monsters

1. Earl

On February 12, 1931, Universal Pictures' "Dracula" premiered in New York. Accompanied by the opening song "Swan Lake", the curtain continued to open (yes, the curtain was raised during the movie at that time), and the audience was taken by a carriage to a remote place in Transylvania (now Romania). In a small mountain village in a sunless castle on the top of a mountain, the movie awakened the elegant vampire devil, Count Dracula.

Two days later, the film opened nationwide and was a box office hit. This is the first serious sound feature film with ghost content produced by a major Hollywood studio. There are no gags in the film, and there is no attempt to weaken the surreal elements. Given the market environment at the time, the film's subject matter and budget were a huge gamble for Universal. They won the bet, and "Dracula" eventually became Universal's most profitable film of the year. It also made the actor who played Count Dracula in the film, the 48-year-old Bela Lugosi, a celebrity. star.

"Dracula" is adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name published by Irish novelist Bram Stoker in 1897. Of course, Stoker did not create the vampire, which has long existed in folklore around the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries before "Dracula" was written, the image of vampires in Europe was actually closer to the zombies we have today. Unfortunately, the relevant terminology is a mess in both English and Chinese. Anyway, they are basically disgusting things that come back to life after death, rotten and stupid, and eat people.

About a hundred years before Stoker was born, Europe entered a period of "vampire panic." People rumored that the corpse did not rot for a long time, the nails continued to grow, the sound of knocking on the coffin was heard in the cemetery, and finally the rotting corpse crawled out of the grave and entered the village to eat people. Now we know that some of these may be the result of special climatic conditions or physiological phenomena, some may be people who faked their death and were nailed into coffins and buried (yes, this was not uncommon at that time), and more are the creation of folk oral literature.

But people at the time believed it. They tried their best to prevent the dead people, especially the relatives and friends who died unexpectedly, from coming back to visit relatives and friends, including food and drinks. It was too difficult to die as a beautiful corpse with autumn leaves in those days: burn the body, behead the body, dig out the heart, nail the coffin board, dig out the heart and then nail the heart to the coffin board, there are all kinds of tricks. There are complete types of private supporting jobs, including those who make predictions during life and those who are responsible for operations after death. During the peak period, theme tourism routes have even been formed, which can be regarded as a booming characteristic economic industry chain.

Novelists would certainly not let such popular images and themes pass by. Stoker's "Dracula" is not the earliest, but it combines the advantages of its predecessors and has its own creation. It is a landmark work that combines many achievements. After publication, although the response from critics at the time was mediocre, it was very popular among public readers.

It is generally believed that the sexual hints in "Dracula" come from Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla", in which the first lesbian vampire appears in history; the vampire's hypnotic ability, struggle The inner heart and the iconic wound with two tooth holes come from James Malcolm Rymer's "Varney The Vampire"; and contrary to the rotten ugliness in folklore, the vampire is shaped into a demeanor The image of an elegant aristocrat comes from "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori, which is generally regarded as the first modern vampire novel.

Universal's 1931 version of "Dracula" was not the first time Stoker's novel was adapted for the screen. In 1922, Germany produced a silent film "Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens" directed by FW Murnau, a representative of Expressionist films and a silent film master.

Now it seems that the artistic achievement of "Nosferatu" is higher than that of "Dracula", but it cannot compare at the box office, because it has almost no box office. The producer did not buy the copyright. Although the character names and some settings were changed, Stoker's widow still won the rights lawsuit. The judge ordered all copies to be burned. Since the film had begun to be distributed overseas at that time, some copies were passed down, so we can still see this masterpiece today. In addition, although the vampires in the two movies have the same aristocratic setting, their looks are quite different. Orlok in "No" is described as lewd, while Lugosi's Dracula, "Jade Tree Lin Feng Lin Feng", exudes evil charm and is popular with thousands of women.

Lugosi's original name was Blaskó Béla Ferenc Dezsö. He was born on October 20, 1882 in Lugozhi, Kingdom of Hungary (today's Romania), not far from the legendary Dracula. His hometown is not far from the Carpathian Mountains. At that time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still there, and the boundaries of European countries were different from today, but in terms of geographical location, it can indeed be said that Bella came from the hometown of Dracula. Later, he took the stage name "Lugosi" after his hometown.

Bella is the fourth child, and her conservative father, a banker, expects his youngest son to engage in a "serious job." But little Bella is a child who loves to perform. He just wants to act. Despite her family's opposition, Bella dropped out of school and left home at the age of 12 to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. He spent his days hanging out outside the theater, and eventually his managers gave him some small roles, which launched his career.

During World War I from 1914 to 16, Béla served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was wounded on the Russian front. The leg disease he suffered would plague him throughout his life. After the war, because of her participation in the socialist movement of the Hungarian Actors' Union, Bella was forced to flee her homeland, first traveling to Vienna and Berlin, and finally across the ocean to the United States.

When he first arrived in the United States, he engaged in manual labor to make ends meet while continuing to develop his career as an actor. After unremitting efforts, Bella's tall, handsome image and excellent acting skills have been recognized. However, due to his poor English and severe accent, in movies, he could only take on some silent film villains or exotic roles where the accent didn't get in the way. During this period, he also got married and divorced twice.

In 1927, Bella was invited to star in the Broadway production of Dracula as the vampire count. At first he was reluctant, fearing that it would further stereotype himself, but it turned out that this was the first hit in his many years of acting career. "Dracula" was so popular that it ran for 261 performances. While he was somewhat famous, he married again, to a wealthy widow, and divorced four months later.

The success of the drama version of "Dracula" gave birth to Universal's film adaptation plan. Bella naturally felt that she was the perfect choice, but Universal didn't think so. The film version of the Count was originally chosen to be Lon Chaney, a silent film star who was known as the "Man with a Thousand Faces" at the time. His representative works include "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera". However, Chaney was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer at the end of 2029. In addition, he inhaled fake snowflakes made from corn flakes during the filming, which caused a severe infection. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died in August of the following year. Bella, who had been a backup, finally got the role (his thick accent was not a problem for Dracula, it was even a plus) and finally achieved stardom of his own.

After the success of the movie version of "Dracula," Universal immediately invited Bella to star in another planned monster movie, but this time Bella declined. As for the reason, there has never been a generally accepted statement. Some people said that it was because he felt that the monster had no lines in the entire film, some said that it was because he felt that the character's makeup was too heavy, which would affect his performance, and some said that it was because he felt that the script (referring to the version he read) The monster is portrayed as an unlovable cold-blooded killer. Some people say that he just doesn't want to continue to be stereotyped in such strange and chaotic roles.

Less than a year later, Bella would regret her decision. Because that movie called "Frankenstein" will change everything.

2. Mary

"Frankenstein" is adapted from the novel "Frankenstein" (or, the Modern Prometheus) published in 1818 (in fact, the English names of the movie and the novel are both Frankenstein, and the customary translations are used here). The book is often considered the first science fiction novel, which naturally makes its author, Mary Shelley, the first science fiction novelist.

Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is often hailed as the "first feminist". Her classic work "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" published in 1792 is one of the founding works of feminist philosophy and is still taught in universities today. She pointed out in the book: Women are not inherently inferior to men. The reason for this appearance is that they have not received equal education. She put her own teachings into practice. Before meeting Mary's father, she had traveled the world alone, had several relationships, and had a daughter out of wedlock.

Mary's father, William Godwin, was a British philosopher who was considered one of the earliest advocates of utilitarian philosophy and anarchist philosophy. He was a member of the radical intellectual circle in London that was deeply influenced by the French Revolution. A prominent figure in it.

The two came together because of the same philosophy. They all support women's right to be independent and not marry, and even describe marriage as "legal prostitution." At that time, women in Britain were not only unable to own property or receive wages, but they were not even qualified to be legal persons in court. This shows how pioneering their ideas were at the time. Later, they got pregnant unexpectedly and got married.

Mary was born on August 30, 1797. The delivery was uneventful, but residual placental tissue caused an infection (not uncommon at the time). Eleven days later, Mary Wollstonecraft died of sepsis. Mary inherited her mother's name and knew from an early age that her birth indirectly caused her mother's death.

As a little girl, Mary often curled up in her father's huge chair and listened to the chatter of the family's guests. It was an intellectual salon held by my father at home. The salon was full of distinguished guests, including writers, journalists, musicians, humanities scholars, and many scientists. Many of the natural sciences we are familiar with today did not even have their own subject names at that time, but were collectively called "natural philosophy" or "natural history".

One of the guests was the Italian scientist Galvani. This man was the first to discover bioelectricity. Many people have done that experiment in middle school: using electrodes to electrocute a frog's legs to make them twitch. But the version Mary heard was much weirder:

On January 18, 1803, a criminal named George Foster was hanged for killing his wife and daughter. His body was quickly transported to a lecture theater in London. Under the gaze of various scholars, Galvani's nephew Giovanni Aldini began to electrocute Forster's body. Under the current, Foster's body began to twitch his limbs, clenched his fists, and even opened his eyes.

Now we all know that this is a common bioelectrical phenomenon. At that time, both electricity and biology were in their infancy, and scholars speculated that electricity might be related to "vitality" or even the key to resurrection.

This story left a huge shadow on Mary in her childhood. Remember that this was a child who felt that her birth caused her mother's death since she was a child. This may be the earliest image of "Frankenstein".

When Mary was about to turn 17, a handsome and graceful young man appeared in her father's salon. This man was considered by later generations to be one of the representative poets of romanticism: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary's future husband.

Shelley is a rebellious nobleman. He entered Oxford University at the age of 18. It is said that he took one class in total, read the books he wanted to read every day, wrote poems and Gothic novels, and also wrote a book called "The Necessity of Atheism" (The Necessity of Atheism). Distributed in schools. It was okay not to go to class, but Oxford couldn't bear to preach atheism, so he was expelled. He had been enrolled for less than a year at that time. Shelley was romantic by nature, full of idealistic passion, and forward-thinking. He not only admired Mary's father, but also admired her deceased mother.

Okay, now, if you put Mary, a young girl who has inherited the excellent qualities of both his parents, who has been immersed in the cultural circle of radical intellectuals since childhood, and who has equally avant-garde ideas, in front of Shelley, nothing will happen. ?

Mary and Shelley spent the whole day together, discussing literature, politics, female independence, Shelley's poetry, and Mary's novel creation, and they soon fell in love. The young hormones were fearless, and it might not be convenient at home, so they went to the cemetery and settled the matter on Mary's mother's tombstone (considering Mary's mother's pioneering ideas, this place may be particularly suitable). She is 17 and he is less than 22. This was probably Mary's first sexual experience, but Shelley was already a veteran - this is certain: regardless of other flowers and plants, at least after being expelled from Oxford, he returned to his hometown to marry a daughter-in-law and gave birth to a child. Two babies. Yes, Shelley was a married man at the time.

Mary's pioneering father couldn't accept it and banned their relationship.

The ban is definitely unstoppable. Shelley said we should commit suicide, Mary said eh... let's elope. So they eloped. But not two people, but three people. The third person is Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont. After Mary's mother died, her father married a neighbor, Claire, the woman's child from a previous marriage. Mary hates her stepmother, but seems to have a good relationship with Claire.

So the current situation is this: Mary likes Shelley, Shelley likes Mary, Claire likes Shelley, and Shelley is willing to accept anyone who comes (and he also has a first wife). At that time, these pioneering intellectuals were emphasizing "free love." Shelley was determined to be as free as he could be. For some time afterwards, Claire was Mary's main rival. Of course, she ultimately lost to Mary. But don't underestimate this Claire, she may be the most critical link in the whole story.

In this way, the three boys and girls sat in a carriage and sang songs, and went through a storm in a boat that almost cost them their lives. Finally, they arrived in France across the strait, and the elopement was successful.

"Free love" may be "free," but it is certainly not without a price. Mary became pregnant and gave birth to her and Shelley's first child out of wedlock at age 17 (beating her mother). The girl was born two months premature and died two weeks later.

3. Monster

In Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster kills a little girl.

This passage tells the story of a little girl playing alone by the lake after the monster escaped. The innocent child didn't think he was ugly and even asked him to throw daisies into the water to play with him. One or two daisies floated on the water. For the first time, the monster felt people's kindness and smiled happily. After they finished throwing away the flowers in their hands, the monster, who was not familiar with the world, was still not satisfied, so he picked up the little girl and threw it into the water. The girl did not rise to the water like a daisy. The monster could not rescue her and the girl drowned.

When the film was released at the end of 1931, theaters in many states across the United States cut this section out of scale (literally cutting this section of film with a knife). It is said that Karloff, the actor who played the monster, was worried about this plot during the filming, but he still performed the monster's innocence, panic and grief vividly, which is one of the most wonderful performances in the movie.

Boris Karloff was born on November 23, 1887, whose real name was William Henry Pratt. Later known to the world as a monster, he was a well-educated British gentleman.

His father held a high position in the Indian Civil Service (the colonial governing body that succeeded the East India Company after the Indian Rebellion of 1857). Both parents have part-Indian ancestry, and William's dark skin is particularly conspicuous among the children in the same circle. Since he was a child, he was often asked how he got such a tan. He would sometimes answer: Plenty of gin and a tight collar!

He is the eldest of nine children. When he was five years old, his father abandoned the family and went to France. When he was seven years old, his mother died. Afterwards, little William was brought up by his older brothers and sisters. This did not seem to be a good memory, and Karloff never talked about it after he became famous.

Little William not only stuttered but also had unclear speech. Through hard work, he overcame the stutter. Although the speech problem was under control, it still existed until he became a big star, and traces can still be found. At the age of nine, little William participated in a children's play that adapted "Cinderella", playing the devil king (this role was not in the original work), and began to become interested in acting. Then he watched the play "Peter Pan" in London and became completely obsessed with the stage.

In 1909, he dropped out of college and left his seemingly uneasy family to go to Canada. In order to make a living, he drove a truck, worked as a stevedore, and did farm work. At the same time, he obtained some stage performance opportunities by exaggerating his resume, and began to use the stage name of Boris Karloff (he also took time to marry... Divorced once). According to him, the surname "Karlov" came from his mother's Russian relatives, while the name "Polis" came "from thin air".

In 1913, Karloff went to the United States and joined the booming film industry in Los Angeles. It was a difficult start. Even with the subsidy for manual labor, I often had to eat one meal before finishing the next meal. But Karloff, who loves acting, does not feel bitter. He once joked with his friends: I like soup cans the most. The soup inside can be eaten for one meal, and the vegetables inside can be eaten for another meal. Because dark skin is quite "exotic", most of the roles he received were exotic villains in silent films, but he eventually became a movie actor. Even though he was hungry and poor, he was not idle either. He was divorced three times and got married for the fifth time.

In 1931, the then-43-year-old unknown Karloff was eventually cast as The Monster by Universal after Bella turned down the role. It is said that Wheeler, the director of "Frankenstein", was particularly fond of Karloff's appearance and told him during the audition: "Your face, Mr. Karloff, hides amazing possibilities."

So Karloff took his face and joined legendary makeup artist Pierce to create the monster's look. By this time Pierce had spent half a year designing the monster.

Jack Pierce was born in Greece in 1889. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a teenager. He first lived in Chicago, where he fell in love with baseball and was good at it. They later moved to California, where Pierce tried to become a professional player but failed. Frustrated, he entered the emerging film industry by chance, working his way from projectionist to manager of a small theater chain, and later entered the production field, working as an actor, assistant photographer, and assistant director, "learning everything about film production." ". Eventually he discovered that his true talent lay in makeup styling, and gradually accumulated a reputation in the industry.

In 1926, Pierce designed the monkey man for Fox's film The Monkey Talks (1927), a technically advanced look that eventually led to him being appointed makeup supervisor by Universal (along with Lon Chaney as the lead). The villa where he lives while working around the world). Pierce continued to impress people around the world, and his classic image in the 1928 film "The Man Who Laughs" became the inspiration for the Joker in DC Comics.

He was also the one who originally planned to design Dracula, but Bella insisted on having the count's own style and make-up, leaving Pierce without much to do. So he put all his energy into "Frankenstein" and wanted to do a big job. From dozens of concepts (there were even robots included) and hundreds of reference photos of real criminals, Pierce and his department ultimately designed the monster. This plan may not seem exaggerated and eye-catching at first glance, but it contains rich details.

For example, the two things on the monster's neck that are often mistaken for screws are actually electrodes used to carry electricity. As for the monster's flat head, Dr. Pierce's lack of skills in setting it up simply sawed the head flat and then closed it. This makes no sense in anatomy, but it is the attention to detail that makes the entire plastic art highly complete and breathtaking.

During the 18-week filming period, the two basically had to get up at 4 a.m. every day to start putting on makeup for four hours. There were no pre-made silicone face molds at the time, so every day Pierce had to re-create the entire look on Karloff's face using cotton, water and a very harsh collodion. It’s hard to imagine what Karloff went through having these chemicals smeared around his eyes every day, and the process of removing makeup after each day’s shooting was even more painful.

In addition to the face, the monster's clothes and shoes are also specially made and weigh dozens of kilograms. Karloff was not a weak person, but such high-intensity filming still caused him to faint on the set one day and left him with a back injury that would never heal.

The pain and efforts were not in vain.

In fact, "Frankenstein" is not the first time that Mary's novel has been made into a movie. Edison's film studio produced a short film adaptation of "Frankenstein" as early as 1910, which was also the first horror film in human history. Nowadays, few people remember that short film, and "Frankenstein" has long become a classic that has gone down in film history:

On a stormy night, like the tower of a Gothic cathedral, the doctor and his assistant operated machinery to raise the stiff body made of corpses on the experimental table to the ceiling. Bolts of lightning struck the monster, and arcs of behemoth-like machines roared all around. The experimental table slowly fell, and the hand outside the white cloth, which had no signs of life, began to twitch. The roaring thunder could not cover up the doctor's ecstatic cry: "It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!"

Modern Prometheus stole the fire of creation from the gods.

In fact, after "It Lives", the Doctor had a line that was also cut by many theaters. The Doctor said: "That's what it feels to be God!" Regardless of whether it violates religious taboos or not, after the film was released, the creators and Universal executives probably felt a little bit like this. History is a testament to Universal's bold investment, Mary's heartbreaking original story, director Whale's aesthetic choices influenced by German Expressionism, the wonderful performances of Karloff and the rest of the film's cast, Pierce's monster look, and the cinematography. Arthur Edeson's powerful images and the art department's breathtaking props and sets... together created a perfect match for the fledgling film industry. The film received critical acclaim and was even more popular than the previous "Dracula".

The creators of the film had a little trick: in the opening list of actors, only the actor who played the monster was not named, which was a question mark. And when the movie ended, he was no longer the unknown third-rate actor. It didn't take long for Karloff to become a superstar known only by a single name. People called him "Karloff the Uncanny".

"Frankenstein" announced the official beginning of the era of Universal monster movies. They struck while the iron was hot and launched a series of box office hits. These films have become classics today and have been remade and adapted many times. Including "The Mummy" (1932), also starring Karloff, and "The Invisible Man" (1933), also directed by Whale. The one that is often considered the pinnacle is the sequel to "Frankenstein", "Bride of Frankenstein", also directed by Whale and starring Karloff, released in 1935.

4. Bride

At the beginning of "The Bride of Frankenstein", director Wheel made Mary and Shelley appear together with another great poet, Lord Byron. This prologue Easter egg pays tribute to the famous summer that Mary, Shelley and Byron spent together in Switzerland in 1816, the so-called "year without a summer".

The cause goes back to Claire. As mentioned earlier, she may be the most critical link in the entire story.

After the elopement, the three of them lived together. As time went by, Claire became dissatisfied with this special "family" relationship, and even went to live in seclusion in the countryside for a while. Mary and Shelley welcomed their second child, a boy, whom they named William, in the first month of the Year Without Summer. There is evidence that Clare may have given birth to Shelley's child during her seclusion (at that time, the so-called "country seclusion" of noble ladies often meant giving birth to illegitimate children).

Perhaps because she was born with a character unwilling to settle down and be ordinary, perhaps because she wanted to prove something, Claire hooked up with a greater talent than Shelley, the great poet Lord Byron in the world (to be precise, Claire met Byron in London before she eloped) , and was pregnant with his child. She persuaded Mary and Shelley to spend the summer with Byron in Switzerland.

That summer, Shelley and Byron hit it off. Byron suspected that Claire was pregnant with Shelley's seed, and Mary began to write "Frankenstein".

After the summer, Mary, Shelley and Clare returned to England.

In October of that year, Mary's half-sister, with whom she was quite close (the daughter her mother gave birth to out of wedlock when she was traveling around the world when she was young), committed suicide.

Two months later, Shelley's first wife committed suicide by drowning herself in the river, eight months pregnant (most people think the child was Shelly's, but Shelley said it was the adulterer's).

At the end of the same year, Mary and Shelley were married.

Because Mary decided to accept Shelley and her first marriage's two children, the legal process related to fighting for custody may have become one of the reasons why the radicals and staunch supporters of free love finally decided to get married. Mary, on the other hand, supports freedom of love and women's right to choose, and her father, who has not spoken to her since her daughter eloped, finally reconciles with them at the wedding.

She still became his bride. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finally became Mary Shelley.

"The Bride of Frankenstein" was born out of Mary Shelley's original work and has its own creation. It is considered a landmark work and surpasses the original work in terms of artistic achievements. The "mastermind" behind it was not only the most personal director in Hollywood at the time, but also one of the few openly gay men in the entire film industry. He often held pool parties for handsome men at his mansion in Los Angeles.

James Whale was born in England in 1889. He started his career as a director in a military camp while participating in World War I, and later rose to prominence in the theater. Through the 1930 military-themed film "Journey's End" (Journey's End), Whale was appreciated by Hollywood movie mogul "Aviator" Howard Hughes, Jr., and he was invited to direct for Hughes himself. Parts of the aerial combat epic Hell's Angels (1930) were filmed.

Wheeler never concealed his preference for marginalized people and outlaws. In his famous 1931 film "Waterloo Bridge", the protagonist is a prostitute (the 1940 Vivien Leigh version was a remake); He is not afraid to challenge social norms. Remember, he killed a child neatly in "Frankenstein". Just imagine which commercial blockbuster today would dare to do this.

No studio would let go of a box office hit like "Frankenstein," and plans for a sequel were almost immediately put on Universal's agenda. Wheeler was initially resistant, reluctant to repeat himself, but eventually agreed in exchange for full creative control.

No one knows if Wheeler harbored a grudge against conservatives and religious forces for censoring the scene in which he kills the little girl and "Being God" (I think so). He went even further in "The Bride". For example, in the scene where the villagers tie the monster to a high pole and carry it back to the village, the image is completely like the crucifixion of Christ. Christ went from birth to death and came back to life, while the monster was reborn from the dead, born and died. There seems to be nothing wrong with saying that this is "anti-Christ" (Thank God I can use "anti" when writing in Chinese, otherwise this Anti-christ is just can be "antichrist").

He also had a queer character in The Bride (at least as far as the screen allowed it at the time), Dr. Pretorius. According to the stereotype, this character is effeminate. Considering Wheel's identity as a gay man and his consistent "viciousness" in art, this should be a kind of irony and resistance. And this man is actually the most important character in "The Bride". It was his crazy pursuit of "parthenogenesis" and unscrupulous means that ultimately led to Dr. Frankenstein's creation of the "Bride."

In fact, if you deliberately watch "The Bride" from a queer perspective, many lines and plots will become puns or even "meaningless". For example, the scene where the monster "makes friends" with the blind old man is derived from the original work, but in addition to retaining the functional need to let the monster speak, the rest of the treatment in the movie is worth pondering. Wheeler did not even mention it. His cunning and bad taste were buried too deep.

In Mary's novel, the Doctor does not ultimately create a bride for the monster as he demands.

At the end of Wheel's film, after a more extensive "creation" scene than in Frankenstein, the bride, played by Elsa Lanchester, makes a mysterious appearance. The monster thought he had finally found his kind, but the bride thought he was ugly and scary, and instinctively rejected him (actually, she herself was quite scary...).

Finally, the heartbroken monster pulled the switch.

The tower was blown to the ground and Wheel ascended to the altar.

If Karloff was extremely red before, now he is already extremely red (he is quite dark).

On the other hand, Bella's luck seems to be a little worse.

After "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" became popular, Universal offered the two film roles constantly, and they even starred in several movies together. Of course, these projects with obvious attempts to make money are generally considered to be of low value. A phenomenon gradually emerged: Karloff's position became more and more solid with each new work, while Bella's star gradually showed signs of decline.

In the era of talkies, Karloff, a child who stuttered at an early age, developed another performance weapon: his own changeable and expressive voice. However, Bella's thick accent limited his acting potential. Karloff is optimistic and open-minded by nature. He is willing to play anything, be it a ghost or a villain, and he doesn't mind if the audience regards him as the "King of Monsters". Bella has always been worried about being stereotyped by the vampire count. The more the accent restricts the roles he receives, the more entangled he seems to be, which is a bit of a vicious cycle. In addition, he was not good at managing money and had long-term cash flow problems, which also contributed to the decline of his career.

Universal arranged for them to collaborate again on 1939's Son of Frankenstein. At this time, Bella's momentum was not as good as before, and due to financial problems and urgent need for money, Universal took advantage of the situation and gave him a very low salary. After Karloff found out, he stood up for Bella, forcing Universal to give a much higher price, but this seems to be the last time Bella received a star-level salary (an interesting detail: it may have come from the filming of " After being injured in "Frankenstein", Karloff has been using his star power to fight for the welfare of his peers, and he is also one of the earliest organizers of the Screen Actors Guild).

This is nominally the orthodox sequel to Universal's "Frankenstein" series. Karloff returns for his third appearance as Frankenstein's monster, and Bella joins the cast as the mad blacksmith Ygor. Bella lived up to Karloff's generosity and gave what can be called the best performance of her career.

But Wheel did not return. There may be many reasons for this. For example, although "The Bride" received unanimous praise from critics and did well at the box office, it failed to reproduce the astonishing revenue of "Frankenstein". In addition, due to its high cost, it may not be particularly cost-effective as a commercial project; For example, Universal became increasingly intolerable of Wheel's eccentric artist personality.

In a sense, monster movies would be a bit lost without Wheel. This movie is actually a family movie. It is neither scary nor innovative. It returns to the safe and steady formula of Hollywood.

Although the audience still buys it, the climax of the era of monster movies has gradually faded away.

After that summer in Switzerland, Byron traveled to Italy, participated in the revolutionary movement of the book-burning party, and began to write "Don Juan".

Clare returned to England and gave birth to Byron's daughter. Byron later finally agreed to acknowledge the child, but demanded unilateral custody and that Claire never see her daughter again. Claire almost collapsed, but finally agreed. Later, the girl was placed in a monastery in Italy by Byron. She died of illness when she was five years old, and her parents were not around when she died.

Clare and Byron had a complete break, but this did not affect the relationship between Shelley and Byron.

Mary completed Frankenstein in England during the summer of 1817. She and Shelley welcomed their second daughter in the fall. Shortly after the birth of the child, in March of the following year, partly under the influence of Byron, Shelley decided to move to Italy with Mary and the children. The newborn daughter did not survive the long journey and died on arrival in Italy. The couple buried their young daughter at the beach.

This year, "Frankenstein" was published anonymously, with a preface by Shelley, and it became very popular.

The next year, his eldest son William died of malaria in Rome.

At the end of the same year, Mary gave birth to his and Shelley's second son.

The successive deaths of relatives, the hardship of life, and possibly the impact of consecutive pregnancies (in fact, Mary was pregnant five times before the age of 25, and only the second son survived to adulthood) gradually created a rift in the relationship between Mary and her husband.

Mary and Shelley's hearts were already drifting apart.

In July 1822, Shelley sailed to Livorno to visit Byron and stayed briefly to plan their new adventure. Then he boarded his new ship named "Don Juan" and set sail, facing the huge wind and waves again, just like he did when he eloped.

Only this time, there was no Mary and Claire by his side.

5. The Year Without Summer

In April 1815, Indonesia's Tambora volcano erupted. This was the largest volcanic eruption recorded in human history, causing serious climate anomalies in the northern hemisphere for a period of time. The summer of 1816 was cold, wet, and rainy, and became known as "the year without a summer."

In mid-May of this year, Shelley and Mary arrived in Switzerland with their young son William, who was still alive at the time, and Clare, who was pregnant, to wait for Byron.

Lord Byron, the emperor of British literature, the number one celebrity in the London social circle, the first sex idol in human history, admired by thousands of people and infamous at the same time. After experiencing a series of scandals such as multiple extramarital affairs (both men and women), incest (with his half-sister), divorce, etc., the young Lord decided to leave his homeland (in fact he never went back). This staunch anti-royalist first went to France, where he mourned Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and then continued south to Switzerland. On the way, he wrote a letter back to England, asking for more cundums.

Byron arrived on the 25th, accompanied by his young personal physician. Immediately after his arrival, the Lord rented Villa Diodati. At first Byron seemed reluctant to talk to Claire, especially unwilling to admit that the child in her belly was another of his bastards, but he was very attached to Shelley and Mary. But soon Lord also resumed his sexual relationship with Claire.

(Among Byron’s countless children, one is worth mentioning: Ada Lovelace, the world’s first programmer. As mentioned earlier, shortly after Ada was born, Byron She divorced her mother. Her mother was afraid that Ada would inherit her father's "dangerous poetic tendencies", so she forbade her to engage in literature and art and encouraged her to study natural philosophy. However, Ada, who is naturally intelligent, still found "poetry" in mathematics. ". She was active in London's social circle, drank heavily, and was addicted to gambling. After getting acquainted with Charles Babbage, Ada was very interested in his idea of ​​an "Analytical Engine." Babbage could not build it until his death. Analytical Engine. But Ada had already written one of the first computer programs in human history for an imaginary machine. Bruce Sterling and William Gibson wrote the first computer program in their science fiction novel, the first work of steampunk. This history is illustrated in The Difference Engine.)

Mary, Shelley, Clare and Byron mingled together over the next summer. When the weather was nice, they walked around Lake Geneva and went boating on the lake. But there wasn’t much good weather that summer. During the rainy and cold days, they drank and had fun at Byron’s residence, took opium (the Lord’s personal doctor probably dealt with a lot of work related to drugs and venereal diseases), talked about literature, Art, politics and sex, and then drinking more wine, taking more drugs, having more... fun, late into the night.

Wherever the Lord went, rumors and glances followed. Villagers said that drug use, sexual incest, and incest were happening every day in the Diodati mansion (which was true to a certain extent), and there were even tourists and busybodies peeping through binoculars.

Personal doctor tools seem to be less popular during this period. Most of the time, they hang out alone or stay in their own rooms. This is not difficult to understand, after all, the whole day activities of Shelley, Mary, Byron and Clare (three pairs? Four pairs? How to quantify this gang of four is really not very good) is not suitable for having "outsiders" around. In short, these four marginalized people in mainstream society, outlaws with traditional concepts, have built a small utopia for themselves, a paradise.

One stormy night, there was lightning and thunder. Byron made a proposal to everyone. He said: Let us each write a ghost story. The real reason why he did this has long been lost in time. It may be the competitive mentality among talented people, it may be because Gothic novels were a common pastime in those days, it may be that the violent storm outside the window gave him inspiration, it may be alcohol or The effect of poison, or just plain boredom.

In the usual behavior of two great poets, Shelley found an excuse not to participate, and Byron gave up after writing the beginning. Only Mary took it seriously, and she was so nervous that she couldn't sleep at night. After all, she had always hoped that her literary talents would be recognized by these two men, and she saw this as an opportunity.

After struggling for several days not knowing what to write, Mary had her famous daydream:

I saw the pale student of the art of blasphemy kneeling near his patchwork. I saw the ferocious phantom expand and stretch. Then, catalyzed by some powerful engine, signs of life began to appear, and the half-death and half-life movement was disturbing. This must be terrible, for any mortal attempt to imitate the Creator must end in supreme terror.

From the time Mary first heard the story of a dead body being resurrected by electric shock as a child, her life seemed to be preparing for this lightning bolt of inspiration. She started writing immediately.

If the core of science fiction literature is to use fictional techniques to explore the relationship between humans and technology, then Mary’s novels have firmly established its motif. In a sense, the science fiction works of later generations almost all tell the same story in different ways.

When "Frankenstein" was later published anonymously, most people suspected that Shelley had written it. Even if Shelley came forward to clarify, people were unwilling to believe him. In recent years, some experts have studied Mary's manuscript verbatim and found that there are indeed two people's handwriting. The main one is definitely Mary, and the other one is almost certainly Shelley.

But what’s interesting is that Shelley’s handwriting, in addition to general word corrections (there are even some footnotes that are little jokes between lovers), does have some additions and deletions, but most of those parts are about Victor Fran Frankly, it was as if Mary was letting him "play" the role of doctor. After all, Shelley, Byron, and even Mary's own father were actually the kind of people who liked to play God, felt that they could save the world, and were willing to sacrifice not only themselves, but also their loved ones for their ideals.

As for the monster, Shelley has made almost no changes - he belongs to Mary alone, an inexplicable mystery. We can analyze it rationally: he is the embodiment of the advanced and contradictory thoughts that Mary has been immersed in since childhood; he is her unwillingness and entanglement with the death of her mother and daughter; he is the disaster externalization of her husband and father's radical ideas. But he was still a mystery, as if Mary had injected into him a part of her own soul that had no home and no one to understand day and night: terrifying, charming, and pitiable. Perhaps it was for this reason that people read the story over and over again - in the passage describing the monster in the manuscript, Mary eventually crossed out the adjective "handsome" and replaced it with "beautiful".

The beginning that Byron gave up was actually a vampire story. This inspired his personal physician to also participate in the creation of ghost stories, and created the image of an aristocratic vampire named Lord Ruthven, based on Byron's protagonist and Byron himself. The Doctor clearly brings his mixed feelings about Byron himself to the character. Lord Ruthven is equally sophisticated and charming, but also full of darkness within, sucking the blood of others to keep himself alive.

What's even more interesting is that there is a saying that the doctor once had a nightmare in which he dreamed that a vampire who looked exactly like the Lord was haunting a cemetery. This short novel was published four years later, sparking speculation that the author was actually Byron.

So, if Shelley can be said to be Victor Frankenstein, then Byron is the first vampire. Mary's "Frankenstein" was the first science fiction novel, while John William Polidori's "Dracula" was the first modern vampire novel.

John William Polidori? This name sounds familiar, right? Yes, he is the first author we mentioned when we took the trouble to sort out the sources of modern vampire literature in the first section. He is Byron’s unpopular personal doctor.

Come on, let's take this story from its most boring idle moments to the truth. The lights went out, the scenery fell down, the mystery was revealed, and everything was still silent. Look up and look out the window to see this world where vampires have become a part of popular culture and science fiction has occupied a corner of human spiritual heritage.

Then we go backwards in time. rewind. The moon rises and the sun sets, sickness and death occur. From "400 Years Old" to "Dracula", from Stoker to Polidori; from "Ex Machina" to "Frankenstein", from Ursula Le Guin to Mary Shelley.

rewind. Returning to the mansion by Lake Geneva that summer, the sleeping night outside the window was stormy again. The drunk young men and women got up to have fun again. The broken cups jumped back to the table and were once again filled with wine. A man's Hold it up with your hands.

pause. Play.

Let's each write a ghost story.

History is like the hair accumulated in the sewer of time, randomness entangled with the law of cause and effect, a mess. But if you peel back the cocoon and examine it carefully, you can find some nodes from time to time. They are as delicate and beautiful as snowflakes, and people can't help but marvel: Look, here.

When Byron said the words "Let each of us write a ghost story", it might be such a moment: the two life paths of a banker's son and the son of a high-ranking government official, a movie era, two literary categories, and even a thousand The fate of thousands of monsters in the fictional world and the real world, in the summer of the year without summer, on that rainy night with lightning and thunder, all took root and began to grow wildly.

6. To the world of gods and monsters

A few days later, the rotting and bloated body of Percy Shelley, who died under the age of thirty, floated ashore.

Some people believe that the inexperience of Shelley and the crew, as well as the inherent design flaws of the "Don Juan", led to their shipwreck after leaving Livorno.

Before Mary arrived, in accordance with local law, Byron and others held a cremation for Shelley at the seaside. Just like the ancient pagans, and like the "vampires" dug up by the people, and also like responding to the last words of the monster in "Frankenstein": "I will climb the pyre as a winner, and I will be defeated by the fire." Drunk in pain. This flame will be extinguished, my ashes will be blown to the sea, and my soul will rest in eternal rest."

After turning down Frankenstein for more than a decade, Bela Lugosi finally took on the role of the monster in 1943's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. In his sixties, he was already unable to cope with such a high-intensity role, and the film crew decided to delete all of his lines before the film was released. The character received a lot of bad reviews, and his star's decline accelerated.

In "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948), Bella was consumed as Dracula for the last time on the screen (due to copyright issues, although he played many vampires, he only played two vampires). times Dracula, 31 versions of "Dracula" and "Two Idiots"). Although this is a comedy, Bella's performance is impeccable. Since then, he has been unable to get any major studio jobs, and can only take more roles in small productions and exploitation films.

During this period, he became very close to a director, the famous "disaster artist" Edward D. Wood Jr.. Bella appeared in Wood's critically and box-office disaster Glen or Glenda (1953), as well as in several other films. Regardless of the film or the role, his performance is as consistent as giving it his best effort.

Due to the root cause of his illness caused by his injuries in World War I, he became heavily dependent on morphine and other drugs during long-term treatment. Affected by drugs, he got divorced again. He was the first Hollywood star in history to openly admit to drug addiction. During the period of detoxification, I exchanged letters and found a female fan. After detoxification, I got married for the fifth time. His success in rehabbing drugs earned him goodwill, but failed to revive his career.

Some of Bella's final scenes were shot by Wood for a film he was planning to call "Grave of the Vampire." In it, he is dressed in his most classic costume of a vampire count, unfolding his cloak in the cemetery. The scene is like Polidori's nightmare about vampires a hundred years ago. The footage was eventually cut into Wood's now-cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

In 1994, the Ed Wood biopic of the same name, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, was released. Martin Landau, who played Bella in the film, won an Oscar for this role.

Bella returned to theater towards the end of her career, touring the UK with Dracula in the hope of rekindling interest in him. But London's major theaters were reluctant even to have him. During the tour he once told a colleague: "You know, Dracula is my Hamlet."

Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on August 16, 1956. His body was buried wearing Dracula's cape, as if waiting to be awakened again.

After filming his pinnacle film "The Bride," Whale's Hollywood career also began to decline. Universal's new management became increasingly intolerant of his own way of doing things, and the planned "Dracula's Daughter" was ultimately shelved.

He suffered a stroke later in life and underwent electroshock treatment, which left him in terrible pain (it's hard not to think of the monster gaining life from the shock). In May 1957, more than 20 years after the scene in which the little girl drowned in Frankenstein was cut, James Whale drowned himself in the swimming pool at his Los Angeles home that had hosted countless handsome men's parties.

Sir Ian McKellen brilliantly portrayed Wheel's later life in the 1998 film Gods and Monsters. The title of the film comes from Dr. Pretorius's classic line "To a world of Gods and Monsters" in "The Bride". There is a scene in the film where Wheeler, his "monster" Karloff, and his "bride" Lanchester reunite in their later years, which never happened in reality.

Universal made a fortune from Pierce's designs (and still does to this day), but Pierce himself received no rights. After Universal's senior management took over, he was gradually marginalized and finally retired sadly.

In 1957, the crew arranged for a reunion between Pierce and Karloff on the career retrospective television show This Is Your Life. Karloff, who has always been low-key and restrained, was overwhelmed with surprise. He said: This is the best makeup artist in the world, and I am very grateful to him. Pierce brought an "electrode" from the monster's neck as a gift to Karloff.

Jack Pierce died in 1968.

Karloff divorced his fifth wife in 1946, married his neighbor and best friend the next day, and spent the rest of his life with her.

In addition to movies, he starred in the play The Lark about Joan of Arc, which ran for 229 performances on Broadway and earned him a Tony Award nomination. He returned to Peter Pan, where he first fell in love with the stage, and played Captain Hook.

He also caught up with the emerging media trend of television. On television, he played Colonel Kurtz in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", his favorite author (twenty years before Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now"). He played the monster for the fourth and final time in a 1962 Halloween television special. He once said: Monster made my career. I am grateful to him, and I also feel sorry for his portrayal in other works.

A back injury sustained during the filming of Frankenstein had a detrimental effect on his health in his later years, but he never considered retiring early. In 1963, he played his first vampire in the movie "Black Sabbath," where he once again terrified audiences. He even appeared in the TV series "The Girl from UNCLE 1966" (The Girl from UNCLE 1966), playing the role of an evil old woman who committed murder and swindled goods. In the dressing room, he said to the mirror, "I look like an old chicken worth two dollars," which made people laugh.

He has lent his voice to Japanese monster movies, read stories to children on television, and won a Grammy for his voiceover of the Grinch in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." When the agent gave him the trophy, he said, "This thing looks like a doorstop," and he took it to block the agent's door.

He is one of the few people, other than the president, to be on U.S. postage stamps twice. It has two stars on the Walk of Fame, one for movies and one for television. Outside of performing, his favorite thing is to water his garden wearing only shorts and a hat.

In 1968, an octogenarian Karloff appeared in Targets (1968), playing a retired horror film actor involved in a random road shooting. Karloff regarded this as his last official work, saying that he was playing himself. The theme of the film is also consistent with his consistent view: the real horror does not exist on the screen, but exists between people in the real world.

Boris Karloff died of pneumonia in London on February 2, 1969. According to his request during his lifetime, his body was cremated and the funeral was simple.

Two years after Shelley's body was cremated at the seaside, Byron contracted an illness and died in Greece at the age of thirty-six.

The Doctor was dismissed by Byron shortly after his arrival in Switzerland. He returned to his hometown in the UK and was deeply troubled by depression and gambling debts. A year before the shipwreck, 25-year-old John William Polidori died. The family believed he had committed suicide by poisoning, but the coroner ruled the death to be natural.

Clare converted to Catholicism and eventually settled in Florence, where she lived peacefully until she was eighty.

Mary compiled and published her husband's posthumous works after Shelley's death, and almost twisted Byron's arm to ensure that her husband had a place in literary history.

Later, Mary relied on the meager income from writing and the even meager subsidy from Shelley's father to raise her and Shelley's only child who survived to adulthood. Mary took her mother's name, and the child took his father's name, also called Percy.

Mary Shelley died of brain cancer at her home in London on February 1, 1851, at the age of fifty-three.

Among her belongings, a piece of charcoal was found. It was the heart that Byron and others picked up from the remains after Shelley was cremated. Mary kept it for her whole life. In fact, the possibility that this thing really charred the heart is very small, but people still want to believe that it is an immortal heart.

postscript

The undead of the past crawl out of their graves, suck the life out of them, and turn people into vassals. Technology marches forward, mercilessly bestowing tomorrow's miracles and disasters. These stories, written and filmed one or two hundred years ago, may have new meaning today.

The opening and closing of circuits is not a matter of course, because the base system of zero and one is simple enough that even a naked ape can invent a machine to run it. The dream was to use this rule to organize colorful things, but now it seems that we have reestablished black and white at the other end of the scale. There is a pool of stagnant water in front of us. We can jump into it ourselves, or we can throw each other into it. I don’t want to talk about the great love in the world. The cruelty of reality is not a binary opposition, but has both ends.

But I dare say a less popular point of view: most binary oppositions start from the obsession of powerful individuals, flourish in the carnival of group fantasy, and finally become self-fulfilling prophecies. Maybe we haven’t lost our respect for facts and logic, it’s just that almost all of it is about information, for opinions, the entities themselves have been replaced by us. Where the social animal brain teaches us to take sides in the face of overwhelming complexity, the cerebellum of our reptilian ancestors tells us to fight or flee. One is not enough, three is too many, two is just right. So we happily bury the compromise, willingly listen to whoever shouts the loudest, and then fight to the death with high spirits.

Then keep a little sense of humor and a little self-deprecation. Fear and laughter are two sides of the same coin. One thing is certain: we are all going to die. What is almost certain is this: We all want to laugh more before we die, even if the laughter is different. Telling such stories today may be just a futile attempt to restore a little bit of the diversity, connections, and subtleties of that old world. It is possible that everyone has a monster in their heart. I dare not say that being interesting is more important than being correct, but maybe when everything is absolutely correct, nothing can make people smile.

There is a possibility: for their own laughter, people invented the right thing together.

It’s just that we seem to be living in other versions.