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80th anniversary, Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstein, Doctor Pretorius, Elsa Lanchester, Henry Clive, horror, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Universal Pictures
Lord Byron: “Astonishing creature.”
Mary Shelley: “I, Lord Byron?”
Lord Byron: “Frightened of thunder, fearful of the dark. And yet you have written a tale that sent my blood into icy creeps. Look at her, Shelley. Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein? A monster created from cadavers out of rifled graves? Isn’t it astonishing?”
Mary Shelley: “I don’t know why you should think so. What do you expect? Such an audience needs something more than a pretty little love story. So why shouldn’t I write of monsters?
Lord Byron: “No wonder Murray’s refused to publish the book. He says his reading public would be too shocked!”
Mary Shelley: “It will be published, I think.”
Percy Shelley: “Then, darling, you will have much to answer for.”
Mary Shelley: “The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson. The punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.”
Lord Byron: “Well, whatever your purpose may have been, my dear, I take great relish in savouring each separate horror. I roll them over on my tongue.”
Mary Shelley: “Don’t, Lord Byron. Don’t remind me of it tonight.”
Lord Byron: “What a setting in that churchyard to begin with. The sobbing women. The first plod of earth on the coffin — that was a pretty chill. Frankenstein and the dwarf stealing the body out of its new-made grave. Cutting the hanged man down from the gallows, where he swung creaking in the wind. The cunning of Frankenstein in his mountain laboratory, taking dead men apart and building up a human monster so fearful, so horrible, that only a half-crazed brain could have devised. And then the murders. The little child, drowned. Henry Frankenstein himself thrown from the top of the burning mill by the very monster he had created. And it was these fragile, white fingers that penned the nightmare.”
Percy Shelley: “I do think it a shame, Mary, to end your story quite so suddenly.”
Mary Shelley: “That wasn’t the end at all. Would you like to hear what happened after that? I feel like telling it. It’s a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.”
Lord Byron: “I’m all ears! While heaven blasts the night without, open up your pits of hell.”
Mary Shelley: “Well, then, imagine yourselves standing by the wreckage of the mill. The fire is dying down. Soon the bare skeleton of the building rolls over, the gaunt rafters against the sky……”
That is the fantastic opening scene of what is considered by many to be one of Universal Pictures greatest horror films: “Bride of Frankenstein”. Continue reading