In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  As the film plays on, I eat several bourbons, almost whole, chewing them like dog biscuits.

  Something is definitely strange about Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS. I’m convinced it was shot in black and white. Ilsa strides through what looks like the Universal Studios Middle European village (built for All Quiet on the Western Front, it shows up in all their monster movies) accompanied by pudgy SS extras. Wherever she stands in the shot, her mammoth breasts seem to be the center of the frame.

  The plot involves Ilsa establishing a Nazi experiment camp in a ruined castle. Cringing villagers avoid Ilsa’s goose-stepping buddies. The village is called Visaria. I guess it’s supposed to be in Czechoslovakia or Poland. It’s hard to tell, because it seems more like generic Eastern Europe than a real country. The burgomeister wears Lederhosen and an alpine hat with a peacock feather.

  Visaria.

  I flip back in Glut and Jones, trying to track down a niggling memory. I am right. Visaria is the name of the village in the later Universal horror films: 1940s monster rallies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula. Whoever wrote Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS must be a monster trivia junkie. I assume Forry Ackerman will get a cameo, and the Ken Strickfaden lab equipment will be dusted off. That suggests the auteur touch of Al Adamson, who always liked to borrow leftover props from the Universals for atrocities like Dracula vs. Frankenstein. This looks too good to be an Adamson (no acid trip, no Russ Tamblyn, no bikers) but I feel I’m getting this movie pinned down. Maybe it’s from about the same vintage as Blackenstein, the one with the Karloff-style monster sporting a flat afro.

  I write: 1972 to 1975? American. Stars Dyanne Thorne (as Ilsa). The tortured girl looked like Uschi Digart.

  Then Lionel Atwill shows up as a police inspector with a prosthetic arm and an eagle-crested cap, with Dwight Frye and Skelton Knaggs as the most cringing of cringing villagers. They are from the ’40s, like the sets and the photography, and I’m lost.

  Bourbon biscuit crumbs turn to ashes in my mouth.

  Even if—and it’s inconceivable—I’m wrong and the leading woman isn’t Dyanne Thorne but a lookalike, then the scene with the rat and the nipple clamps could never have been shot in the ’40s. Even for the private delectation of Lionel Atwill’s houseguests. Ilsa doesn’t have the lipsticky, marcelled look of the women in ’40s horror films. Her hippie eye make-up and butch haircut are ’70s to the bleached-blonde roots.

  I swallow and am forced to assume this is a Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid gimmick, mixing footage from different films. Perhaps it has been overdubbed with wisecracks by Saturday Night Live regulars. I listen to the dialogue as Ilsa dresses down Inspector Atwill, and can’t catch any deliberate camp. One-shots of Ilsa and Atwill alternate and I try to see inconsistencies in the backgrounds. The match is good.

  Then Ilsa peels off her elbow-length black leather glove and slaps Atwill across the face with it. Thorne’s Ilsa, from the ’70s, is in the same shot with Atwill’s Inspector, from the ’40s, and their physical interaction is too complicated to be faked. Ilsa rips apart Atwill’s many-buttoned uniform, yanking off his artificial arm, and squats on him, hip-thrusting against the stump that sticks out of his shoulder. Thorne’s orgasmic moaning is as unconvincing as ever but Atwill looks as though he’s getting something out of the scene. Unsatisfied, Ilsa gets up and rearranges her SS skirt, then has Atwill summarily executed. Black blood squirts out of his burst eye. The ketchupy ’70s gore looks nastier, more convincing in hand-me-down ’40s expressionist black and white.

  The telephone rings and the answering machine cuts in. It’s Ciaran, complaining about maintenance. She jabbers on, an uncertain edge to her voice, and I concentrate on important things.

  This is definitely a crossover movie. I fervently wish I had seen it from the beginning so I could tell whether the title card was original or spliced in. Actually, trying to track this one down is pointless. Whatever it’s really called, it’s impossible.

  It’s the usual Ilsa story but the supporting characters are from the Universal monster series. Major Ilsa is the last granddaughter of the original Henry Frankenstein and the castle is her ancestral home. That would make her the character played by Ilona Massey in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Dyanne Thorne is even wearing an Ilona Massey beauty mark, which shifts alarmingly around her mouth from scene to scene with typical Ilsa continuity. She is supposed to be working on the creation of a race of super-Nazis for Hitler, but spends more time having weird sex and torturing people than contributing to the war effort.

  To help her out around the laboratory, where Glenn Strange lies supine on the table, Ilsa drags Dr. Pretorius, Ernest Thesiger’s swish mad scientist from Bride of Frankenstein, and Ygor, Bela Lugosi’s broken-necked gypsy from Son … and Ghost of Frankenstein, out of their concentration camps. Pretorius keeps adjusting his pink triangle to set off his lab coat and Ygor leers gruesomely at Ilsa, tongue dangling a foot or so out of his mouth.

  The sex scenes are near hardcore, but extremely silly. Ilsa needs a man who can sustain an erection for a whole night and most of the next morning if she is to achieve full satisfaction. She thinks she is in luck when virile Larry Talbot tears off his clothes as the full moon rises. In an unprecedented shot, yak hair swarms around the Wolf Man’s crotch. Jack Pierce must really have given Lon Chaney, Jr., a hard time with that lap dissolve. Ilsa and the Wolf Man go at it all over the castle, with ridiculous grunting and gasping and Franz Waxman’s Wedding Bells score from Bride of Frankenstein, but there’s big disappointment at dawn as the moon goes down and the werewolf turns back into dumb old flabby Larry-Lon. Ilsa yells abuse at the befuddled and limp American, and batters him to death with a silver cane.

  After this, Ilsa is so crabby she shoves the burgomeister’s irritating daughter into the sulphur pits below the castle. As the little girl goes under, we cut to Ygor-Bela snickering over a lamp positioned under his chin to make him look scary.

  In theory, Universal’s creature features have contemporary settings. Dracula and The Wolf Man clearly establish 1931 and 1941 for the dates of the action, so their sequels must take place in the years of their production. Ghost of Frankenstein (1941), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), the Visaria movies, are all set in an unspecified Eastern Europe of torchbearing peasant mobs, gypsy musicians and saluting policemen. Though Atwill in Son of Frankenstein complains that he missed out on the First World War because the monster tore his arm off when he was a boy, no one ever mentions the then-current War. In its crazed way, Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS is more “realistic.” The War, as reflected in the Nazi pornos of the 1970s, has leaked into the enclosed world of Universal horror.

  I mix Kettle Chips and Jaffa cakes, washing them down with Appletiser.

  Predictably, at sunset, a distinguished visitor arrives at the castle, nattily-dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, peering hypnotically over his long nose. John Carradine announces himself as Baron Latos. As Ilsa escorts him to her boudoir, Carradine’s floor-length cloak sweeps into a wing shape. An animated bat lands on Ilsa’s breasts and writhes, pushing her back onto a canopied four-poster bed. Reverting to human form, Dracula nuzzles his moustache between Ilsa’s thighs. The Count unbuttons his immaculate trouser fly to uncurl a white length of vampire manhood and pleasures Ilsa all through the night. The end, though, is inevitable. At sunrise, Dracula turns to ashes on top of an unsatisfied and infuriated Ilsa.

  A sunburst of realization: Channel 1818 isn’t showing movies that were made, but movies that can be imagined.

  Appletiser blurts out of my nose at the conceptual breakthrough.

  The ending is guessable: Dr. Pretorius charges the Monster and he gets up off his slab in time to be the insatiable stud Ilsa has looked for throughout the picture. Glenn Strange, naked but for asphalt-spreader’s boots, pounds away at Ilsa’s tender parts for what seems like hours as revolting partisan peasan
ts burn down the castle around their ears. The Monster’s tool is in proportion with the rest of him, scarred with collodion applications. As Ilsa finally comes like a skyrocket, burning beams fall on the bed and an end title flickers.

  As usual on cheapo movie channels, the film fades before the end credits so there’s no chance of noting down the copyright date. I howl in frustration and throw away the file card. With no concrete information, I might just as well not have watched the film.

  In anger, I batter the cushions of my sofa. Then, I’m drawn back to the television. Over a frozen frame of Boris Karloff as the Monster in a Beatle Wig, Channel 1818 announces the rest of the evening’s movie program.

  King Kong Meets Frankenstein. Willis O’Brien’s dream project.

  The Marx Brothers Meet the Monsters. Through the bungling of Igolini (Chico), Professor Wolf J. Frankenstein (Groucho) puts the Monster’s brain into Harpo’s skull. Margaret Dumont is Dracula’s Daughter.

  House of the Wolf Man. A 1946 Universal, directed by Jean Yarbrough. Otto Kruger and Rondo Hatton tamper with the brains of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange.

  Dr. Orloff, Sex Slave of Frankenstein. Directed by Jesus Franco, with Howard Vernon and Dennis Price, plus hardcore spliced in a decade after Price’s death.

  Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster: The Director’s Cut. The three-hour extended version, with additional beach party numbers.

  My bladder is uncomfortably full but I can’t get up to pee lest I miss anything irreplaceable. Channel 1818 is a treasure trove. If I keep watching, I’ll be able to note down credits. I’ll be the true source of information. Weldon, Glut and Jones will have to beg me for credits. My interpretations will be definitive. Hardy’s Aurum Encyclopedia: Horror will have to be junked entirely. The history of horror is written on shifting sands.

  Then come trailers: Peter Cushing sewing new legs onto disco queen Caroline Munro in Hammer’s Frankenstein AD 1971; an hour-long print of the 1910 Edison Frankenstein; Baron Rossano Brazzi singing “Some Lightning-Blasted Evening” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Frankenstein!; Peter Cushing and Boris Karloff in the same laboratory; W.C. Fields as the Blind Hermit, sneering “never work with children or hunchbacked assistants”; James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, with Leslie Howard as the doctor, Bette Davis as Elizabeth and a still-living Lon Chaney, all staring eyes and glittering teeth, as the monster; John Wayne and a cavalry troop tracking the Monster through Monument Valley in John Ford’s Fort Frankenstein; a restored 1915 Life Without Soul, with Percy Darrell Standing; Frankenstein 1980 in 3-D, with a better script; James Dean and Whit Bissell in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

  1818 was the year in which Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. This is the Frankenstein Channel.

  My bladder lets go, but I don’t mind. I can’t make it to the kitchen without looking away from the screen, so I’ll have to improvise food. As always, I have enough munchies to keep me going. Sleep, I can do without. I have my vocation.

  My wrist aches from writing down titles and credits. I have responsibilities.

  David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein. Dario Argento’s Frankenstein. Ingmar Bergman’s Frankenstein. Woody Allen’s Frankenstein. Martin Scorsese’s Frankenstein. Walerian Borowczyk’s Frankenstein. Jerry Warren’s Frankenstine. Akira Kurosawa’s Furankenshutain. Ernest Hemingway’s Frank Stein. Troma’s Frankenslime. William Castle’s Shankenstein. Jim Wynorski’s Wankenstein. Wayne Newton’s Dankenshane. Odorama’s Rankenstein.

  I watch, reference books strewn around the floor, all useless, all outdated. On and on, monsters and mad doctors, hunchbacks and mobs, blind men and murdered girls, ice floes and laboratories.

  Channel ident 1818 flickers. I fight pangs in my stomach and eat the crummy paper which was wrapped around my last pack of digestive biscuits. Sammy Davis, Jr., slicks hair across his flat-head in a Rat Packenstein picture, as Dino and Frank Sinatra fix up the electrodes.

  I recognize the strange smell as my own. There are enough crumbs behind the cushions of the sofa to sustain life. I pick them out like a grooming gorilla and crack them between my teeth.

  Badly-dressed black musicians rob the graves of blues singers in the endless Funkenstein series. Ridley Scott directs a run of Bankenstein ads for Barclays, with Sting applying for a small business loan to get his monster wired. Jane Fonda works the scars out of her thighs in the Flankenstein video.

  I am transfixed. I would look away, but there is a chance I might miss something. I’m dreaming the electronic dream, consuming imaginary images made celluloid.

  Brides, sons, ghosts, curses, revenges, evils, horrors, brains, dogs, bloods, castles, daughters, houses, ladies, brothers, ledgers, lodgers, hands, returns, tales, torments, infernos, worlds, experiments, horror chambers … of Frankenstein.

  I hit the exhaustion wall and burn through it. My life functions are at such a low level that I can continue indefinitely. I’m plugged into Channel 1818. It’s my duty to stay the course.

  Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Redford and Newman, Astaire and Rogers, Mickey and Donald, Tango and Cash, Rowan and Martin, Bonnie and Clyde, Frankie and Annette, Hinge and Brackett, Batman and Robin, Salt and Pepa, Titch and Quackers, Amos and Andy, Gladstone and Disraeli, Morecambe and Wise, Block and Tackle … Meet Frankenstein.

  I can barely move, but my eyes are open.

  Credits roll, too fast to jot down. These films exist for one showing and are lost. Each frame is unique, impossible to recreate. I daren’t even leave the room to get a pack of blank videotapes. It is down to me. I must watch and I must remember. My mind is the screen on which these Frankensteins perform.

  The Frankenstein Monster is played by … Bela Lugosi (in 1931), Christopher Lee (in 1964), Lane Chandler, Harvey Keitel, Sonny Bono, Bernard Bresslaw, Meryl Streep, Bruce Lee, Neville Brand, John Gielgud, Ice-T, Rock Hudson, Traci Lords.

  The experience is priceless. A red sun rises outside, and I draw the curtains.

  “Now I know what it feels like to be a God,” croaks Edward G. Robinson.

  I will stay with the channel.

  “We belong dead,” intones Don Knotts.

  I will watch.

  “To a new world of Gods and monsters,” toasts Daffy Duck.

  PAUL McAULEY

  The Temptation of Dr. Stein

  Paul McAuley was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire. A former research biologist at Oxford University and UCLA, and a former lecturer at St. Andrews University, he became a full-time writer in 1996. McAuley sold a story to the SF Digest when he was just nineteen, but the magazine folded before it could appear, and his first published story appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction in 1984.

  With his debut novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), he became the first British writer to win the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award and he established his reputation as one of the best young science fiction writers in the field by winning the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1995.

  His other novels include Secret Harmonies (aka Of the Fall), Eternal Light, Red Dust, Pasquale’s Angel (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Long Form Alternate History fiction), the Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning Fairyland, Child of the River, Ancients of Days, Shrine of Stars, Ship of Fools, The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, White Devils, Mind’s Eye, Players, Cowboy Angels, Evening’s Empires, Something Coming Through and Into Everywhere.

  The author’s short fiction is collected in The King of the Hill and Other Stories, The Invisible Country, Little Machines and A Very British History.

  “The Temptation of Dr. Stein” was written especially for this volume and won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1995. It is set in the same alternate history as the author’s novel Pasquale’s Angel, in which the inventions of the Great Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, have made Florence into a world power.

  The novel features a cameo by a certain Dr. Pretorious (a character played by the great English eccentric Ernest Thesiger in the 1935 movie Bride of Franken
stein), and this story concerns his activities in Venice, some ten years earlier …

  Dr. Stein prided himself on being a rational man. When, in the months following his arrival in Venice, it became his habit to spend his free time wandering the city, he could not admit that it was because he believed that his daughter might still live, and that he might see her amongst the cosmopolitan throng. For he harbored the small, secret hope that when Landsknechts had pillaged the houses of the Jews of Lodz, perhaps his daughter had not been carried off to be despoiled and murdered, but had been forced to become a servant of some Prussian family. It was no more impossible that she had been brought here, for the Council of Ten had hired many Landsknechts to defend the city and the terraferma hinterlands of its empire.

  Dr. Stein’s wife would no longer talk to him about it. Indeed, they hardly talked about anything these days. She had pleaded that the memory of their daughter should be laid to rest in a week of mourning, just as if they had interred her body. They were living in rooms rented from the cousin of Dr. Stein’s wife, a banker called Abraham Soncino, and Dr. Stein was convinced that she had been put up to this by the women of Soncino’s family. Who knew what the women talked about, when locked in the bathhouse overnight after they had been purified of their menses? No good, Dr. Stein was certain. Even Soncino, a genial, uxorious man, had urged that Dr. Stein mourn his daughter. Soncino had said that his family would bring the requisite food to begin the mourning; after a week all the community would commiserate with Dr. Stein and his wife before the main Sabbath service, and with God’s help this terrible wound would be healed. It had taken all of Dr. Stein’s powers to refuse this generous offer courteously. Soncino was a good man, but this was none of his business.