Girlsicles

Janitor of Lunacy, commenting for the first time here at Erotic Mad Science, has pointed my attention to a small trove of tube girls, some of which I’d seen before, but others of which were new to me. For example, this illustration is identified as being for Le Triangle a Quatre Côtés by W. Temple — I believe the British science-fiction writer William F. Temple, who wrote the novel that was made into the film The Four Sided Triangle (1954).

The context for these is a page at the site Project Rho, devoted to the problem of space travel, and how damn difficult it would be to stay alive long enough to actually get anywhere. One possible solution: freeze yourself, which is of course especially appealing if you are an attractive female and freeze yourself in a tube. An illustration to Frozen Limit by “Volsted Gridban” (I think actually John Russel Fearn, another British sci-fi writer.)

A disadvantage of suspending your animation would appear to have been that you might have missed out on exciting events in your vicinity.

Another illustration, this I think from a story “Newscast” by Harl Vincent that ran in Marvel Science Stories, April/May 1939.

Trying to research the last turned up a bonus tube girl illustrating the Wikipedia article:

Like, wow.

The author of the Project Rho page remarks, perhaps a little apologetically, “I did not intentionally limit these illustrations to just frozen women. Apparently the artists of the time were not interested in painting men under glass.” Well, let’s not be too sure. I suspect rather that it was an audience consisting of hetero men and boys that wasn’t interested in looking at men under glass. As for what might have been in the artists’ private sketchbooks, I do not know.

Though I really wish I did.

Frankenstein and personal identity

We’ve encountered Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) here at Erotic Mad Science before, but surely if any movie would deserve a second post here, it would be this one. And not just because it has a swell mad-lab setup, though it certainly does.

The deeper reason is that this movie constitutes a fine early example of personal identity porn with an erotic twist. An explanation: Baron Frankenstein in this movie has moved beyond just trying to make creatures and is now trying to defeat death by using a sort of force-field to keep the soul from leaving the body at death. (Okay, it’s a lunatic premise but of course this is mad science we’re talking about here.)

Meanwhile in whatever little burg or dorf in which Frankenstein has set up shop, young man Hans is framed for the murder of a tavern-keeper with connivance of the actual murders, a trio of loathsome young dandies. He’s guillotined at the edge of town — thus providing useful experimental material for Frankenstein.

But what to do with Hans’s soul when he’s trapped it? In a human tragedy that works out well for mad science, when Hans’s lover Chritina sees his execution she promptly drowns herself. More material for Frankenstein.

What he creates is a composite creature, Hans’s soul somehow transferred into Christina’s repaired (and improved) body. Quite an advance on the old poetic conceit of two lovers united in death! Her first sentence on revival is that most philosophical of questions: “Please…who am I?”

And indeed, who is she? She’s not a composite like Jireen, the owner of the memories of both her progenitors. But at the same time, she seems in some ways continuous with both of them, as her subsequent actions will show.

The resulting being is quite the seductress, and proceeds to use this ability to execute a program of revenge on the young dandies, giving us in the audience something to ogle.

Definitely not a movie to miss for the thaumatophile.

All hail Dr. Impossible

If you want to see a really excellent addition to the canon of mad scientists, allow me to commend to you attention Dr. Impossible, from Austin Grossman‘s Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007).

Soon is a superhero story, basically. It’s a book for grown-ups, but unlike other superhero books for grown-ups like Watchmen it doesn’t so much deconstruct the superhero genre as take its characters seriously and write a story around them. Since most of the superheroes and supervillains therein are sort-of humans or at least used-to-be-humans, this means that like any literary characters, they have lives and stories and goals and loves. And hurts. Lots of hurts.

Dr. Impossible is one of the two viewpoint characters: he’s a supervillain, a mad scientist who keeps trying to take over the world. His tragedy is that even though he has an IQ of 300 he doesn’t realize that the world he inhabits is made of stories rather than atoms, and the rules that govern these stories make it such that he the “good” guys will always foil his plans for taking over the world. But this doesn’t at least prevent him from almost succeeding a lot of the time, and in the process generating one of the most thoroughly-imagined mad scientist characters out there. He has internal monologues that really hit the right notes. (My page references are to the U.S. Vintage edition).

I remember those nights, planning technologies that didn’t exist yet, outsider science, futurist dreaming, half-magical. The things I could do outside the university setting, now that I didn’t have to wait for the pompous fools at the college! I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, spout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science. (76)

Yes! Though at the same time, Grossman is really good at showing how difficult and lonely it would be to actually have to be someone like Dr. Impossible.

But if that alone isn’t enough to qualify as Erotic Mad Science (and for me at least, that alone would be, but then I have rather unusual values), then consider the two female characters. The other viewpoint character is a cyborg named Fatale (much appeal there, especially for the technosexual), and then consider the awesome blue girl who appears in the background of the (much cooler) UK cover illustration to the novel.

(Image source this Forbidden Planet blog.) This character has a bit of self-narrated backstory that has an erotic embrace what you are character. Since it has a hint of a spoiler about it, I’ll run it below the fold:

Continue reading →

Vulnavia

The titular character of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) surely counts as a mad scientist, though he’s surely unique in the mad science canon. Not only is he the only one I can think of who has a doctoral degree in theology (*) of all things, but he’s a mad scientist with curiously limited objectives. He wishes to inflict bizarre deaths on the eight doctors and one nurse who were part of the surgical team that failed to save his wife’s life, deaths modeled upon the ten plagues God inflicted on Egypt to compel the Pharaoh to release the Israelites. (Take religion seriously –> become homicidal lunatic. Shades of Colonel Madder!)

There’s plenty in Phibes that is entertaining, but that which really catches my attention is Vulnavia, who appears to be some sort of creation of Phibes’s. She was played by Virginia North, an actress we sadly see very little of outside this movie.

She might be some sort of clockwork, but she’s good enough as a seductress to help suborn at least one of Phibes’s victims.

Seductive indeed. Enough to propel Phibes from just mad science into outright Erotic Mad Science. Vulnavia’s nature is mysterious. I have a difficult time fathoming even the meaning of her name, although it might be derived from the Latin vulnero, meaning “to wound.” (Phibes himself is clearly wounded by life.)

Obviously she wouldn’t be complete mad science creation if she didn’t help out in the lab.

Wow. I suppose I could go no further than cite El Santo’s remark in the course of his review of Phibes.

I always thought it would have been fun to be an evil genius when I grew up, and now that I know one of the fringe benefits is the possibility of having Virginia North for a pet, I’m really thinking I need to find myself a university that offers a graduate program in Advanced Evil.

You and me both, pal.

(*) Though I am aware of course that my illustrious namesake did at least study theology, though he didn’t seem to get as much out of it as Phibes.

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerey und Medicin,
Und leider auch Theologie!
Durchaus studirt, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh’ ich nun, ich armer Thor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;
Heiße Magister, heiße Doctor gar,
Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr,
Herauf, herab und quer und krumm,
Meine Schüler an der Nase herum –
Und sehe, daß wir nichts wissen können!

Text source here.

Update 20100913: The phrase “Vulnavia’s nature is mysterious” originally read “Vulvania’s nature is mysterious,” and this mistake has now been corrected. It was Vinnie Tesla who discovered the mistake. In his gentlemanly fashion Vinnie suggested in comments that this was a typo, but looking at it, I think it more likely that I made a Freudian slip. one rather obvious when you think of the context.

Well the machine says you had one

Bacchus brought my attention to this illustration. Probably more junky pop science than mad science, but the aesthetic is definitely right for Erotic Mad Science.

(Click on image to see full-size.) It’s from Adam magazine, November 1965 and can be found at the fun blog Vintage Girlie Mags.

(Addendum: this post’s title is a caption of a cartoon that supposedly appeared in the New Yorker but which I can’t find. If anyone knows if this is really true and when it might have appeared, I’d be most grateful if you would let me know.)

New Marie art by Russkere

For some time I’ve followed with pleasure the art of Russkere at Renderotica and at his own blog. Interesting stuff there, including vore, tentacles and cheerleaders (paging Gregg Easterbrook!) in, er, compromising and problematical situations. After a while, I decided to take the plunge and offer a commission for original artwork — something I like to do, resources permitting. Since I was working at the time on a Gnosis College storyline in which the abduction of Marie was a key plot point, I decided on two illustrations of such. Here are Russkere’s interpretive renderings (click on the images for larger versions). Marie pursued by the sphere:

And Marie captured therein (observed by the curious cat Lilith):

Both works Creative Commons licensed as follows:
These Marie images for EroticMadScience by Russkere are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on works at eroticmadscience.com.

Russkere’s style gives a comic feel to the events that happen here which perhaps we can appreciate, even if Marie (and, of course, Taylor) cannot.

And if this sort of thing appeals to you, keep in mind that Russkere does accept commissions!

Bullshot mad science

No, again not a typo on my part. And this time, not on their part either. Rather, it’s a reference to a movie called Bullshot (1983). It’s loosely a parody of Bulldog Drummond, who was a sort of early pulp hero/proto-James Bond figure. The plot? Rather benign (only borderline mad) scientist Professor Fenton invents some sort of super-fuel formula that Must Not Fall Into the Wrong Hands. He entrusts half the formula to his klutzy-ditzy daughter Rosemary (played by Diz White, who also helped write the screnplay), and then is promptly abducted by our villain, Otto von Bruno. The distraught Rosemary contacts our hero, Bullshot Crummond (First World War fighter ace, Olympic athlete, defender of the British Empire, makes all girls swoon, etc. etc.) asking for help, and various preposterous adventures are afoot in the breeze.

Yes, this is a silly movie but I confess I was entertained for its 85-minute running time, which is more than I can say of many things I watch.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether von Bruno was himself a mad scientist or just a judicious user of mad science created by others, but he certainly provided some fine mad science moments. Here he is, attempting to extract the whereabouts of the secret formula from Fenton by means of an Infernal Machine, which causes its victim just to let slip out what he’s thinking.

Contrast this villainy to the reaction of our upstanding English hero, who has just received word that there’s a damsel in distress who needs his help.

Mad science will indeed make his life difficult along the way.

I suppose it gives nothing away to say that in the end British spunk triumphs over Teutonic beastliness. But at least along the way Crummond and Rosemary will have to fight off what von Bruno proudly describes as “the world’s only trained octopus.” Tentacle sex enthusiasts will kindly take note:

In case anyone should miss the point, this merry scene is accompanied with the following dialog:

rosemary

It’s all slimy…and wobbly….

(gasps)

…and it’s so big!

bullshot

Never mind that. Beat it off!

Ahem.

Rotwang art

The great technologist C.A. Rotwang is with little doubt the most interesting character from Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis (1927). He has the most complex motivation and the deepest backstory of all the characters therein, and unsurprisingly he’s a principle literary hero for this site, celebrated with his own commissioned image. The coming-to-be moment of his creation, the Maschinenmensch, appears at the top of every page here. So I’m delighted to be able to link to a post of Rotwang concept art by Nathan Heigert.

If you’re a fan of this theme, it’s worth checking out the entire post and indeed, Heigert’s entire blog of Metropolis art.

“Sex dominates the world, and now I…”

It might be about as awful as any movie I reference here, but The Curious Dr. Humpp (1967/1969 maybe) at least has the courage to over the top in the Erotic Mad Science category since it is, after all, a mad science movie almost entirely harnessing the power for sex for, well, something anyway. So there are a few good minutes here for the thaumatophile, which it’s my pleasure to cherry-pick for you, dear reader.

Humpp was originally an Argentinian movie called La Venganza del Sexo written and directed by Emilio Vieyra picked up by an American distributor who padded it out with additional softcore footage, dubbed it into English, and retitled it before release. (That release is now available from Something Weird Video.) The result is an often-tedious production (I was fast-forwarding through even more softcore than usual) that has moments of levity when the English-language dubbing conflicts with the film’s manifestly hispanophone setting.

The core plot shouldn’t detain us long (you can get a more complete synopsis here): people engaged in various sex acts are being abducted by grotesque figures. The police are baffled, by an enterprising reporter whom I shall call Journalist Guy has a theory that a mad doctor previously active in Italy is somehow involved.

Journalist Guy tracks his quarry to a hard-to-find estate somewhere outside whatever city this movie is set in. He is captured within about fifteen seconds of doing so and, unsurprisingly, is compelled to participate in weird experiments.

The apparent antagonist here is one Dr. Humpp who, to give credit where do, does maintain a pretty good-looking mad-lab given the film’s obviously small budget.

Humpp is compelling or inducing his victims to have lots and lots of sex and then extracting chemicals from them, some of which he then injects into himself. Humpp’s apparent motivation for this at this stage of the movie is some sort of vampirism: the chemicals keep him alive, young, healthy, etc.

In this experiment, he’s wired Journalist Guy and a Girl Victim up in some sort of apparatus.

Humpp explains that they are about to have virtual sex:

humpp

And now I’m going to conduct a final experiment on electronic control of the male and female libido.

(to Journalist Guy)

Do not resist. You’ll possess that girl. You’ll do everything to her that a man can.

(to Girl Victim)

You’ll respond to him. He will excite you in every way his libidinous imagination can evoke. He will drive you to climactic frenzy, yet your bodies will never touch.

And they do. Their experience is represented in a not-too-bad visual montage.

The success of this experiment allows Humpp to give us an exultant mad science line, one which no reviewer can resist quoting:

HUMPP

(triumphantly)

Sex dominates the world, and now I dominate sex!

But later on, because he’s our hero and because the plot requires him to, Journalist Guy manges to get out of confinement and find his way into Humpp’s laboratory. Picking up one of Humpp’s notebooks, he finds out that Humpp’s project goes beyond personal vampirism. It’s an entire Promethean enterprise, one explained by Humpp to the audience in a handy voice-over:

humpp (v.o.)

Science will soon be able to harness sex, the most potent force in humanity, to increase the mental and physical prowess of coming generations. The virility of men must be increased and they must be mated with women of insatiable appetites.

(Journalist Guy turns a few pages in the journal and reads further)

Through electronic control of the libido we shall produce females capable of promiscuous and orgiastic encounters of infinite variety, producing nearly continuous concupiscent delights.

Wow! It’s a good thing that Hero Journalist is working to stop this, because it would be just terrible if that were to happen because…because…

Well, I’m sure there’s some reason why it would be just terrible, but I’m afraid I don’t know what it is. Maybe that Leon Kass character knows the answer. Anyway, I shan’t tarry over this deep philosophical problem, because it turns out that Humpp’s notes reveal something even stranger.

humpp (v.o.)

These discoveries were discovered by the brain of Dr. Puttagniello.

(My transcription here might not be entirely accurate as to the ur-scientist’s name, since as far as I can find there is no Italian surname “Putagniello” or close variants. Were they perhaps aiming at something like Dr. Puttaniere and missing? Maybe I’ve over-thinking this.)

Note that the helpful voiceover tells us that the discoveries were made by the brain of Dr. Puttagniello, not Dr. Putagniello. And as Journalist Guy soon finds out, this is not just overheated writing, but rather literal truth because Dr. Putagniello apparently is a literal brain in a jar on Dr. Humpp’s desk.

What self-respecting disembodied brain-in-a-jar mad scientist can be denied a rant of ver own?

brain in a jar

Dr. Humpp is on the verge of a great breakthrough. In his hands sex will dominate the world. Try to stop him and you will die!

But, fortunately for morality and decency, Journalist Guy manges to summon the proper authorities in the end who storm the place. Dr. Humpp, denied his precious fluids promptly rots away. Brain in Jar is predictably outraged.

brain in a jar

What have you done you idiots? Dr. Humpp was my bodily instrument for finding eternal life for all of mankind. Just as I was preserving his life by the use of blood forces of sex, he was preserving my life. We were vital to each other! Idiots! Arrgh!!!

And then for no obvious reason except frustration, Brain in a Jar bursts into flames. I guess this brain has serious anger management issues.

There is of course one final rant:

brain in a jar

Without the powerful forces of sex we discovered, the secret of eternal life for everyone on earth. Now, you have destroyed the dream of mankind forever. You will be mortal!

Oh, so that’s what was at stake here. I guess “try to stop him and you will die” was therefore not a threat but a prediction. Well then, Nice Job Breaking It Hero.

Frankenstein Venus

Awesome blog Wicked Halo has put together this gallery of images of the Bride of the Monster as created by Elsa Lanchester, a subject we’ve broached before here at Erotic Mad Science. All are worthy of your attention, but my personal second favorite was probably this one:

Thematically this falls into a line with one of the very first posts done here.

The hat tip goes to PZ Myers at Pharyngula, whose personal favorite coincides with mine. If you look at the Wicked Halo post I’ll bet you can guess which one that is (but no extra points if you peek at PZ’s post first).