More Scripts From The Crypt

Weaver/Rhodes Celebrate Lugosi and Bride Of The Monster (1955)

Another wow from Tom Weaver's Scripts From The Crypt series, this one written/compiled by him and Lugosi historian Gary Don Rhodes. Not only is there exhaustive coverage for Bride Of The Monster, but countdown through Bela's final couple of years as Bride was made, released, and run over period up to the horror legend's 8/56 death. I see Bride Of The Monster not at all in "bad movie" terms, and would tip readers to ideal format for next time watching: Crop your image to 1.85, Bride better in that intended ratio (Image's DVD is full-frame, otherwise excellent from Wade Williams source). Also recommended is fast-forward through dreary talk among those other than Lugosi, save bits like Loretta King exchange with Dolores Fuller, which back story should be read prior to pic view. Great thing about Weaver-Crypts (more are forthcoming) is easy access to subject films, disc and/or streaming, and chance to watch, read, watch again. Never has Bride Of The Monster been so rewarding than in company of this just-out book.

Bride Lands in Cleveland with Big G

I've known guys who lived for Lugosi. Not a few have plied trade as writers. So why?, you ask. Answers vary from aesthetic to personal. Many including myself admire Bela for not giving up, never lying down. He'd bear decline and insult with grace. Where life dealt adverse dose, BL soldiered on. I go on record as follows: The man is great in Bride Of The Monster --- no, let's cap the G --- Great. He's not camp or decrepit or pathetic. Never was, to my thinking. Lugosi takes full command of a mad lab not dissimilar to ones he'd known at Monogram, but what false walls really evoke are stages trod over hundreds of tank-town spook shows BL did through the 40's and into the 50's. Bride Of The Monster is, in fact, as accurate a record as we could want of Lugosi's shock act to live rows of sugar-high youth. His man-to-atomic superman device may not have worked in Bride, but experiments like it fired up many a crowded house where Bela bedeviled bound-up women (part of his troupe?, local volunteers?, Lillian?), sidekick ape or hunchback, maybe a Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange himself on occasion). Lugosi would have had that act down to (mad) science by late 1954 when Bride Of The Monster went before cameras.

I'd submit that Bride Of The Monster was the only Lugosi film written by fans who grew up watching him, Ed Wood and Alex Gordon being young men in 1954 (Gordon thirty-two, Wood lately turned thirty as Bride rolled). They were children when Lugosi made his Dracula splash, such circumstance like me growing up to pen a chiller for Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee. Shot-full-of-holes as Lugosi's career was, it had to be an all-time high writing dialogue spoke ultimately by an actor you'd spent all of life idolizing. Can we blame Alex or Ed for latter-day wrangling over credit? (each said he was primary author) Whoever led gave Bela terrific stuff --- better than that, it was respectful of him, keyed to the actor's strength. This is the late-term Lugosi we want to see, in control and not having to cope with Berle/Skelton silliness by writers stuck deep in bowels of formula gagging (honed for most part since vaudeville). TV comics wouldn't go gentle with Lugosi, humor smacking more of disparagement than parody, but then Milton Berle was born 1908, Red Skelton 1913 (though he'd admit privately it was 1906). What did they know, or care, of Bela's art?

Scenes Like This Are Cue to Fast-Forward

I don't buy notion that Lugosi never caught on properly to the English language. No one said that about Paul Lukas, a BL countryman whose accent seems to me more pronounced. Lugosi was a master at emphasis on precisely the right words, at all times through Bride Of The Monster. I think he understood English, at least dramatic use of it, better than lots who'd been born to the language. And I don't sense a learning curve either, for he's as practiced with our words in 1929's The Thirteenth Chair as he would be in Bride Of The Monster. All of Dracula lines are immortal because of force Lugosi lends them. He'll pick a word or two from a sentence to emphasize, and make a blockbuster of every speech. No actor was better at showmanlike recital of dialogue. I'd love to have been present for one of Bela's spook shows or doing Dracula, or maybe Arsenic and Old Lace, on stage. Lugosi was larger than life right to the finish. Consider this: he was past seventy for Bride Of The Monster, and still the scare element in a lead part. Bride was for Lugosi what those 60's AIP's would be for Karloff, old men who'd lost none of menace they had sold from beginnings. If only Bela could have hung on for the horror boom that was coming with sale of Universal oldies to TV and gothic revival in theatres.

But hold on --- Lugosi was already all over television. Most of his chillers had been for independents or poverty row, and so were sold early to tube-cast. BL and his fans had ready access to oldies on L.A. stations (recall the scene where he watches White Zombie with Johnny Depp's Ed Wood). Vintage Universals were still playing theatres too, under Realart auspice, all over town ... throughout the country ... right up to TV release after Lugosi died. Bride Of The Monster meanwhile came and went, hobbled thanks to small-change distribution. What if a major had handled it, say United Artists as with The Black Sleep of the following year? If Bride had done half of Sleep's eventual business, it would have been a major hit in terms of low-budget horror. But that wasn't to be. Lugosi's last starring part, final speaking role, ran second billed behind mainstream Hollywood stuff, or other cheapies. By 1958, Bride joined what was by now virtually all of Lugosi backlog being televised. But it wasn't altogether done in theatres. I would have startling rendezvous with Bride Of The Monster at our Liberty Theatre in 1972, as late show bonus after a reissued 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. And the 35mm Bride print was brand new. Our newspaper ad read "Bela Lagosi in Bride Of The Monster." I thought about sending correction to the editor, but who'd care?

There's another Tom Weaver "Script From The Crypt" I want to mention. This one is for The Indestructible Man, a 1956 nerve-jangler with Lon Chaney as a heist thug raised from death thanks to ill-advised science practiced by Robert Shayne and later McHale's Navier Joe Flynn. I liked The Indestructible Man from seeing it as charm on Channel 8 bracelet that was weekly Sat morning play of Allied Artists sci-fi. They'd pad the movies with a "teaser" scene before credits and s-l-o-w crawls explaining action (or lack) we're about to see. Unlike too much of his 50's work, Lon is Main Man in addition to being Indestructible, this among precious few star parts I recall from him post-war. Weaver tells the whole background, his patented "Fun Facts" a delight carried forward from previous Script/Crypts and ones to come. There is so much humor to Weaver's work, but never at the expense of our horror heroes. He's respectful, but never stuffy, nor smug like too much of spoofing crowd that paint the genre with camp because they understand too little about it. I only wish Chaney had post-resurrection dialogue, but he does have a lulu of a swear-revenge speech from behind bars that gets The Indestructible Man off to compelling start. There's also virtual tour of L.A.'s Bunker Hill of later deconstruction, plus Lon on the loose in noir cradle that was/still is The Bradbury Building. The Indestructible Man and Bride Of The Monster are available on DVD and streaming. Get both, and the books, for sure-thing watch and read parlay. Like previous Bride Of The Gorilla from Weaver, they sure gave me hours of fun.