Monsters

1. Earl

On February 12, 1931, Universal Pictures' Dracula premiered in New York. Accompanied by the opening song "Swan Lake", the curtain opened (yes, the curtain had to be drawn when showing a movie at that time), and the audience was taken by a carriage to a remote mountain village in Transylvania (now in Romania). In the castle on the top of the mountain that was never exposed to the sun, the movie awakened the elegant blood-sucking devil, Count Dracula.

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

Dracula is adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name published by Irish novelist Bram Stoker in 1897. Of course, vampires were not created by Stoker, but have 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 today's zombies. Unfortunately, the related terms are a mess in both English and Chinese. Anyway, it's basically some disgusting things that come back to life after death, rot and are stupid, and eat people.

About a hundred years before Stoker was born, Europe entered a period of "vampire panic". People said that corpses would not decay for a long time, their nails would continue to grow, and there would be knocking sounds in the cemetery. Finally, the rotten corpses would crawl out of the graves and enter the village to eat people. Now we know that some of these may be the result of special climatic conditions or physiological phenomena, some are people who pretended to be dead and were nailed into coffins and buried (yes, this kind of thing was not uncommon at that time), and more are folk oral literature creations.

But people at that time believed it without a doubt. They tried every means to avoid the dead, especially relatives and friends who died in an accident, coming back to visit relatives and friends and even eating and taking things. In those days, it was very difficult to die as a beautiful corpse like autumn leaves: burning corpses, beheading, digging out hearts, nailing coffin boards, digging out hearts and nailing coffin boards, all kinds of tricks. There were a full range of folk supporting jobs, some for predictions before death, and some for operations after death. During the peak period, a theme tourist route was even formed, which can be regarded as a characteristic economic industry chain in full swing.

Novelists certainly would not miss such a popular image and theme. Stoker's Dracula was not the earliest, but it combined the advantages of predecessors and had its own creations. It is a landmark work that has achieved great success. Although it received average response from critics at the time, it was very popular among the general public.

It is generally believed that the sexual innuendo in Dracula comes from Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, in which the first lesbian vampire in history appears; the vampire's hypnotic ability, struggling heart, and iconic two tooth-hole wounds come from James Malcolm Rymer's Varney The Vampire; and the image of vampires as elegant aristocrats, contrary to the rotten ugliness in folk legends, comes from John William Polidori's The Vampyre, which is generally considered to be the first modern vampire novel.

Universal's 1931 version of Dracula was not the first time that Stoker's novel was adapted for the screen. In 1922, Germany made a silent film, Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens), directed by the representative of expressionist films, silent film master F. W. Murnau.

Now it seems that the artistic achievement of "Nosferatu" is higher than that of "Dracula", but there is no comparison in terms of box office, because it almost had no box office. The producers did not buy the copyright. Although the names of the characters and some settings were changed, Stoker's widow still won the lawsuit for copyright protection. The judge ordered all copies to be burned (they could not escape the fate of cremation). Since the film had already been released 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 films are both nobles, their appearances are very different. Orlok in "No" is described as wretched, while Lugosi's Dracula is handsome and exudes evil charm, which has swept thousands of women.

Lugosi's original name was Blaskó Béla Ferenc Dezsö. He was born on October 20, 1882 in Lugoj, Hungary (now in Romania), not far from the Carpathian Mountains, the hometown of Dracula in the legend. At that time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire still existed, and the boundaries of European countries were different from today, but in terms of geographical location, it can be said that Béla came from Dracula's hometown. Later, he gave himself the stage name "Lugosi" based on the name of his hometown.

Bella is the fourth child in the family. His conservative father, a banker, expected his youngest son to have a "proper job". But little Bella was a child who loved acting and only wanted to act. Despite his family's opposition, Bella dropped out of school at the age of 12 and left home to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He spent all day hanging out outside the theater, and eventually persuaded managers to give him some small roles, which started his career.

During World War I, from 1914 to 1916, Bela served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was wounded on the Russian front, suffering a leg disease that would plague him for the rest of his life. After the war, Bela was forced to flee his homeland because of his involvement in the socialist movement of the Hungarian Actors' Union, first to Vienna and Berlin, and finally across the ocean to the United States.

When he first arrived in the United States, he worked as a laborer to make a living while continuing to develop his acting career. After unremitting efforts, Bella's tall and handsome appearance and excellent acting skills were recognized. However, due to his poor English and severe accent, he could only play villains in silent films or foreign roles where the accent was not a problem. During this period, he also got married and divorced twice.

In 1927, Bella was invited to play the vampire Count in the Broadway version of Dracula. He was reluctant at first, fearing that this would further stereotype him, but it turned out to be the first hit in his many years of acting career. Dracula was a big hit and was performed for 261 consecutive shows. With a little fame, he married again, to a wealthy widow, but divorced four months later.

The success of the stage version of Dracula gave birth to Universal's film adaptation plan. Bella naturally felt that he was the best choice, but Universal did not think so. The film version of the Count was initially decided to be played by Lon Chaney, a silent film star who was known as the "Man of 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 1929. In addition, he inhaled fake snowflakes made of corn flakes during filming, which caused a serious infection. His condition deteriorated rapidly and he died in August of the following year. Bella, who was a spare tire, finally got the role (his strong accent was not only not a problem for Dracula, but even a plus), and finally achieved his star status.

After the great success of the movie version of "Dracula", Universal immediately invited Bella to star in another monster movie in the plan, but this time Bella refused. As for the reason, there has never been a generally accepted statement. Some people said that he didn't like the monster in the whole movie. Some people said that he thought the character's makeup was too heavy and would affect his performance. Some people said that he didn't like the script (referring to the version he read) that the monster was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer without any loveliness. Some people said that he just didn't want to continue to be stereotyped to play such weird and supernatural roles.

Less than a year later, Bella would regret her decision because a movie called Frankenstein would change everything.

2. Mary

Frankenstein is based on the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, which is generally considered the first science fiction novel, making its author Mary Shelley the first science fiction writer.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary’s mother, is often called the “first feminist.” Her classic book, 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. In it, she argued that women were not born inferior to men, but rather that they did not receive the same education. She put her teachings into practice, having traveled the world alone, had several romances, and had a daughter outside of marriage before she met Mary’s father.

Mary's father, William Godwin, was a British philosopher who was considered one of the earliest advocates of utilitarianism and anarchism. He was a prominent figure in the radical intellectual circle in London, which was deeply influenced by the French Revolution.

The two came together because of the same philosophy. They both supported women's right to be independent and not to get married, and even described marriage as "legal prostitution." At that time in Britain, women could not own property or get wages, and they did not even have the status of legal persons in court. This shows how avant-garde their ideas were at the time. Later, they got pregnant unexpectedly and got married.

Mary was born on August 30, 1797. The birth was uneventful, but the remaining placental tissue caused an infection (which was 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.

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

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

On January 18, 1803, a criminal named George Foster was hanged for murdering his wife and daughter. His body was soon transported to a lecture hall in London. Under the gaze of various scholars, Galvani's nephew Giovanni Aldini began to electrocute Foster's body. Under the current, Foster's body began to twitch, clench his fists, and even open his eyes.

Now we all know that this is a common bioelectric phenomenon. At that time, both electricity and biology were just beginning, and scholars speculated that electricity might be related to "vitality" and even the key to resurrection.

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

When Mary was almost 17 years old, a handsome and elegant young man appeared in her father's salon. This man was later regarded as one of the representative poets of romanticism: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary's future husband.

Shelley was a rebellious nobleman. He entered Oxford University at the age of 18. It is said that he only attended one class. He read the books he wanted to read every day, wrote poems and Gothic novels, and wrote a book called "The Necessity of Atheism" to distribute in the school. It was okay to not attend classes, but Oxford couldn't stand preaching atheism, so they expelled him. He had been enrolled for less than a year. Shelley was romantic by nature, full of idealistic passion, and avant-garde in thought. He not only worshipped Mary's father, but also her deceased mother.

Well, now, if you put Mary, a young girl who inherited the excellent qualities of both his parents, who was immersed in the radical intellectual cultural circle since childhood and whose thoughts were equally avant-garde, in front of Shelley, how could nothing go wrong?

Mary and Shelley spent the whole day together, discussing literature, politics, female independence, Shelley's poetry, Mary's novel writing, and soon fell deeply in love. Young hormones are fearless. Maybe it's not convenient at home, so they ran to the cemetery and did it on Mary's mother's tombstone (considering Mary's mother's avant-garde ideas, this place may be particularly suitable). She was 17 and he was less than 22. This was probably Mary's first sexual experience, but Shelley was already an old driver - this is certain: regardless of other flowers and plants, at least after being expelled from Oxford, he returned to his hometown to marry a wife and had two children. Yes, Shelley was a married man at the time.

Mary's father, who had progressive ideas, couldn't accept it and forbade them to date.

It was definitely impossible to stop. Shelley said let's commit suicide, Mary said uh... let's elope. So they eloped. But it wasn't two people, but three people. The third person was Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont. After Mary's mother died, her father married a neighbor, and Claire was the woman's child from a previous marriage. Mary hated her stepmother, but she seemed to have a good relationship with Claire.

So the situation is this: Mary likes Shelley, Shelley likes Mary, Claire likes Shelley, and Shelley accepts everyone (and has a wife). At that time, these pioneering intellectuals emphasized "free love". Shelley was determined to be as free as possible. For a period of time, Claire was Mary's main competitor. Of course, she lost to Mary in the end. 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 rode in a carriage, sang songs, and took a boat through a storm that almost cost them their lives. They finally reached France on the other side of the strait and eloped successfully.

“Free love” may be “free,” but it is by no means without cost. Mary became pregnant and gave birth to her and Shelley’s first child outside of marriage at the age of 17 (beating her mother). The girl was born two months premature and died two weeks later.

3. Monsters

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

This part tells the story of a little girl playing alone by the lake after the monster escaped. The innocent little girl did not mind his ugliness and even asked him to play with her by throwing daisies into the water. One by one, the daisies floated on the water. For the first time, the monster felt the kindness of people and smiled happily. After they finished throwing the flowers in their hands, the naive monster was still not satisfied, so he picked up the little girl and threw her into the water. The girl did not float to the surface like the daisy, and the monster was unable to rescue her in time, and the girl drowned.

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

Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887. He was a well-educated English gentleman who later became known as a monster.

His father held a high position in the Indian Civil Service (the colonial governance body that succeeded the East India Company after the Indian uprising in 1857). With some Indian ancestry on both sides of his parents, William's dark skin stood out among the children in his circle. When he was young, he was often asked how he got such a tan, and he sometimes answered: Plenty of gin and a tight collar!

He is the oldest of nine children. His father abandoned the family and went to France when he was five, and his mother died when he was seven. After that, little William was raised by his brothers and sisters. This does not seem to be a good memory, and Karloff never talked about it after he became famous.

William not only stuttered but also spoke indistinctly. He overcame his stuttering through hard work. Although the problem of speech was under control, it still existed until he became a big star, and traces of it could still be found. At the age of nine, William participated in a children's play of the magical adaptation of "Cinderella", playing the role of the Demon King (this role did not exist in the original work), and began to develop an interest in acting. Later, he watched the play "Peter Pan" in London and became completely fascinated by the stage.

In 1909, he dropped out of college and left his seemingly dysfunctional family for Canada, where he drove a truck, worked as a loader, and did farm work, while inflating his resume to get stage credits and began using the stage name Boris Karloff (and finding time to get married and divorced). The last name, Karloff, he said, came from his mother’s Russian connections, while the name Boris came “from thin air.”

In 1913, Karloff went to the United States and joined the booming film industry in Los Angeles. The beginning was difficult, and even with the subsidies from doing manual labor, he often had no food to eat. But Karloff, who loved acting, did not feel bitter. He once joked with his friends: I like canned soup the most. The soup in it can be eaten for one meal, and the vegetables in it can be eaten for another meal. Because of his dark skin, he was quite "exotic", and the roles he received were mostly foreign villains in silent films, but he finally became a movie actor. Although he was hungry and poor, he was not idle. He got married and divorced three times, and got married for the fifth time.

In 1931, after Bella turned down the role, Karloff, then 43, was finally cast as the monster by Universal. It is said that Frankenstein director Wheal particularly liked Karloff's looks 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 appearance. Pierce had already spent half a year designing the monster.

Jack Pierce was born in Greece in 1889. When he was a teenager, he immigrated to the United States with his family. He first lived in Chicago, where he fell in love with baseball and was quite good at it. Later, they moved to California, and Pierce tried to become a professional player, but failed. Frustrated, he entered the emerging film industry by chance, working his way from a projectionist to a 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 real talent was in makeup and modeling, and gradually accumulated industry fame.

In 1926, Pierce designed the monkey man for Fox's film The Monkey Talks (1927). This advanced look eventually led to his appointment as makeup supervisor by Universal (and the villa where Lon Chaney lived when he worked for Universal). Pierce continued to amaze audiences at Universal, and the 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 designed Dracula's original look, but Bella insisted on doing the Count's makeup, which left Pierce with little to do. So he went all out for Frankenstein. From dozens of concepts (including robots) and hundreds of reference photos of real criminals, Pierce and his department finally designed the monster. This plan may not look exaggerated or eye-catching at first glance, but it is rich in details.

For example, the two things on the monster's neck that are often mistaken for screws are actually electrodes for electricity. The flat top of the monster's head is because Dr. Pierce's design skills are not good, and he simply sawed the head flat and covered it again. This naturally makes no sense in terms of anatomy, but it is the attention to detail that makes the entire modeling art extremely complete and breathtaking.

During the 18-week filming, the two had to get up at 4 a.m. every day to start a four-hour makeup application. There were no prefabricated silicone face molds at that time, so every day Pierce had to use cotton, water and a very irritating collodion to recreate the entire look on Karloff's face. It's hard to imagine what Karloff went through every day with these chemicals applied around his eyes, and the process of removing makeup after each day's filming was even more painful.

In addition to the face, the monster's clothes and shoes were also specially made, weighing dozens of kilograms. Karloff was not a weak person, but such high-intensity filming still made him faint on the set one day, leaving him with a back injury that he never recovered from.

All this pain and effort was not in vain.

In fact, Frankenstein was not the first film made from Mary's novel. Edison's film studio had produced a short film based on Frankenstein as early as 1910, which was also the first horror film in human history. Today, few people remember that short film, and Frankenstein has long become a classic in film history:

On a stormy night, like the tower of a Gothic cathedral, the doctor and his assistant operated the machinery to raise the stiff body made of corpses on the experimental table to the sky. Lightning struck the monster, and the arcs of the beast-like machines around it roared. 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 the doctor's ecstatic shout: "It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!"

The modern Prometheus stole the fire of creation from the gods.

In fact, after "it came to life", the doctor had another line that was also cut out 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 main creators and Universal executives probably felt a little bit of this floating feeling. History has proven that Universal's bold investment, Mary's heartbreaking original story, director Wheeler's aesthetic choices deeply influenced by German Expressionism, Karloff and other actors in the film, Pierce's monster shape, and photographer Arthur Edeson's impactful images and the art department's amazing props and scenery... together created a perfect match for the newly born film industry. The film was well received by the audience and was even more popular than the previous "Dracula".

The film's creators played a trick: in the list of actors at the beginning, only the actor who played the monster was not named, with a question mark. But when the movie was over, he was no longer the unknown third-rate actor. Karloff soon became a superstar with only a single name. People called him "Karloff the Uncanny".

Frankenstein officially marked the beginning of the era of Universal’s monster movies. They struck while the iron was hot and released a series of box office hits. These movies have become classics today and have been remade and adapted many times. They include The Mummy (1932), also starring Karloff, and The Invisible Man (1933), also directed by Wheal. The one that is often considered the pinnacle is Bride of Frankenstein, the sequel to Frankenstein, which was released in 1935 and also directed by Wheal and starred Karloff.

4. Bride

At the beginning of The Bride of Frankenstein, director Wheal had Mary, Shelley, and another great poet, Lord Byron, appear together. This prologue Easter egg pays tribute to the so-called "Year Without a Summer" in 1816, the famous summer that Mary, Shelley, and Byron spent together in Switzerland.

The cause of the matter goes back to Claire. As mentioned earlier, she may be the most crucial link in the whole story.

After the elopement, the three lived together. As time went by, Clare 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, in the first month of the Year Without Summer. They named him William. There is evidence that Clare may have given birth to Shelley's child during her seclusion (at that time, the so-called "countryside seclusion" of noble ladies often meant giving birth to illegitimate children).

Perhaps because she was born unwilling to settle down and be ordinary, or perhaps because she wanted to prove something, Claire hooked up with Lord Byron, a great poet of the time, who was even more talented than Shelley (to be precise, Claire met Byron in London before she eloped), and became pregnant with his child. She persuaded Mary and Shelley to go to Switzerland to spend that summer with Byron.

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

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

In October of that year, Mary's close half-sister (the daughter her mother had born out of wedlock when she was young and traveling around the world) committed suicide.

Two months later, Shelley's original wife committed suicide by jumping into a river while she was eight months pregnant (most people believed the child was Shelley's, but Shelley said it was from the adulterer).

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

Because Mary decided to accept Shelley's two children with his first wife, the legal process related to the custody may have become one of the reasons why this radical couple, staunch supporters of free love, finally decided to get married. Mary's father, who supported free love and women's right to choose and had never spoken to his daughter since she eloped, finally reconciled with them at the wedding.

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

The Bride of Frankenstein was born out of Mary Shelley's original work, but also had its own creations. It is considered a milestone work and has surpassed the original work in artistic achievement. The "mastermind" behind it, Wheal, 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 in his mansion in Los Angeles.

James Whale was born in England in 1889. He began his career as a director in the military camp during World War I and later made his mark in the theater. Through the 1930 military-themed film Journey's End, Whale was recognized by Hollywood movie mogul Howard Hughes, Jr., who invited him to shoot part of the epic air combat film Hell's Angels (1930), which Hughes himself directed.

Wheall never concealed his preference for marginalized people and outlaws. The protagonist of his famous work "Waterloo Bridge" in 1931 was a prostitute (Vivien Leigh's 1940 version was a remake); he was not afraid to challenge social norms. Remember, he killed a child in "Frankenstein" in a straightforward manner. Just imagine which commercial blockbuster today would dare to do that.

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. But Wheal initially refused and was reluctant to repeat himself, but eventually agreed on the condition of complete creative control.

No one knows if Wheeler is resentful of conservatives and religious forces for deleting the scenes of him killing the little girl and "being God" (I think he is). He went even further in "The Bride", for example, the scene where the villagers tied the monster to a high pole and carried it back to the village, the visual presentation was exactly the Passion of Christ. Christ was born and died, and was resurrected from the dead, while the monster was born from death, born and died, and it seems that there is nothing wrong with calling this the "Anti-Christ" (thank God I wrote in Chinese, so I can use "反", otherwise this Anti-christ can only be "反基督教").

He also arranged a queer character in "The Bride" (at least in the maximum scale allowed on the screen at that time), Dr. Pretorius. According to the stereotype, this character is effeminate, which should be a kind of irony and resistance considering Wheeler's own gay identity and consistent "evil" in art. And this person is actually the most important character in "The Bride". It is his crazy pursuit of "parthenogenesis" and unscrupulous means that ultimately led to Dr. Frankenstein creating the "Bride".

In fact, if you watch "The Bride" with a queer perspective, many lines and plots will become puns or even "literal meanings". For example, the scene where the monster and the blind old man "make friends" is derived from the original book, but in the movie, apart from retaining the functional need to make the monster speak, the rest of the processing is very interesting. Wheeler didn't even bury his cunning and bad taste too deeply.

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

At the end of Whelk's film, after a more dramatic "creation" scene than in Frankenstein, the bride, played by Elsa Lanchester, makes a spooky appearance. The monster thinks he has finally found a kindred spirit, but the bride thinks he is ugly and scary, and instinctively rejects him (she herself is pretty scary, actually...).

Finally, the heartbroken monster turned off the power.

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

If Karlov was very popular before, he was now very popular (he was quite popular).

On the other hand, Bella's luck seemed to be a little off.

After Dracula and Frankenstein became popular, Universal offered them many film contracts and even co-starred with them in several films. Of course, these projects with obvious money-making intentions were 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 path gradually showed signs of decline.

In the era of sound films, Karloff, a child who stuttered in childhood, developed another acting weapon: his own varied and expressive voice. However, Bella's strong accent limited his acting career. Karloff was optimistic and open-minded by nature. He was willing to play anything, whether it was a ghost or a villain, and he didn't mind the audience treating him as the "King of Monsters". Bella had always been worried that he would be stereotyped as the Count of Vampires. The more his accent restricted the roles he received, the more he seemed to be entangled, a bit of a vicious cycle. In addition, his poor financial management and long-term turnover also contributed to the decline of his career.

In 1939, Universal arranged for them to work together again in Son of Frankenstein. At this time, Bella's momentum was no longer as good as before, and he was in financial trouble and needed money urgently. Universal took advantage of his situation and gave him a very low salary. After Karloff learned about it, he stood up for Bella and forced Universal to give him a much higher price again, but this seemed to be the last time Bella got a star-level salary (an interesting detail: perhaps due to the experience of being injured while filming Frankenstein, Karloff has always used his star power to fight for benefits for his peers and was one of the earliest organizers of the Screen Actors Guild).

This is nominally a legitimate sequel to Universal's Frankenstein series, with Karloff returning to play Frankenstein's monster for the third time, and Bella joining in as the mad blacksmith Ygor. Bella lives up to Karloff's kindness and delivers a career-best performance.

But Wheal did not return. There may be many reasons for this. For example, although "The Bride" received unanimous praise from critics and had good box office, it failed to reproduce the amazing income of "Frankenstein". In addition, the high cost may not be particularly cost-effective as a commercial project; for example, Universal has become increasingly intolerant of Wheal's eccentric artistic personality.

In a sense, without Whirl, the monster movie is a bit lost. This one is actually a family movie, which is neither scary nor innovative, and returns to the safe routine of Hollywood.

Although audiences are still buying into it, the climax of the monster movie era is gradually fading away.

After that summer in Switzerland, Byron traveled to Italy, where he joined the revolutionary movement of the Book Burners and began writing Don Juan.

After returning to England, Claire gave birth to Byron's daughter. Byron 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 at the age of five, and her parents were not around when she died.

Clare and Byron broke off completely, but this did not affect the relationship between Shelley and Byron.

In the summer of 1817, Mary completed Frankenstein in England. In the fall, she and Shelley welcomed their second daughter. In March of the following year, soon after the birth of the child, Shelley decided to move to Italy with Mary and the children, partly influenced by Byron. The newborn daughter did not survive the long journey and died after arriving in Italy. The couple buried the young daughter by the sea.

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

The following year, the 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 her relatives, the hardships of life, and perhaps 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 cracks in the relationship between Mary and her husband.

Mary and Shelley's hearts were drifting apart.

In July 1822, Shelley arrived in Livorno by boat to visit Byron and stayed there briefly to plan their new adventure. Then he boarded his new ship, the Don Juan, and set sail, once again facing the raging winds and waves, just as he had done when he eloped.

Only this time, Mary and Claire were not with him.

5. The Year Without a Summer

In April 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. This was the largest volcanic eruption ever recorded in human history, which caused severe climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere for a period of time. The summer of 1816 was cold and humid with continuous heavy rains, and was later called the "Year Without a Summer".

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

Lord Byron, the superstar of English literature, the most popular person in London social circles, the first sex symbol in human history, admired by thousands of people and infamous at the same time. After a series of scandals including multiple extramarital affairs (both male and female), incest (with his half sister), divorce, etc., the young Lord decided to leave his homeland (in fact, he never returned). This staunch anti-royalist first went to France, where he felt the defeat of Napoleon 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 private doctor. After arriving, the Lord immediately rented Villa Diodati. At first, Byron seemed reluctant to pay attention to Claire, especially unwilling to admit that the child in her belly was another bastard of his, but he got along very well with Shelley and Mary. However, the Lord soon resumed his sexual relationship with Claire.

(Among Byron's countless children, there is one that is worth mentioning: Ada Lovelace, the world's first programmer. As mentioned earlier, Byron divorced her mother shortly after Ada was born. Her mother was afraid that Ada would inherit her father's "dangerous poetic tendencies", so she forbade her from engaging in literature and art and encouraged her to study natural philosophy. But Ada, who was naturally intelligent, still found "poetry" in mathematics. She was active in London's social circles, alcoholic and addicted to gambling. After meeting Charles Babbage, Ada was very interested in his idea of ​​an "analytical engine". Babbage was unable to build an analytical engine until his death. But Ada had already written the first batch of computer programs in human history for an imaginary machine. Bruce Sterling and William Gibson interpreted this history in their science fiction novel, The Difference Engine, the pioneering work of steampunk.)

In the following summer, Mary, Shelley, Clare and Byron mixed together. When the weather was good, they walked along Lake Geneva and went boating on the lake. But there was not much good weather that summer. On 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 drank more wine, took more drugs, and did more...fun until late at night.

Wherever the lord went, rumors and eyes followed him. The villagers said that drug abuse, promiscuity, and incest were happening every day in the Diodati mansion (which was true to a certain extent), and there were even tourists and curious people who used binoculars to peek.

The private doctor tool man seemed to be unwelcome during this period, and spent most of his time wandering around alone or staying in his room. This is not difficult to understand, after all, the activities of Shelley, Mary, Byron and Claire (three pairs? Four pairs? How to quantify this Gang of Four is really not a good review) all day long are not suitable for "outsiders". In short, these four marginalized people in mainstream society, outlaws of traditional concepts, have built a small utopia for themselves, a paradise.

On a stormy night, with lightning and thunder, Byron made a proposal to everyone, saying: Let's each write a ghost story. The real reason why he did this has long been lost in time. It may be the competition between talented people, it may be because Gothic novels were their common pastime in those days, it may be the storm outside the window that gave him inspiration, it may be the effect of alcohol or poison, or it may be pure boredom.

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

After days of struggling to figure out what to write, Mary had the famous daydream:

I saw the pale face of the student of the blasphemous art, kneeling beside his patchwork. I saw the hideous phantom expand and stretch. Then, under the catalysis of some powerful engine, signs of life began to appear, and the movement of half-death and half-life was disturbing. This must be terrible, because any mortal who attempts to imitate the Creator will end in supreme terror.

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

If the core of science fiction is to explore the relationship between humans and technology through fictional means, then Mary's novel firmly established its theme. In a sense, later science fiction works almost all tell the same story in different ways.

When Frankenstein was later published anonymously, most people suspected that it was written by Shelley. Even when Shelley came out to clarify, people were unwilling to believe him. In recent years, some experts have studied Mary's manuscripts word by word 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 text corrections (some footnotes are even jokes between lovers), does have some additions and deletions, but those parts are mostly about Victor Frankenstein, as if Mary was letting him “play” the role of the doctor. After all, Shelley, Byron, and even Mary’s own father, are actually that kind of people: they like to play God, think they can save the world, and are willing to sacrifice not only themselves but also their loved ones for their ideals.

As for the part about the monster, Shelley made almost no changes - he is unique to Mary, an inexplicable mystery. We can analyze rationally: he is the embodiment of Mary's advanced and contradictory thoughts since childhood; he is her unwillingness and entanglement with the death of her mother and daughter; he is the catastrophic externalization of her husband and father's radical ideas. But he is a mystery after all, as if Mary has injected a part of her soul that has nowhere to go and no one can solve day and night into his body: terrible, charming, and pitiful. Perhaps this is why people read this story over and over again - in the passage describing the monster in the manuscript, Mary finally crossed out the adjective handsome and replaced it with beautiful.

The opening that Byron abandoned was actually a vampire story. This inspired his personal doctor to get involved in the ghost story creation activity, and created the image of a noble vampire named Lord Ruthven based on Byron's protagonist and Byron himself. The doctor obviously incorporated his complex feelings about Byron himself into this character. Lord Ruthven is equally sophisticated and charming, but also full of darkness in his heart, sucking the blood of others to maintain his life.

Even more interesting is that there is a saying that the doctor also had a nightmare in which he dreamed of a vampire who looked like the Lord haunting a cemetery. This short novel was published four years later, which also triggered speculation that the author was actually Byron.

So if Shelley is Victor Frankenstein, then Byron is the first vampire. Mary Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel, and John William Polidori's Dracula is the first modern vampire novel.

John William Polidori? Does this name sound familiar? Yes, he is the first author we mentioned in the first section when we took the trouble to sort out the origins of modern vampire literature. He is Byron's unpopular personal doctor.

Come, let's take this story from its most boring side story to the truth. The lights go out, the scenery falls, the mystery is actually revealed, and the surroundings are still quiet. Look out the window and 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 travel backwards in time. Rewind. The moon rises and the sun sets, sickness and death, birth and aging. From Bram Stoker to Dracula, from Stoker to Polidori; from Ex Machina to Frankenstein, from Ursula K. Le Guin to Mary Shelley.

Rewind. Back to that summer in the mansion by Lake Geneva, the sleeping night outside the window was stormy again, the drunken young men and women stood up and made noise again, the broken cup on the ground jumped back onto the table, filled with wine again, and a man's hand raised it.

Pause playback.

Let's each write a ghost story.

History is like the hair accumulated in the sewer of time, randomness entangled with causality, a mess. But if you unravel it and examine it carefully, you can occasionally find some nodes, which are as delicate and beautiful as snowflakes, making people marvel: Look, here.

When Byron said, "Let each of us write a ghost story," it was perhaps such a moment: the two life paths of a banker's son and the son of a government official, a film era, two literary genres, and even the fate of thousands of monsters in the fictional and real worlds, all took root and began to grow wildly in that summer without summer, that rainy night with thunder and lightning.

6. To the World of Gods and Monsters

A few days later, Percy Shelley's rotten and swollen body floated ashore. He died at the age of less than thirty.

Some believe that Shelley and his crew's inexperience, as well as the Don Juan's inherent design flaws, led to their shipwreck after leaving Leghorn.

Before Mary arrived, Byron and others cremated Shelley by the sea in accordance with local law. Just like the ancient pagans, like the "vampires" dug up by the people, and like the last words of the monster in "Frankenstein": "I will climb the woodpile as a victor, and indulge in the pain brought by the flames. The flames will go out, my ashes will be blown into the sea by the wind, and my soul will rest forever."

More than a decade after turning down the role of Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi finally took on the role of the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943. At the age of 60, he was already unable to cope with such a high-intensity role, and the film company even decided to delete all his lines before the release. The role received a lot of bad reviews, and his star career declined rapidly.

In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Bella played Dracula for the last time on the screen (due to copyright issues, although he played many vampires, he only played Dracula twice, in the 1931 version of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). Although this was a funny comedy, Bella's performance was impeccable. After that, he could no longer get any work from big studios, and could only take more small-scale and exploitation films.

During this period, he was very close to a director, the famous "disaster artist" Edward D. Wood Jr. Bella starred in Wood's box office and critical disaster "Glen or Glenda" (1953) and several other films. Regardless of the film or the role, he always gave his best performance.

Because of the root cause of his injury in World War I, he became seriously dependent on drugs such as morphine during long-term treatment. Under the influence of drugs, he divorced again. He was the first Hollywood star in history to publicly admit to drug addiction. During the drug rehabilitation period, he exchanged letters with a female fan and got married for the fifth time after drug rehabilitation. The success of drug rehabilitation won people's goodwill, but failed to revive his career.

Some of Bella’s final shots were shot by Wood for a planned film called Grave of Dracula, in which he wears his classic Count Dracula costume, unfurling his cape in a cemetery, in a scene that resembles Polidori’s nightmare of vampires a century earlier. These footage were eventually edited into the now cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

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

At the end of his career, Berra returned to the theatre, touring the UK with Dracula in the hope of rekindling interest in him. But even the big theatres in London were reluctant to take him. During the tour, he told a colleague: "You know, Dracula is my Hamlet."

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

After his masterpiece, The Bride, Wheal's Hollywood career began to decline. The new management of Universal could no longer tolerate his self-willed style, and the planned Dracula's Daughter was eventually shelved.

In his later years, he suffered a stroke and received electroshock therapy, which was extremely painful (it was hard not to think of the monster being brought to life by electricity). In May 1957, more than 20 years after the scene in Frankenstein that drowned the little girl was forced to be deleted, James Whale drowned himself in the swimming pool at his Los Angeles home, where he had held countless handsome men's parties.

Sir Ian McKellen brilliantly portrayed Wheeler's later years 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 reunites with his "monster" Karloff and "bride" Lanchester in his later years, which never happened in real life.

Universal made a lot of money from Pierce's designs (and it still does today), but Pierce himself did not get any rights. After Universal's top management took over, he was gradually marginalized and finally retired in disgrace.

In 1957, the crew arranged a reunion between Pierce and Karloff in the career review TV program "This Is Your Life". Karloff, who has always been low-key and reserved, was very surprised and said: "This is the best makeup artist in the world. I am very grateful to him." Pierce brought an "electrode" from the neck of the monster as a gift to Karloff.

Jack Pierce died in 1968.

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

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, the stage where he first fell in love, and played Captain Hook.

He also caught up with the emerging television media. He played Colonel Kurtz in Heart of Darkness by Conrad, his favorite writer, on television (twenty years before Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now). In a 1962 Halloween TV special, he played the monster for the fourth and last time. He once said: The monster made my career, I am grateful to him, but I also feel sorry for the portrayal of him in other works.

A back injury sustained during the filming of Frankenstein had a very negative impact on his health in his later years, but he never thought of retiring early. He played his first vampire in the movie Black Sabbath in 1963, and frightened the audience again. He even played an evil old woman who killed and robbed people in the TV series The Girl from UNCLE 1966. In the dressing room, he said to the mirror, "I look like a two-dollar chicken," which made people laugh.

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

He is one of the few people other than the president to appear on a U.S. stamp twice. He has two stars on the Walk of Fame, one for movies and one for television. Besides performing, his favorite thing is to water his garden in just shorts and a hat.

In 1968, the octogenarian Karloff starred in the film Targets (1968), playing a retired horror film actor who was 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 also fits his consistent view: the real horror does not exist on the screen, but exists between people in the real world.

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

Two years after Shelley's body was cremated on the seashore, Byron fell ill and died in Greece at the age of thirty-six.

The doctor was dismissed by Byron shortly after his stay in Switzerland. He returned to his homeland in England, where he fell into depression and gambling debts. A year before the shipwreck, 25-year-old John William Polidori died. His family believed that he had committed suicide by taking poison, but the coroner ruled that it was a natural death.

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

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

Later, Mary raised the only child she and Shelley had who survived to adulthood, relying on her meager income from writing and an even meager subsidy from Shelley's father. Mary inherited her mother's name, and the child inherited his father's name, also named Percy.

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

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

postscript

The ghosts of the past crawl out of their graves, sucking life out of people and turning them into vassals. Technology is advancing all the way, mercilessly gifting tomorrow's miracles and disasters. These stories written and filmed one or two hundred years ago may have new meanings today.

The opening and closing of the circuit is not a matter of course, just because the base of zero and one is simple enough that a naked ape can invent a machine to run it. The dream used to be to use this rule to organize the diversity, but now it seems that we have rebuilt black and white at the other end of the scale. There is a stagnant pool in front of us, we can jump in ourselves or throw the other person in. I don’t want to talk about the great love of the world. The cruelty of reality is not a binary opposition, but a rationality on both sides.

But I dare to say a less popular point of view: most binary oppositions begin with the obsession of powerful individuals, flourish in the carnival of group fantasy, and finally become self-fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps we have not lost our respect for facts and logic, but almost all of them are information about information, opinions about opinions, and the entity itself has been replaced by us. Faced with overwhelming complexity, the brains of social animals teach us to choose sides, and the cerebellums of our reptile ancestors tell us to fight or flee. One is not enough, three is too many, and two is just right. So we happily bury compromise, willingly listen to whoever shouts the loudest, and then fight to the death with high morale.

So keep a little sense of humor, and a little self-deprecation. Fear and laughter are two sides of the same coin. What is certain is that we will all die. What is almost certain is that we all want to laugh more before we die, even if the laughter is different for each of us. Telling such stories today may just be a futile attempt to restore a little bit of the diversity, connection and subtlety of the old world. It is very likely that everyone lives in their hearts with a monster in the eyes of others. I dare not say that being interesting is more important than being correct, but perhaps when everything is absolutely correct, nothing can make people smile.

There is a possibility that people invented something called right together for their own laughter.

It's just that we seem to be living in some other version.