Review: Philip J. Riley's 'The Return of Frankenstein'

Bride of Frankenstein went through several iterations on its way to becoming the greatest monster movie ever made. Philip MacDonald, who’d later adapt Rebecca for Hitchcock and The Body Snatcher for Robert Wise, imagined Frankenstein’s invention of a death ray as an integral plot element of the sequel to James Whale’s 1931 smash. L.G. Blochman, who enjoyed greater success as a mystery novelist than a screenwriter, had a more fanciful vision in which the mad doctor and his bride Elizabeth leave their troubles behind to work as puppeteers in a traveling carnival. John L. Balderston, who’d adapted the original Frankenstein, got closest to the film we know and adore, though his screenplay was a much darker affair, more faithful to Mary Shelley with a meatier role for the Bride than Elsa Lanchester got to play in the finished film. There’s no Dr. Pretorius in his draft dated June 1934, no Minnie, no humor or homunculi. The Monster, however, does get to talk a lot more and a lot more articulately. He also gets to milk a cow and eat a muskrat. Plus, Fritz is back, because Balderston apparently forgot that the Monster wrung his neck in the first film. So much for continuity.

Philip J. Riley compiled MacDonald and Blochman’s treatments and Balderston’s complete screenplay in his recent book The Return of Frankenstein (this was the preferred title for a while since the producer’s realized the Bride wasn’t actually Frankenstein’s intended…though Balderston does have the Monster refer to himself as Frankenstein a couple of times! So much for knowing who your main character is…). Like all entries in Riley’s “Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters” series (or the “Filmonster Series-Lost Scripts,” as it’s now called), The Return of Frankenstein is a juicy tidbit of film history cluing us in on what might have been. Sometimes the scrapped scripts are better than what ended up on screen, as was the case with Dracula’s Daughter, the most essential entry in Riley’s series. In the case of Bride of Frankenstein, we ended up with the very best monster picture imaginable, elevated incalculably by James Whale and William Hurlbut’s witty and imaginative revisions. The treatments and screenplay in this book aren’t nearly as much fun to read as Whale’s movie is to watch, but they are still fascinating, essential documents for any classic monster education. If nothing else, they really make you appreciate the depth of James Whale’s genius.

Review: 'Poster Art from Classic Monster Films'

During a recent trip to Paris, my wife and I were passing a cinema presenting a revival of In the Heat of the Night. She commented that the poster looked strangely modern. It was, indeed, a non-vintage photo composite, the kind you’ll see promoting any contemporary film, slapped outside any contemporary theater. Quite a shame, considering that the original poster advertising Norman Jewison’s film was terrific: graphic, kinetic, painted. It was art, something contemporary movie posters most certainly are not.

Prior to the ‘80s, painted movie posters were the norm, and the loss of them meant the loss of a legitimate subcategory of pop art. In his new book, Poster Art from Classic Monster Films, Philip J. Riley eulogizes this sadly defunct art form by presenting striking, full-color posters from the major films of Universal’s golden horror age, beginning with 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and creeping through the decades to 1954’s This Island Earth, when that era shuddered its last.

These posters are magnificent. Many will be familiar to Monster fans, though there are some interesting variations included throughout. The real treat in Poster Art from Classic Monster Films is Riley’s inclusion of numerous hand-tinted lobby cards, so we get to see the Frankenstein Monster’s beige (not green!) face, Ygor’s purple cloak, and Im Ho Tep’s green (not beige!) bandages for the first time. Certain films, such as Dracula (both English and Spanish language versions) and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, were promoted with what looks like exclusively painted lobby cards, although it’s possible the artist just put on the tinting with an unusually heavy hand. Even more fascinating, Erik’s face has been blurred out from the Phantom of the Opera lobby cards, probably because Universal didn’t want to spoil Lon Chaney’s big, horrifying surprise.

There’s no commentary, and barely any captions, so it would have been nice if Riley had supplied a bit more text, perhaps providing some information on the artists. Still, this is art that speaks for itself, and we can be grateful to him for collecting it all in such a swell volume. It’s nice to see that even when Universal was cutting corners on the screen, as it did with some of its later Horrors, it still invested in memorable, artful promo paintings. If only modern film companies maintained such attention to detail.

The Revenge of Some Classic Horror Novelizations

Horror historian Philip J. Riley recently announced the NightMare Series, a new reprint line of classic novelizations of classic Hammer and AIP flicks. First up will be Dean Owen’s 1960 book based on Brides of Dracula. The Revenge of Frankenstein follows. Nine other titles with new introductions are already in the works.

Review: 'War Eagles: An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters'

King Kong was the Star Wars of its day, a nutso detonation of imagination and futuristic special effects that could have been a massive folly but ended up a massive blockbuster and pop-cultural milestone. The obvious follow-up to such a success is a sequel, and RKO Pictures certainly cooked one up with the well-meaning but slight Son of Kong. No matter, though. Kong producer and co-director Merian C. Cooper had heftier game in mind. He intended his film’s true successor to be a picture that combined the King Kong structure with a bit of chest-pounding patriotism.

Like Kong, War Eagles was to be divided into three major acts moving from the planning of a harrowing trek in the U.S. to a prehistoric jungle island, then climaxing in New York City for an explosive showdown set near an iconic landmark. Only this time the trek was to be an globe-circling air flight to promote a brand of antacid, the jungle was to be populated by giant eagles rather than a giant ape, and the final battle was to be fought between eagle-riding Vikings and an unidentified foreign air force near the Statue of Liberty, rather than U.S. fighters and Kong exchanging blows atop the Empire State Building.

By 1940, War Eagles was basically ready to go. A ream of production art had been drafted, Ray Harryhausen was on board to handle the stop-motion eagles, and Cyril Hume (who later penned Forbidden Planet) had completed the script. But as World War II reached a boil, RKO got cold feet regarding the film’s themes of invasion by zeppelin, and Cooper decided he’d be of more use as fighter than filmmaker and reenlisted in the air force. War Eagles was shelved and died the death of the neglected.

Very little information about this film has been available since its inception aside from a brief piece in a 1977 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland that sparked the enduring fascination of 13-year old David Conover. Decades later, Conover has unearthed a staggering wealth of pre-production War Eagles material, including Cooper’s original treatment, a great deal of art, photos of the stop-motion eagle skeletons, a wacky article from Flying Aces magazine that inspired the film’s climax, a slew of production notes, and most significantly, the final draft of Hume’s script. All of this is gathered in the latest installment of Philip J. Riley’s Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters series (Riley essentially takes a back seat as editor for this volume, while Conover supplies the text).


No previous book in this fantastic series has offered so many juicy rarities or provided so much illumination on such a little-known project. Along with all of the vintage archival material, Conover offers a very detailed narration linking the various artifacts (which is something previous volumes lacked) and a fine interview with Harryhausen. The one unfortunate aspect of the book is that all of its rare artwork is presented in low-quality, black and white reproductions. It would have been nice to see this stuff in its sharp, full-color glory (unlike Kong, War Eagles was supposed to get the Technicolor treatment), but such is the nature of publishing with a small press. This quibble aside, classic monster movie fans will be most grateful to Conover, Riley, and Bear Mountain Media for finally making all of this fascinating and highly valuable material available.

Review: ‘Robert Florey’s Frankenstein’ by Philip J. Riley

One of the better-known nuggets of horror-flick history is that Bela Lugosi was originally intended to play the Frankenstein Monster in Universal’s second great monster picture of 1931. Why Lugosi did not end up donning the flattop and neck-electrodes in the original feature-length Frankenstein is a matter of much debate—he either exited the role because he objected to playing a sexless, silent brute, or he was fired from the project much like Robert Florey, who was originally slotted to direct. Florey and Lugosi went off to make the less impressive Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) together, and James Whale was hired to helm Frankenstein with Boris Karloff starring as the Monster.

When Florey and Garrett Fort wrote the Frankenstein screenplay, they did so still under the impression that Lugosi would be monstering it up as the Monster. Philip J. Riley now brings us this original draft as part of his “Alternate History to Classic Film Monsters” series, which I’ve often praised on this site. Robert Florey’s Frankenstein is not as impressive as the previous installments in the series, although that is hardly Riley’s fault. The problem is that this script really isn’t that drastically different from the one Whale filmed, making it less historically valuable than totally unique works such as Nina Wilcox Putnam’s Cagliostro or Bernard Schubert’s Wolfman vs. Dracula.



Although a 170-page script should be bursting with revelations, considering that the released film was a mere 69 minutes (the rule of thumb is that a single screenplay page equals one minute of screen time), it only reaches such epic length due to Florey and Fort’s tendency to over-describe their scenes. The climactic hunt for the Monster creaks along for nearly twenty pages. The boldest difference between script and film is a sexually charged scene in which the Monster stalks a peasant couple tussling in their bedroom. The relationships between Elizabeth and Victor Moritz, and Frankenstein and Dr. Waldman, are also more complex in the script. Much to the script’s detriment, the scenes in which Fritz culls a madman’s brain for his boss and the Monster has a fateful encounter with a little girl by a riverbed are far more simplistic than what wound up in Whale’s film. Furthermore, the Monster is far less sympathetic and the script is decidedly humorless with a completely downbeat ending that might have kept Bride of Frankenstein from being born. Satisfyingly, a lot of these problems are acknowledged in the rather insightful script notes included as an appendix at the end of Riley’s book. A second appendix finds Fort defending his script, even though he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Fans of Riley’s series will certainly want to add Robert Florey’s Frankenstein to their collections, even though it is a relatively unenlightening read. Hey, not every lost script can be R.C. Sheriff’s Dracula’s Daughter.

Psychobabble recommends 'Cagliostro: An Alternate History for ClassicFilm Monsters'

Count Allesandro di Cagliostro was an 18th century magician, scam artist, opportunist, and globetrotter. He founded an occult church called the Egyptian Rite of Masonry, lived in an ornate palace full of hieroglyphic-etched walls and statues of Egyptian gods and goddesses, and was ultimately put to death during the Inquisition. Such a colorful character was made for the movies, but as a monstery successor to Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, Cagliostro didn’t quite deliver the ghoulish goods. That’s why Universal Studios saw to it that Nina Wilcox Putnam’s screenplay inspired by the wicked mountebank was rejiggered into the film we all know and adore as The Mummy.

The script by Putnam, a novelist and short story writer with a biography nearly as eccentric as that of Cagliostro (she created the 1040 income tax form and was known to tool around in a toga as a protest against “the madness of clothing”!), displays some essential similarities to the horror classic it would become. Both center on dual-identity creeps who slither out of the past to reclaim their lost loves via bizarre Egyptian rituals. But, as stated above, Universal wanted a more traditionally iconic monster rather than a time-hopping magician, and some of the scenes Putnam included in her script likely drew gasps from the studio suits. It’s hard to imagine the climactic ritual sequence featuring a bloody, severed goat’s head, “almost naked” dancing girls, and elaborately described half human/half animal gods and goddesses making its way into a 1932 film.

While there’s no doubt that there would be a void in Monster Moviedom without The Mummy, Putnam’s script contains enough scenes like the one above to make me miss Cagliostro a little. There’s also a terrific magic-show sequence (which, bizarrely enough, would basically be shot for the 2006 film The Illusionist) and a genuinely suspenseful race to rescue the damsel from Cagliostro. We may not be able to watch these sequences on screen starring Boris Karloff (who, of course, would be cast as the lead in The Mummy), but the publication of Philip J. Riley’s Cagliostro or The King of the Dead: An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters makes it possible to read Putnam’s vivid screenplay. The book is supplemented with Wilcox’s even less-monstery 10-page treatment, biographies of her and the subject of her unproduced film, and some essential details regarding the development of the script. As is the case with all of Riley’s “Alternate Histories for Classic Film Monsters”, it’s to be treasured by Classic Film Monster freaks.

June 24, 2010: Psychobabble recommends Philip J. Riley’s ‘Lon Chaney as Dracula’

Before Bela Lugosi forged his iconic performance as Count Dracula, another horror legend was slotted to play the role. Having risen to superstardom by playing grotesques in silent pictures such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, and London After Midnight, Lon Chaney Sr. was to play the vampire in what would have been his second talking picture. The film was well past the planning stages—with Tod Browning hired to direct and Dudley Murphy and Louis Bromfield penning the script—when Chaney’s death by throat hemorrhage in 1930 halted it. Losing little time, Universal replaced Chaney with Bela Lugosi and hired Garrett Fort to write a new script in time for the film to be released less than six months after Chaney’s death.


Long thought to be lost, Murphy and Bromfield’s unproduced Dracula script is the latest discovery of cinematic archaeologist Philip J. Riley, whose Alternate History for Classic Monster Movies series continues to marvel. This latest volume is a more eclectic affair than the ones about James Whale’s Dracula’s Daughter and Wolfman vs. Dracula. Beginning with Riley’s brief introduction to the subject, the book moves on to Bromfield’s extensive, 50-page treatment, complete with long stretches of dialogue. Chaney was adamant that his film-adaptations remained faithful to the novels on which they were based, and the treatment reveals a picture considerably closer to Bram Stoker than Fort’s script based on the Dracula stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The Count is also described in more animalistic terms, with his hairy body, wolfish ears, and long fangs, than Lugosi’s vampire, probably to take better advantage of Chaney’s makeup prowess. After the treatment comes the opening passage of Murphy and Bromfield’s script, which draws out Jonathan Harker’s arrival at Castle Dracula for 20-pages, suggesting a more epic film than the one with Lugosi. The script ends abruptly during Harker’s initial meeting with Dracula because of Chaney’s death, but Riley’s book still has several more treasures in its crypt: a complete cast, crew, and title list for the 1931 Dracula, F.W. Murnau’s complete shooting script for Nosferatu, which includes numerous notes by the director (Bromfield was given a copy of the script to help him along with constructing his vampire tale), and most valuably, Lon Chaney’s 12-page autobiography originally published in the September 1925 issue of Movie Magazine. While any classic horror enthusiast should be sufficiently lured by Bromfield’s fascinating treatment, Chaney’s autobiography is a clincher, offering a rare opportunity to read the man’s story in his own words, not to mention a wealth of terrific pictures.

April 14, 2010: Psychobabble recommends Philip J. Riley’s ‘The Wolfman vs. Dracula’

Several months ago I reviewed the first book in film historian Philip J. Riley’s “Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters” series. His book on the version of Dracula’s Daughter that was to be directed by James Whale was an invaluable archive of treatments, scripts, and notes about a film that may have been a milestone fusion of horror, comedy, sex, and fantasy along the lines of Whale’s masterpiece, Bride of Frankenstein. The second volume in Riley’s series, The Wolfman vs. Dracula, is not as bursting with original documents, but the film's utter obscurity makes it nearly as essential. That Whale was originally slated to direct Dracula’s Daughter is pretty well known among classic horror cultists. David Skal’s indispensable The Monster Show, published in 1993, contained an abundance of key details about the script. However, even Riley had never heard of The Wolfman vs. Dracula until recently. I sure hadn’t. Screenwriter Bernard L. Schubert (Mark of the Vampire; The Mummy’s Curse) unearthed his script for this long forgotten project sometime in the eighties. His scant recollections about the film preface his complete script in Riley’s book.

In short, the film was to serve as a direct sequel to both Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Son of Dracula. Lon Chaney Jr. was to re-don his fuzzy make-up as lycanthrope Larry Talbot. More significantly, the film was also intended to return Bela Lugosi to his rightful place as Dracula (a most welcome return considering Chaney’s hopeless portrayal of the count in Son… although an early concept had Chaney playing both Talbot and Dracula in Schubert’s film!). The film was also to be the second Universal Monster movie shot in color (Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains was the first). There are several references to this in the script.

The film was dropped because Universal didn’t think they needed to waste the expense of color film stock on a monster movie that already had a built-in audience. Schubert went off to write The Mummy’s Curs, and filed his script away in his garage for forty years. The closest we got to Dracula meeting the Wolfman in their own picture was Columbia Pictures’ The Return of the Vampire with Lugosi as a vampire who hangs out with a werewolf henchman. That film was released in 1944— the same year Universal’s The Wolfman vs. Dracula was scheduled to hit.

This one remaining artifact of The Wolfman vs. Dracula (dated May 29, 1944) is a first draft, which means it probably would have gone through numerous changes had it eventually been shot. As it stands, the script tells the rather perverse tale of Talbot marrying a peasant girl in order to impel her hangman father to plug him with a silver bullet, ending his reign of wolfy terror once and for all (well, at least until the inevitable sequel). Unfortunately, Dad has already promised his daughter’s hand to Dracula, who takes issue with Talbot’s cock-blocking. Written in the charmingly clunky, exposition-heavy manner of later day Universal Monster flicks like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, but with a greater emphasis on drawing-room debate than bestial carousing, The Wolfman vs. Dracula would have been quite a strange entry in the monster canon, especially considering the intention to film it in color. Yet I could still hear Chaney’s dejected voice speaking Talbot’s dialogue and Lugosi’s chewy baritone speaking Dracula’s in my head as I read this book. Monster fans won’t want to be without it.

November 3, 2009: Psychobabble recommends ‘Dracula’s Daughter- An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters'

When I posted a piece about the lost versions of Dracula’s Daughter just two weeks ago, I had no idea that a book was poised to be published that would be the final word on this fascinating nook of film history. At the risk of sounding melodramatic (or, at the very least, really geeky), I literally gasped when I learned about Philip J. Riley’s Dracula's Daughter - An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters. Riley’s book gathers precious documents detailing what might have been regarding the first sequel to Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Dracula, such as John L. Balderston’s 10-page treatment, which was rejected by the suits at Universal Studio for being too shockingly perverse, and R.C. Sheriff’s entire script for the version that would have been filmed by Frankenstein director James Whale. The book also contains fascinating recollections from Carl Laemmle, Jr., the head producer at Universal when the company was turning out it’s greatest monster films; the full text of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest”, the story that inspired Dracula’s Daughter; proposed poster art for the aborted versions of the film; and spare but priceless historical and biographical tidbits by Riley.


Without question, Dracula’s Daughter- An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters contains the most important artifacts of classic horror film history to be made public this century. Finally, we get to read in specific detail just what so offended Laemmle and Co. about Balderston’s treatment and realize that his film could have been the greatest of all of Universal’s Dracula pictures, not to mention one of the most faithful to Stoker’s original text—Balderston includes many of the author’s details that did not make it into Browning’s film, including a character based on Quincey Morris. Sheriff’s script is equally jaw-dropping: Whale was far more interested in filming the musical Showboat than another monster picture, so he had Sheriff make his screenplay for Dracula’s Daughter so outrageous that Laemmle would never green light it. This included a flashback showing Dracula being transformed into a vampire by a Yoda-like creature and a pair of overtly gay heroes. Whale got his wish and Showboat was released in 1936.

I’ll not give away much more about this book, which is a trove of revelations and an utter thrill to read. Most exciting of all is the fact that it’s just the beginning. Riley’s “Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters” series will include future installments about scrapped versions of The Wolfman and The Invisible Man that would have starred Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney’s Dracula, Wolfman vs. Dracula, and more. Unfathomably essential.