Flesh for Frankenstein I — cool lab

Coming up now, a trio of posts on Paul Morrissey‘s Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), sometimes known as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. This a a seriously weird version of what is already a strange story. Even if we never were to get in the lab, we have a setting of adultery, murder, and incest (Baron Frankenstein is is married to his sister) in a crumbling castle set (presumably) somewhere in the Balkans.

Of course, since we’re into the mad science here, our first stop should be Frankenstein’s laboratory.

Baron Frankenstein’s objective here is not just to re-animate the dead, but to create a mated pair of creatures (notwithstanding the two children he’s had with the Baroness). This pair are to become the progenitors of a master Serbian race. Why Serbian? Some things only the screenwriter was meant to know. In any event, this means making a female half of the pair, which gives director Morrissey an opportunity to provide an early live-action variant on the tube girl meme, as our female half (played by Dalila Di Lazzaro, if you must know) is preserved in a vat of something.

Once she’s lifted out we see a laboratory setup which is one of the coolest we’ve seen since James Whale was directing Frankenstein movies.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Frankenstein movie without electricity providing the spark of life.

It gets squickier tomorrow, I promise.

Tartarus XIII

Script for today:

Page 37

A white-gloved hand is holding a champagne flute to Donna’s lips. She is drinking from it.

CAPTION: This all seems like quite a harsh reaction to things going wrong with your family.

View of Donna’s face. Her eyes are closed.

CAPTION: Yes, well that’s how it is. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

A gauntleted hand holding up a flaming sword against a background of a dark, stormy sky.

CAPTION: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.”

Extreme close-up view of a scalpel in a surgically-gloved hand, about to make an incision in Donna’s bare shoulder.

CAPTION: I chose to live by the scalpel instead.

View of a man in coveralls, pushing a trolley down a corridor, on which something about the size and shape of a human trunk wrapped in burlap.

CAPTION: I did so knowing full well I probably won’t last all that long the way I am.

View of Donna’s face again. Her brow is wrinkled, her eyes closed, her expression dark.

DONNA: Was Emily a “little whore?” Did she die as one? Well then, I’ll die as one too.

Page 38

View of Taylor cradling Donna’s head in her arms, as if trying to comfort her. Donna’s expression is still angry.

TAYLOR: You mustn’t give up hope…

TAYLOR: Hope? Let me tell you something about hope..

View of ZEUS, here a heavily muscled, bearded man sitting on a marble throne, wearing an enraged expression and in the act of pounding one of the arms of his throne with a clenched fist.

CAPTION: After Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind, Zeus, the head god, vowed to punish the human race.

View of PANDORA, a beautiful woman, lying nude on a slab. She is not quite formed. HEPHAESTUS, a hairy, dirty, gimp-legged fellow, is reaching down with his hands to mold some part of her body.

CAPTION: Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the smith-god, to create an artificial woman out of earth. All the other gods then gave her gifts.

View of ATHENA, a stern, beautiful goddess, showing the still-nude Pandora a loom.

CAPTION: Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, taught the woman weaving. And perhaps also some wisdom, as we shall see.

View of APHRODITE, nude like Pandora. Pandora is seated. Aphrodite is doing Pandora’s hair, while at the same time leaning forward to whisper something in Pandora’s ear.

CAPTION: Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, beautified her but also filled her with lusts.

View of HERMES, here a beautiful, beardless young man, standing behind Pandora and speaking to her.

CAPTION:Hermes the messenger of the Gods taught her the arts of speech…and of lying.

Page 39

Athena fitting a long gown on Pandora.

CAPTION: Athena then clothed this lovely created woman. The Gods named her “Pandora,” which means “all gifts.”

Upper-half view of Pandora holding the hands of EPIMETHEUS, who is here a Greek-god-like individual, but defective (cross-eyed).

CAPTION: Zeus then gave Pandora to Prometheus’s dim-witted brother Epimetheus as a bride.

Pandora holding up a lidded jar, which she is gazing at curiously.

CAPTION: The gods gave Pandora a wedding present, a jar which she was told never to open.

Close up on Pandora’s hands pulling the lid off the jar.

CAPTION: But like so many people with gifts, curiosity was an overpowering motive for Pandora.

It scarcely needs to be mentioned what a popular subject Pandora was for artists. One example:

Dante Gabriel Rosettti (1828-1882), Pandora (1878). Original in the Lady Lever Art Gallery. You can find an amazing collection of Pandora imagery here, although unfortunately without much in the way of provenance for individual images.

Splice

I finally got around to watching Splice over the weekend, which is something that I qua thaumatophile am practically obliged to do.

I must confess I was rather less impressed by this than I had hoped to be. Hotshot bioengineers and lovers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) create a creature out of genetic material from a variety of different animals — including humans. Well, one specific human, actually. There’s an appealing Frankenstein-like element here — take things from many things to make one thing — as well as an appealing element of rebellion, since the creature is made in secret and in defiance of corporate bosses (Simona Maicanescu plays the corporate chieftain with an icy self-possession that makes me positively squee).

I have to admit that the creature they produce, whom they name “Dren” does, as a child, make one of the cutest l’il monsters you’ll ever see.

And I guess there’s a sense in which there’s mad science going on in this movie. There’s a willingness to flout moral conventions, lobs of laboratory equipment, and the “science” itself is appropriately crack-brained. And Dren grows up fast, which leads to something either squee or squick, depending on your tastes in such matters.

But somehow this movie didn’t really grab me. There are hints at mad science motivations: Elsa had some sort of miserable childhood and there are hints that her motivation for making Dren might have something to do with compensating for this (in part), although this stab at the mad scientist as Wounded isn’t really played out satisfactorily. And there are the obligatory Promethean recitations (think of all the good our discoveries could do for mankind!) although these often have the feel of rationalizations, and half-hearted ones at that. When things spin out of control (as they inevitably do), the supposedly brilliant and strong-willed characters act disoriented and helpless. What the movie really feels like is Our Dysfunctional Relationship played out in a mad science setting. I don’t have any objection to entertainment about Our Dysfunctional Relationship, but really, isn’t there enough of that already? A proper mad scientist needs to be more decisive, willing to cross the line from normality to Beyond-Good-and-Evil Land with verve and commitment.

I’ll confess, though, that the way the movie ended did redeem it for me, because Elsa does finally grow a pair, uh, grow the beard, uh…jump in with both feet. I won’t give away how the movie ends, except to hint that it owes more to Humanoids from the Deep than the people who made this movie would probably like to admit. So you might as well go watch it.

Enhanced Sally

I don’t doubt that many, perhaps most, readers of Erotic Mad Science have at some point seen Tim Burton‘s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). And those of you who have seen it would be surely not forget Sally, an animated ragdoll created by Halloweentown’s resident mad scientist (though perhaps in context he isn’t so mad) Dr. Finklestein. She served as a love interest for the main protagonist and, I must say, I can think of no other cinematic character who makes stalking like quite so adorable.

Now in the context of the actual movie, Sally seems to serve Dr. Finklestein as a sort of combination ersatz daughter/houseservant. But I recently discovered a concept art sketch of Sally…

…and that suggests that perhaps creators had some rather other ideas about the reason why Finklestein might have created Sally. Guess that old erotic mad science really is everywhere.

An additional thought: when Sally doesn’t work out as planned for Dr. Finklestein, he creates a new woman, whom he animates by removing half his brain and donating it to her. “Think of the brilliant conversations we’ll have!” Hmm. This act rather reminds me of something. I wonder if Derek Parfit was serving as a consultant to Tim Burton…

On making your own V: The power of technology

πρὸς τοῖσδε μέντοι πῦρ ἐγώ σφιν ὤπασα…ἀφ᾽ οὗ γε πολλὰς ἐκμαθήσονται τέχνας. (“I gave them the gift of fire…and many arts they shall master thereby.”)

—Prometheus Bound, lines 252-4

Of course, as long as we are discussing the making of one’s own as Promethean act, we shouldn’t ignore the power of technology, which is now giving us such splendid mad-science visual representations as this:

That’s”Feel the Power” by Niceman, whose work we’ve seen before here at Erotic Mad Science, and gosh but he hits so many right notes here: a mad-lab setting, an erotic pose, a tube girl and possibly a created woman to boot. And he did it with software. (If you’re interested you can see a lot more of his work either at Deviant Art or Renderotica, although both sites might require some sort of registration to see the best material.)

Although I’ve written hopefully on the subject of computer generated art as a way of creating bespoke erotica I must confess to only have dipped in very little (some messing around with MakeHuman and Poser). Still, I’ve been following computer-rendering for a while now and the signs are good. If you compare the computer-generated image in this old post with Niceman’s work above, you can see that we’re getting across the uncanny valley bit by bit. The images are better, and the software is doubtless getting easier and easier to use. You might want to become a user now, or you might want to follow developments. I’m sure they will be worth following. With a little luck, you might have Pixar on your desktop in a decade.

In the meantime, I should also note that CG artists themselves also often take commissions. Be generous!

The four-sided triangle

Sometimes you get lucky and find a movie that’s not all that well regarded critically but which hits all sorts of notes for you, and a recent discovery, The Four-Sided Triangle (1953), was that for me. An early release of Britain’s mighty Hammer Film Productions, it sure does a lot for the thaumatophile, it’s a personal identity porn forerunner to Hammer’s Frankenstein Created Woman. And it pleases me all the more because my learning of it came from a different post at Erotic Mad Science, one presenting my then-latest search after tube girls.

Plot background: In the sleepy English village of Hardeen impoverished boy genius Bill, the son of the local squire Robin and blond beauty Lena grow up together as best friends. Bill comes under the tutelage of the kindly but slightly dim Dr. Harvey. Lena is in time taken “back to America” by her mother (a good writing cover for the fact that adult Lena will be played by American actress Barbara Payton and won’t really have the accent), while Bill and Robin go off to Cambridge to learn science. Bill and Robin will return to Hardeen and set up shop in an old barn, working on a mysterious mad-sciency project funded by Robin’s father Sir Walter.

Lena returns to Hardeen a little later, a broken woman very young: she’s tried many things and failed and returned essentially to die, as she tells a shocked Dr. Harvey in a line whose nihilistic spirit might have come from Iris Brockman.

Lena

I thought doctors were supposed to understand how little life really matters. There are many scapegoats for our sins and failures, and the most popular is Providence. I shan’t blame anyone but myself. I didn’t ask to be born, so I have the right to die.

(This is perhaps a little scary in hindsight for a reason in addition to the obvious one, given that Barbara Payton was at this point in her career in a downward alcoholic spiral that would lead to her own death at 39.)

Well, Dr. Harvey is having none of that, so he re-introduces Lena to her two childhood friends. Things go well, as Lena rejoins them as an assistant.

It turns out that Bill and Robin are working on a technology that allows them to reduplicate material objects with perfect fidelity. After much effort they succeed. Unfortunately, things don’t go so well on a personal front. Love walks right in and wrecks destruction, as love has a way of doing. Bill and Robin both fall in love with Lena. Repressed-but-sensitive genius Bill dithers over expressing his feelings, while self-confident upper-class Robin has no such hesitation. Robin proposes marriage to Lena, who accepts happily, leaving Bill devastated.

Soon Dr. Harvey finds Bill back in the laboratory, this time using his reproducing technology to recreate not just inanimate objects but living animals and…can we see where this is going, fellow thaumatophiles? Yes we can. Bill is planning to make a duplicate Lena for himself.

And here is where The Four-Sided Triangle takes a more interesting turn. Instead of following a more traditional mad-science script in which Bill would kidnap Lena and have his way with her, Bill instead explains what he wants to Lena, and tender-hearted Lena agrees to take part. Not that I want to dis the traditional plot, which certainly has its appeal, but at least this time I like the way this one was written so much better. Do you remember, dear readers, my post on The Invisible Woman?

Let’s reflect on what Kitty has implicitly gone for here: “So, you want me to take off all my clothes, step into this machine that has hitherto never been tested on a human being, zap me with heaven-knows-what, and turn me invisibile? Sure, I’m game!”

I think I’m in love.

Well, I think I’m in love all over again (perhaps I’m about to get destroyed, who knows?).

So Lena climbs into the apparatus. Switches are thrown, lights flash, and so on. Do you see the eccentric arrangement of the glowing tube in the background? The people who made this film knew their mad science cinema. They’re paying tribute to German Expressionism here, to Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, or my name ain’t Faustus.

And of course, there’s the tube girl thing going on here as well. Although contrary to tube girl tradition, and for that matter the “girl in the machine” precedent set by Kitty Carroll herself, she leaves all her clothes on.

Now why is that? Doesn’t wearing clothes somehow make the whole duplication process a little more complicated? This is dangerous stuff, people, and we need to do things right!

Oh wait, there’s that placard that I now remember from the beginning of the movie:

Okay, I get it now.

So anyway, the duplication process works once the duplicate is revived and Bill finally gets the love of his life.

Bill names the duplicate “Helen,” and they set off for a happy holiday together.

Only things don’t work out that well, because Helen is psychologically identical with Lena, and that means she still loves Robin. Uh oh. After a suicide attempt, everyone agrees to a radical measure — electroshock therapy to try to wipe Helen’s memory and give her a clean start. Significantly, Helen herself agrees to this. This is one amazing mad-science woman.

And maybe things work, but at this point the movie chickens out and runs away from its premise. An electrical short happens, the lab burns down, and Bill and either Helen or Lena are lost to us.

That’s unsatisfying, but the movie still has a lot going for it, because it’s the cinematic playing-out of the old dream, brought to me originally through the study of philosophy, and discussed in my Thaumatophile Manifesto:

And he was also sometimes thinking about “…start with some pretty object of desire, gin up a few cloning-and-growth tanks, some superduper neurosurgery, and then maybe there will be…two objects of desire, at least one of whom might be free from certain social obligations, and..” Needless to say, the Inner Mad Scientist was chortling with delight at the prospect.

Some themes are just destined to be encountered, over and over.

Bonus animated gif from Bill and Helen’s “vacation” below the fold.

Continue reading →

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.

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.

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).

Origins of tube girl meme?

I’ve done a lot of posts here at Erotic Mad Science about what I call the “tube girl meme,” the visual depiction of a pretty woman, often nude or scantily clad, sealed in some sort of transparent tube (often suspended in fluid) for the purpose of preservation, experiment, or some perverted purpose — let your imagination run free there. It’s clearly a pretty prominent visual motif in the mad science genre and really takes off with pulp covers after the Second World War. But where did it come from?

I’ll offer a conjecture, and kindly keep in mind that it’s only a conjecture so if any of you who read this blog know of an earlier or better one by all means please comment. It goes back to a locus classicus of cinematic mad science, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

In this film, Dr. Septimus Pretorius, one of Frankenstein’s former teachers, demonstrates to Frankenstein a set of experiments in creating life, in this case Pretorius’s creation of a set of homunculi that live in cylindrical glass jars. It’s a pretty good effect, given that it’s 1935.

Among these are a dancer, (who, Pretorius laments, will only dance to Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song”)…

..and, perhaps more on visual point, a mermaid.

Origin of the concept? Maybe. I’m willing to bet that all those pulp artists and the public that patronized their work both watched Bride of Frankenstein a lot.

Bonus erotic trivia: The mermaid in the jar is played by Josephine McKim, a swimmer who won a gold medal in 1932 Olympics and who was the body double for Maureen O’Sullivan during her famous pre-code “nude swim” sequence in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

Is there video? You betcha!

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Of course we have also visited the contributions of Olympic swimmers to erotica on this blog before.