SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (16)

By: Trav S.D.
November 24, 2024

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite horror movies. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY | d. JACK SMIGHT | 1973

Your correspondent was a horror movie virgin of eight years old when NBC announced a two-part television event with the startling title Frankenstein: The True Story in late 1973.

To say that I was unexposed to the genre contains an implied corollary: I had never seen any Frankenstein movies, neither the Universal nor the Hammer ones. A Saturday morning cartoon show called The Groovie Goolies, which had a humorous character based on Frankenstein’s monster was the extent of my experience. That, and pictures in books and magazines. Imagine my excitement at the advent of this program, airing on prime-time television where I could find out what all the fuss was about! More than this — imagine my guileless swallowing of the show’s subtitle. The “true” story! Sure, sure, my father said it’s not true… but what if…?

That subtitle cleverly served two roles. It was meant to hook naïfs like me. But its real meaning was that it cleaved more closely to Mary Shelley’s original 1818 novel than any previous screen version. And that was true. It did. Produced by Hunt Stromberg, chiefly remembered today as the man who discovered Vampira, it was a British production starring an unbelievably prestigious cast of screen talent. Some were revered veterans, some were hot contemporary stars.

Of the former there were James Mason, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton, and Agnes Moorehead. Of the latter, there were the now-forgotten Michael Sarrazin, then at the peak of his career, plus David MacCullum of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Tom Baker of Doctor Who, Jane Seymour, and as the mad doctor himself Leonard Whiting, who’d played Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. It was penned by the one and only Christopher Isherwood and his romantic partner Don Bachardy, and directed by Jack Smight, who’d made those two unsettling pictures with Rod Steiger: No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and The Illustrated Man (1969). This was one top-shelf bottle of poison.

In the role of the monster, the dashing Sarrazin was a bold choice. Recall that this was several years before Frank Langella played Dracula. Central to the arc of the plot is that the creature starts off as a success, but quickly begins to rot and sink into grotesque decrepitude. Mason, meanwhile, was memorable as the manipulative Polidori, a character based on the Dr. Praetorius character from the Universal films but renamed in honor of an actual doctor who’d been with the Shelleys and Byron at their historic horror-writing party.

The movie is over 50 years old now but certain scenes are still vivid in my mind from that first viewing. In particular, there’s one where a disembodied arm that Frankenstein is experimenting with reaches up and clutches a character in its grip. A jump scare, to be sure — something I ordinary scorn, but its lingering power came from the uncanny, nightmarish quality. Moving arms usually have a person attached.

Is this my favorite horror movie? That’s a tough call. But with horror movies, as with lovers, you never forget your first.

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SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (16)

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