the early 1930s, America had
nothing approaching effective censorship

and some films were pushing well
beyond the camp and the gothic

into remarkably twisted,
sadistic territory.

There was Mad Love,
in which a shaven-headed Peter Lorre

grafted the hands of a murderer
onto a mutilated concert pianist.

In Island Of Lost Souls, Charles
Laughton experimented on animals

to create a race
of half-human creatures.

And then there was The Black Cat, which climaxed
with Bela Lugosi flaying Boris Karloff alive.

We only see it in silhouette,
but nevertheless...

However, one film above all others from
the era remains notorious to this day.

When I was about eight, I got the best
Christmas present I had ever received.

In fact, it's the only Christmas I can remember
where all my other presents lay unopened

because I was given
this wonderful book.

Alan G Frank's The Movie Treasury Of Horror Movies,
which for many years became my absolute bible.

And there was a time when I knew every
single page and every single picture.

But there was one photograph that I used
to hurry past. In fact, I can remember

paperclipping two pages together
in order to avoid looking at it.

And it's no wonder. It was a still
from the 1932 film, Freaks.

Freaks is a lurid
but wholly original saga

of sexual manipulation and revenge,
set in a travelling sideshow.

It was made by Tod Browning,
the director of Dracula,

who boldly decided to use actual
carnival performers in the film.

It was that blurring of fantasy and reality that
made the picture in the book so disturbing for me.

This isn't a brilliant Jack Pierce
make-up job.

These are real people.

An early bad omen for the film's reception came
when the novelist and screenwriter F Scott Fitzgerald

walked into the MGM canteen,
saw a pair of Siamese twins

having their lunch,
and ran outside to throw up his own.

For much of the film, Browning presents
the carnival characters sympathetically.

But he also establishes
an uncomfortable sexual tension

with the passion
of the midget, Hans,

for the statuesque
trapeze artist, Cleopatra.

She strings him along and poisons
him so she can inherit his fortune.

When they discover Cleopatra's
deception,

the other performers exact
a terrible revenge

in a vividly staged sequence that's
like a primal, oozing nightmare.

Characters who were earlier
portrayed with sensitivity

and are now depicted as crawling,
squirming and menacing.

It's a shameless case of
double standards from Browning.

SHE SCREAMS

But it can't be denied
that Freaks has one of the most

memorable pay-offs in horror cinema,

when we find out the true nature
of the revenge exacted on Cleopatra.

It plays as both a grotesque reveal and
as the punchline to the blackest of jokes.

Believe it or not, there she is.

SHE SQUAWKS

How can you fail to warm to a film in which
somebody is turned into a giant chicken woman?

Well, ask the 1932 audience.

Browning's film bombed
at the box office and MGM

plucked it from the movie theatres
within a month of its release.

Following costly controversies
like Freaks,

backlashes from morality campaigners

and actual bans in lucrative
foreign territories like Britain,

Hollywood's enthusiasm for horror began
to wane almost as quickly as it had arisen.

But seeking to earn extra cash
from its two original horror hits,

Universal re-released Dracula and
Frankenstein as a double bill

and was astonished
by their popularity.

Even if the studios were losing
their appetite for horror,

the public was hungry for more.

The result was a second wind
for horror at the end of the '30s.

Universal took the lead
with Son Of Frankenstein.

Boris Karloff returned
with a remarkable cast,

but James Whale's
high gothic camp was replaced

by a more family-friendly,
swashbuckling approach.

The film also introduced
a new face -

four-year-old Donnie Dunagan,
who played Basil Rathbone's son.

The grandson of Frankenstein,
if you will.

Well, hello! Good morning, son.

Did you have a nice sleep? Yes.

So, Donnie, great pleasure
to meet you.

I think I really should just say,
"Well, hello!"

Well, hello!

THEY LAUGH

Right on.

Donnie's biggest claim to fame is that he
would later be the voice of Disney's Bambi,

but for me,
the thrill lies in meeting someone

who can give a first hand account
of working with perhaps

the greatest cast
of any classic horror film.

The first time I met Boris Karloff, the
first thing he did was bought me ice-cream.

Now how can you possibly be afraid of
somebody who bought you ice-cream, right?

The first time I saw him then,
in costume,

and I shouldn't have done this
cos it disrupted things,

I busted out laughing. "Cut. Take
four. " "Donnie, quit laughing. "

"Cut. Take six. "

This playfulness on the set
is reflected in the film,

which has sparkle and humour,

particularly in the form
of Bela Lugosi, who,

as the bodysnatcher Ygor, slides
nimbly between menace and mischief.

I think it's the best performance
he ever gave.

He's alive!

How long has he been here?

Long time.

It's my friend.

He... he does things for me.

Has he always been here?

Nearly always.
This is place of the dead.

We're all dead here.

Some of the crew would applaud him.

I don't remember getting applauded.
They laughed at me, you know?

When he was around,
people paid keen attention.

And I was at least
aware enough to know,

boy, this is a real performance.

Quiet. That'll be all, Ygor.

Go back to Castle Frankenstein
and be careful.

HE COUGHS

Hey! You spit on me!

I'm sorry, I cough. You see,
bone get stuck in my throat.

HE COUGHS

While Karloff had gone from strength
to strength since his breakthrough,

Lugosi's fortunes had been mixed.

So much so that Universal were able to
secure his services at a knock-down rate.

They tried to hire him cheaper cos they
heard that he was having economic difficulty.

And Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff
stood up against the studio on that,

and ensured that he had
a more responsible salary.

And apparently, he responded to all that
help, because his performance was magnificent.

There's a real twinkle in his eye,
isn't there? Yeah, yeah.

This is a film that seeks
to entertain rather than horrify,

and Lugosi's gleeful malevolence is balanced by a
warmth between Donnie's character and the monster.

Whereas Little Maria was thrown
in the lake in the first film,

the monster refuses to harm the boy despite
being sent to kidnap him by the vengeful Ygor.

Did you feel that there was a sort of connection
between the child and the monster? I know there was.

And I think holding me like this, as opposed to some
other more violent thing, I think that was his idea.

They had him hold me like this
for two takes, and he dropped me.

I bounced off of the floor.
That was a hard deck down there.

And then they decided
to wire me to him.

If everybody would look carefully,

you'll see it's an artificial hand.

It's a little phoney,

so he couldn't drop me.

The thought occurred to me,
I've got to be the only guy

still sucking air in this world that
can say, "I was wired to Frankenstein!"

MARK LAUGHS

Daddy, Daddy!

THE MONSTER SCREAMS

Of course, by now, the audience
knew that it would take more than

plunging into a pit of sulphur to
finish off the monster for good.

But as far as Karloff's
portrayal was concerned,

this really was the final curtain.

He was grateful,
really grateful to that role.

And he sometimes referred to the
creature in interviews as his best friend.

But he felt that the films and the
role had gone as far as it could

or should without the creature
becoming the brunt of bad scripts,

bad jokes, and he didn't want
to be any part of that.

He could see a downward trend

and he didn't want to take
his friend down that path.

Few of Universal's horror productions now
had the quality of Son Of Frankenstein.

By the 1940s, the studio was
increasingly busy making sequels.

Not just to Frankenstein, but also
to its own original properties.

These included The Mummy and The
Wolf Man, both of whom were played by

Lon Chaney's son, Lon Chaney Junior,
something of a sequels regular.

This production-line approach
showed how Universal's monsters

had gone from being
terrifying bogeymen

to familiar favourites.

But surprisingly,
it was a rival studio's attempt

to create its own monster parade that would take
horror cinema back into the shadows where it belonged,

and exert an influence on film-makers
that continues to this day.

CAR ENGINE STARTS UP

GROWLING

No studio looked more enviously at Universal's
money-spinning menagerie of monsters than RKO.

Yes, the same RKO
which made Citizen Kane

and needed to make quick cash
following that magnificent flop.

Across the centuries comes this
exciting story of a modern girl

cursed by an ancient legend.

The legend of the Cat People.

During the early 1940s,

RKO released a string of

sensationally-titled
horror pictures.

But the actual films showed a subtle
mastery of the psychology of horror

that was quite revolutionary.

All were produced by Val Lewton, who was
appointed Head of the RKO Horror Unit in 1942.

Lewton's budgets were tight, and
his bosses' policy was to choose

a commercial-sounding title first

and then commission
a screenplay to fit.

But within these limits, Lewton
was given a free creative hand.

And he played it very cleverly.

Lewton's first horror picture
was Cat People,

the story of a woman
who turns into a panther

when caught in the throes
of passion or jealousy.

The film's most celebrated set pieces
show her love rival being stalked.

Lewton realised that his restricted
budgets weren't a disadvantage,

because in horror,
less could be more.

Monsters didn't have to be seen,
just suggested.

He also understood
that a good shock

didn't have to be caused by something
explicit or even intrinsically frightening.

SCREECHING BRAKES

That technique of a slow build-up
followed by a sudden but unthreatening jolt

has become known, appropriately
enough, as a Lewton bus.

You can spot Lewton buses in much
more recent and famous films.

This scene from The Exorcist
plays as pure Lewton.

Director William Friedkin uses
the shadows in the attic

to keep our nerves
on a hair trigger.

CLATTERING

SHE SCREAMS

INDISTINGUISHABLE VOICE
Oh, Carl.

Jesus Christ, Carl, don't do that.

But not everyone
is so impressed by Lewton.

I just think he's so overrated.

Everybody worships Val Lewton
for a couple of scenes.

The swimming pool scene. What?

SCREECHING AND SCREAMING

There's nothing
in the frame near her.

It's just lighting. The pool's lit.

She's in the middle of the pool.

Nothing's going to get her. When it's
frightening is when there's something around you.

There is an argument,
a very strong argument, I think,

that you can do it and do it and do it and
then if you then don't deliver, you're cheating.

I totally agree with that.

But if you can, and if you have a monster
or a thing that looks pretty good, show it.

Show it. I mean, Jurassic Park
done by Val Lewton would be nothing.

But there are many reasons
to enjoy Lewton's work.

He gave Boris Karloff some of the finest roles
of his career, in films like The Body Snatcher,

which showcased the range
of his acting ability.

There, Master Ferris.

Sooner than we thought.
A stroke of luck, you might say.

Good.

Why, that's the street singer.

I know her, I tell you. She was
alive and hearty only this evening.

It's impossible she can be dead.

You could not have gotten
this body fairly.

You're entirely mistaken.

You'd better give me my money
and make the proper entry.

In this film, Karloff once again
plays alongside Bela Lugosi.

But Lugosi is relegated to a secondary
role, quite literally overpowered by Karloff.

No, put your hand down.

How can I show you, man?

This is how they did it.

There's something very resonant about
the different fates of these two men,

who both played such a crucial role
in establishing horror cinema.

Lugosi, who always felt he was
cut out for something better,

and Karloff, grateful to horror
for his unexpected and late success.

Wow. Doesn't everybody
have a room like this?

I would like a bathroom like this.

Wow.

Karloff went on to enjoy regular work in film
and television for the rest of his career,

and lived long enough
to enjoy some of the respect

that eventually came to him

as a pivotal figure
in 20th century popular culture.

These are the stamps from 1997,
the classic movie monster stamps.

My father was on two of them, one for
Frankenstein and one for The Mummy.

And then later, in 2003,
there was a set of ten stamps

that depicted the various disciplines
of film -making.

And my father's face was selected
for the discipline of make-up.

So I've been told by stamp collectors
that my father was

the only person other than
a President

who has been on more than two stamps.

So he's been on three stamps,
really quite an honour.

Karloff never strayed too far from the horror
genre, but he never seemed too worried by that.

Bela Lugosi, however, seemed trapped
on the treadmill of horror sequels.

Lugosi had tried to avoid being
typecast in Dracula-like roles,

and had not actually played
the Count since his debut.

But struggling with his finances and
his health, he was finally forced to

re-embrace the role that had defined
him in the public imagination.

In 1948, he took up
Dracula's cape once again

in an Abbott and Costello movie.

It could have been
the final humiliation,

but Lugosi brings a dignity
and a knowing humour to the role.

I think this second performance as the
Count now stands up better than the first.

I must say, my dear, I approve
very highly of your choice.

What we need today is young blood.

And brains.

What's surprising about Abbott
and Costello meet Frankenstein

is that amongst the comedy, it
boasts some striking horror sequences.

SCREAMING

Look at what happens
to the woman in this scene.

Chick, do you believe me now? Yes.

Against all the odds,
the film is a fine, final flourish

of the Universal horror cycle.

But Lugosi's own horror career had an
unexpected last act that took it full circle.

In 1951, he was invited
to Britain to star in a revival

of the Dracula stage play.

Lugosi now found himself performing
in towns like Eastbourne,

in the sort of regional theatres where the play
had first been seen a quarter of a century before.

It must have felt
a long way from Hollywood.

The tour seemed to test not only Lugosi's
drawing power, but that of the Count himself.

The producers hoped
for a West End run

but no-one would take them on until the production
had first proved its profitability outside of London.

Lugosi's leading lady on the tour was the English
actress Sheila Wynn, who played the role of Lucy Seward.

Why do you think Lugosi
took on the tour?

I think he felt his career
was sinking.

He was becoming less well known
and less important.

And I think he had a great hope
that to come to England

and play in the West End would
bring his prestige right up again.

And when the management sent the tour
out, I don't think they realised

that the audiences had become

much more sophisticated, and they
were inclined to giggle every night.

They didn't at Brighton,
I don't think,

and they certainly didn't in Belfast,
where they screamed,

but there was a bit of giggling in
Golders Green and also in Manchester.

And I think this distressed Bela
very much indeed.

He once said to me, "You know,

"Dracula is Hamlet to me. "

Regional theatres were as far
as the Dracula revival got.

Lugosi never achieved
the comeback he sought.

He died five years later and,
perhaps having finally come to terms

with the role he could never escape,
was buried in his Dracula cape.

Why did audiences which had once
thrilled at horror now laugh at it?

Lugosi's tour showed how little horror had
really moved on since its heyday in the 1930s.

Meanwhile, the world
had entered an atomic age.

Hollywood responded with
a new set of terrors -

science fiction monsters

that would be defeated by scientists and
soldiers, not with a stake or a silver bullet.

SHE SCREAMS

By the early 1950s, horror cinema was pretty
much extinct, after barely two decades.

But of course, it's just when you think the
monster's dead that it comes back. Stronger.

Next time,
full colour vampire lust

and gushing gore...

GUNSHOT

.. as Britain's Hammer Films
conquer the world.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E- mail subtitling@bbc. co. uk