I wrote a documentary script about the busted Hammer/Screen Gems pilot; it answers some of the questions about it, and I try to put it in context.
For my fellow fans:
In 1956, fledgling American screenwriter Milton Subotsky wrote a script, "Frankenstein and the Monster." It's likely that Subotsky and business partner Max Rosenberg knew of the imminent release to TV of the older Universal "Frankenstein" films, Columbia Pictures' TV arm Screen Gems having licensed them that year.
Rosenberg had little luck raising production funds, but New York based financier Eliot Hyman forwarded the manuscript to his friend James Carreras of Hammer Films in England. Subotsky's script, a tired pastiche of "Son of Frankenstein" and only 50 pages long at that, was rejected by Hammer's line producer Anthony Hinds, and the project risked running afoul of legal challenges from Universal Pictures, trodding as it did on elements in their copyrighted Boris Karloff films from the 1930s.
Nevertheless, Hinds acquired the script, assigned it to novice writer Jimmy Sangster, who rewrote it completely. References to any character or incident in the older films was vetted, the character of Frankenstein was promoted from well-intentioned student to Byronic baron, and Hammer shot the film in color. Warner Bros. released it as THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
By August, 1957, Warners reported a box office return of two million dollars in the US alone on CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Despite the success, little of the proceeds dribbled back to the company that actually made the film.
A frustrated James Carreras fired off an angry letter to Warren Cowan at Warner Bros.
JAMES CARRERAS memo:
I am sorry I missed you in New York. If I had seen you I was going to make a complaint of a very successful film handled by your organization and who is told nothing, absolutely nothing as to how the picture is doing in the territories handled by you. I understand that in Singapore you took more money with my film than practically any other picture you have ever distributed in that territory, but nobody tells me this good news. To this, I add the USA and Canada. I have to hear that fourth-hand, which I am sure you'll agree is depressing for an independent Producer who started with such high hopes of American distribution, and who had in mind other such future deals.
Elliot Hyman tells me he has been trying to get an estimate of how much is likely to be the producer's share from the USA and Canada and he has gotten exactly nowhere, which to me, seems quite extraordinary. I should have thought that an Organisation like yours handling this great success of mine would have kept me fully informed as to the great success you are having in distribution.
For some reason, Warners was displeased at the tone of Carreras' letter, expressing no further desire to deal with Hammer.
With his company chronically on the verge of insolvency despite having a world-wide hit, James Carreras sought for commitments that would keep the company active in the long run.
Through the Variety Club, he met Mike Frankovich, executive in charge of overseas production for Columbia Pictures. Eager to obtain the second Frankenstein, Frankovich brokered a deal that included Hammer's two non-horror films at a bargain rate.
Columbia also agreed to finance three films yearly for three years, and threw in a bonus. In conjunction with Columbia's subsidiary Screen Gems, Hammer would make a TV series.
The project would be called "Tales of Frankenstein," but only eight stories would feature the title character. The rest would be generic horror or suspense stories.
Half of the 26 episodes would be shot by Hammer at Bray Studios, the rest filmed at the Columbia facilities. Ironically, the episodes with the Baron would be shot in Hollywood. Budgets for the Columbia shows would be about $80,000 apiece. The Bray productions would have to be made for about $45,000.
Desperate to keep his under-financed company alive, Carreras accepted the terms.
By late 1957, Screen Gems had seen "Shock Theater" break records coast to coast in the US. It assembled a second batch of old films, calling the program "Son of Shock."
The American Broadcasting Company, perennially in distant third place after CBS and NBC, was eager to get out of the cellar.
In 1955, The Alfred Hitchcock Show had debuted on CBS. This darkly comic suspense anthology was a critical and popular success. To ABC executives, an anthology tied into the popularity of horror seemed a godsend.
ABC penciled in "Tales of Frankenstein" on its schedule for Fall, 1958-- but only if a sponsor could be found. For that, an example of the show would actually have to be produced.
By early autumn of 1957, a format was established, and script ideas were solicited.
In October, Jimmy Sangster turned in his feature script for "Blood of Frankenstein," as well as writing a carbon copy of the script entitled "Blood of the Vampire," for a rival company, Eros Films. He wrote to Hammer to volunteer his services.
Dear Jimmy, JC has passed me your letter regarding the "Frankenstein" TV series. Anticipating a deal on these lines will be set up very shortly and knowing how fully booked your future is, I am writing to ask you if you would be available to write six thirty minute stories for the series. If so, when can you start and when can you deliver. Then we can sit down and work out monetary matters? Please advise me as soon as possible.
Sangster reponded:
Dear Mike, as for the further adventures of Frankenstein:
One. He starts to travel, visiting various new cities and countries. There he is feted as an important man by the medical councils, and he does nasties to some of their patients.
Two. He has a set-to with Zombies, on the assumption that he has worked for years putting life into dead bodies, while here there are dead bodies that move around without any life whatsoever. This to him is fascinating.
Three. He dabbles in some voodoo and gets himself a big Black assistant for a while.
Four. He becomes interested in Black Magic and the power of the Devil? he considers the Devil and he have a certain affinity.
Five. He works on mutations and retrogressions whereby his dabblings in time factors turn people into primeval slime.
Six. He works on the preservation of living tissue whereby he freezes bodies in blocks of ice for long periods of time.
Seven. He works on the property of the vacuum, where if you put a human being in one, its blood boils.
Eight. He works on the theory of pain. How much pain can a human stand. To do this he extracts by surgery the main nerve centers. Imagine having a tooth drilled where the drill touches a nerve as thick as your finger. Love, Jim the Nasty. PS., The above are all copyright (as from now)
His vision of the Baron remained consistent with his first script-- a brilliant, obsessive Victorian roué unhampered by decency.
Meanwhile, Tony Hinds developed other, rather less outré stories with different writers.
A.R. Rawlinson had written mysteries for Hammer in the early 50s. In his story outline, a traveler meets girl named Lisa in the castle, apparently held captive. The Baron agrees to let the man take her away-- if he can get any emotional response out of her. The girl, of course, is a creation of the Baron-- and the emotional response is a homicidal one.
Story two was authored by Hugh Woodhouse, later a writer on the Gerry Anderson puppet shows. The Baron creates a duplicate of himself, Frankenstein 2, which shares all his brain impulses.
When the experiment goes wrong, the imperfect duplicate acts out the Baron's repressed urges-- that is, killing people.
In the third outline, penned by Cyril Kersh, the Baron drugs and murders a colleague but keeps his mind alive, to learn the secrets of the world beyond death.
In a fourth story, written by Edward Dryhurst, the Baron freezes an unwary victim in a cryogenics experiment.
Peter Bryan, later to adapt Hound of the Baskervilles for Hammer, and write Plague of the Zombies, drafted the fifth story. The Baron entices a sideshow mesmerist to restore the memory of his latest creation. The revived monster kills the hypnotist-- and the Baron transplants his brain into the monster.
In November, even as Dracula went before the cameras at Bray, Michael Carreras went to oversee Hammer's first Hollywood production.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
Awful, awful recollections. I was there. I don't know, it was just disaster. I mean, the people who were involved, which was Screen Gems, had no idea of what they were trying to make.
When I got there, I took with me six scripts, all written by Jimmy Sangster, and all ready to shoot. I mean, you know, good, professional nick. And the first thing they made me do is to sit down and listen to the title music. They had some jingle. That confused me slightly, that we were listening to jingle music before we even made anything. But they were very proud of that.
And then they started to trot out some directors, who I think they kept in cupboards on the lower floor, ready to work, Have-Megaphone-Will-Travel.
Of all the possible directors available, Screen Gems chose 56 year old Curt Siodmak.The best of Siodmak's scripts were clever, inventive and eerie, in equal proportions-- such as Beast with 5 Fingers and I Walked with a Zombie, a subtle Val Lewton film which was basically Jane Eyre set in Haiti.
At worst, Siodmak was a hack, recycling his own or others' ideas. His assignment for Universal, the script for Black Friday, resulted in his own lifetime annuity, the novel Donovan's Brain, filmed several times (and never with Siodmak involved in the screenplay). Other Siodmak scripts also leaned on the "brain transplant" idea: House of Frankenstein, Hausen's Memory, Creature with the Atom Brain.
Meanwhile, brother Robert directed such film noir classics as The Spiral Staircase, Criss Cross, and The Killers, with Burt Lancaster.
Attempting to equal or surpass his brother, Curt Siodmak became a writer-director, with less than astounding results. In his Bride of the Gorilla, Raymond Burr believes he transforms into a shaggy beast. The original wolf man, Lon Chaney, stayed on the sidelines as a jungle policeman. The female lead was Barbara Payton, a tabloid favorite because of her abusive love triangle with actors Tom Neal and Franchot Tone. With her brief career on an alcoholic downslide, she became persona non grata in Hollywood, and thus affordable to Hammer which cast her in Four Sided Triangle the next year, a film directed by Terence Fisher.
Siodmak's luck as director was only slightly better. On the 1953 film Magnetic Monster, producer Ivan Tors realized director Siodmak's footage did not intercut with stock footage which was the heart of the story. Three days into shooting, film editor Herbert Stock replaced Siodmak as director. The same year, producer Tom Gries hired Siodmak to write and direct a remake of Donovan's Brain. Gries then fired Siodmak before filming began. He wrote the story for "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," but his caustic comments to producer Charles Schneer got Siodmak replaced.
Films that Siodmak did complete were not exactly memorable-- such as Curucu, Beast of the Amazon. The titular beast turns out to be a native in a ludicrous aborigine mask. Also in Brazil, Siodmak wrote and directed Love Slaves of the Amazon. The less said, the better.
Nevertheless, Siodmak's name was linked to the old Universal horrors, and Columbia deemed him acceptable as a director.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I just couldn't believe the whole scene. So I kicked up a bit of a stink and we started again by them getting out a list of writers. And finally, having gone through them with their head writing honcho, he said to me, "There's a guy here, I think lives in England, called Jimmy Sangster, why don't we try him?" So we did full circle. I had the six scripts under my arm, which they hadn't read, probably Jimmy'd put another name on them, I don't know.
So I said to them, "Well, I actually know this man, I have some influence. I think I can get him." Then I told them that all these were his, I mean, the whole thing just fell apart.
Curt Siodmak got himself appointed associate producer of the show as a well. He also wrote the story for the pilot film. With astonishing originality, his plot involved a brain transplant.
Screenplay duties fell to the team of Henry Kuttner and his wife Catherine Moore. As a team or separately, they were masters of short horror stories, mainstays of pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Amazing Fantasy.
However, the Kuttners were ordered to do little more than flesh out Siodmak's outline and add dialogue. Shortly after completing the script, Henry Kuttner died at the age of 43.
The obvious choice for the lead role was Peter Cushing. Since 1952, Cushing had been a mainstay of British television.
Fortunately for him, he was in the position to decline such an offer. For the first time in a career that went back to the 1930s, he had found regular employment in theatrical feature films. Curse of Frankenstein made Cushing a film star. A small-screen series would have been a major backward step in his career. He was also loath to leave his wife Helen for the extended period necessary to shoot in the US. Her chronic respiratory problems were a constant source of concern. In any event, Cushing would be making two theatrical films back to back for Hammer-- Dracula, then the Frankenstein sequel, then--
-- co-star in another company's large-budget swashbuckler, John Paul Jones.
Instead, the role was offered to Austrian actor Anton Diffring, best known for playing cold-hearted Nazis. Anthony Hinds had spotted Diffring in a TV adaptation of "The Man in Half-Moon Street," about a man rendered immortal through surgery and serial murder.
HAZEL COURT
Anton Diffring was one of the premier actors of the Berlin Theater. He was very well thought-of in Germany. There was a wall, always. He was very charming, and very well mannered, but there was always that 'wall.'
Hazel Court, female lead of Curse of Frankenstein, would later co-star with Diffring in Hammer's version of The Man in Half-Moon Street entitled The Man Who Could Cheat Death. Ironically, Hammer had offered that role to Peter Cushing, who declined. But that was a year in the future.For now, Diffring was available at the right price, and willing to go to Hollywood.
American actress Helen Westcott played the heroine, who comes to the Baron for help, only to have the him steal her husband's brain.
Westcott was no stranger to monsters herself. During a brief contract with Universal, she played the suffragette niece of Boris Karloff in "Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde."
Character actor Ludwig Stossell provided another link with the old Universal films. German-born Stossell had had a role in the 1945 monster rally, "House of Dracula."
Odd man out and with no input regarding casting, Carreras focused on the physical aspects of production. He arranged a screening of Curse of Frankenstein for principal members of the creative team-- the director, the cameraman, the set designer and the make-up man. With the facilities of a major Hollywood studio-- or even a near-major such as Columbia-- the pilot could be impressively mounted.
Screen Gems assigned Clay Campbell to create the look of the Monster. As head of the department, Campbell's specialty was glamour make-ups, but for the few horror films made by Columbia, Campbell provided the goods. He designed the grisly finale of the 1943 film "Return of the Vampire." The undead villain liquefies in the rays of the sun, courtesy of a wax mask of Bela Lugosi, melted over a plaster skull. Campbell also created a wolf man for the same film, a design he revived a decade later with The Werewolf, a 1956 film for Columbia.
That film's hero was played by Don Megowan-- usually cast as a heavy because of his great size and scowling looks. He also played the Gill Man in the last of the Creature from the Black Lagoon films for Universal. Screen Gems cast Megowan as the Monster in the pilot film.
Since Columbia owned the TV rights to Universal's films, they did not feel legally hamstrung as Hammer had been with "Curse of Frankenstein" and ordered Clay Campbell to created a variation on the familiar Monster.
To Michael Carreras, the square-topped brute was old-fashioned-- and not particularly frightening.
MICHAEL CARRERAS Memo to "I.B."
Attached is a much nearer version of how I feel the monster should look. However, I still feel that it does not go far enough. I suggest we seriously consider marking the face itself with further scar tissue and signs of burns, which are called for in the pilot script. I would appreciate your comments.
The comments fell on deaf ears. Screen Gems did not want a make-up that was "too horrible." Paradoxically, they wanted a horror show that would not horrify viewers. Hammer's other hallmark, sexually charged situations and low-cut gowns, were also ruled inappropriate for the television market.
One of Hammer's major selling points was period decor and lush color photography. By 1958, many TV shows were shot in color, though initially broadcast in black and white. In many producers' minds, the slight increase in expense would more than pay for itself in re-run syndication down the line, after color broadcasting systems were perfected. Again, Carreras' suggestions went unheeded. To save money, Screen Gems chose to shoot in black and white and emulate the old Universal look.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I don't know why they ever came to us in the first place, because we had made some fairly good Gothic stories.
From England, Jimmy Carreras argued that half-hour films could be shot at Bray for a mere $45,000, slightly more than half the cost of the Hollywood pilot. Always desperate to attract more cash, Colonel Carreras pestered Columbia executive Ralph Cohn.
JAMES CARRERAS memo:
Why don't we make more of them in England? I know we all agreed that only thirteen should be made here and the reason I am making such a bloody nuisance of myself is because I have tremendous faith in the series and I honestly believe we can make them here better than anyone else. Let me know when you are ready to start." James Carreras.
Screen Gems ignored the entreaty for obvious reasons. The more shows shot in England, the less money they kept in Hollywood. But further production funds were hypothetical at any rate. First, the pilot had to be sold. The chances of that happening were slim.
Siodmak's directorial style was rudimentary, at times even amateurish. Establishing shots did not match medium shots; medium shots did not intercut with close-ups. Other times, reverse angles would throw cinematic screen direction askew. In dialogue scenes, Siodmak invariably chose the most static of compositions, a medium two-shot with both performers in profile. Despite an elaborate and ornate laboratory with a multitude of working props, Siodmak covered these scenes with uncinematic and protracted long-shots.
Instead of contracting for an original music score, Screen Gems saved more money by using inexpensive library music.
Siodmak, who thought a continuing series of Frankenstein stories was fatuous, wrote a generic opening narration with one foot in both camps-- invoking the name Frankenstein, but leaving the stage open for one-shot dramas.
Editors Richard Fanit and Tony DiMarco cobbled together a title montage of scenes from the film and stock shots.
Siodmak's new narration rarely synchronized with the moving lips of the disembodied head in a crystal ball-- a shot lifted by the editors from the Universal movie versions of the old Inner Sanctum radio plays.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I went home, it was Christmas time, I couldn't bear it anymore, and Tony Hinds went over to finish the project. And even he couldn't get them to make a good film.
The end result was a 25 minute film with none of the elements that made Curse of Frankenstein a success-- nor much of the atmosphere of the old Universal films.
Upon viewing the pilot film, the ABC network was under-whelmed. Though they searched for several months, no commercial sponsor thought the film or the concept was viable.
Screen Gems tossed the half-hour film in a syndicated package of other busted pilots, which it sold as summer replacement filler to various stations over the next decade.
Hal Roach Productions attempted to fill the gap in the ABC's schedule by producing twelve films on speculation. The series, entitled The Veil, featured Boris Karloff as host and star. Despite Roach's association with ABC through programs like Racket Squad and My Little Margie, ABC passed. A syndicated sale also fell through. The series was never broadcast and the company went bankrupt the next year.
In January, 1959, ABC premiered One Step Beyond, sponsored by the Alcoa Corporation. An anthology based on true tales of ESP, its host and director was John Newland, who had portrayed Frankenstein in the abortive live broadcast with Lon Chaney in 1951. For cost reasons, many of the 92 episodes were shot in England, using Hammer Films alumni such as Christopher Lee and Anton Diffring, ingeniously cast as a Nazi officer. The series ran three years.
Twilight Zone debuted on CBS the same year. Like One Step Beyond, it would run for decades after its original five seasons, though it did not attract a large audience originally. Unlike The Veil, a second Boris Karloff series faired slightly better. Thriller, made at Universal, was a sixty-minute anthology which ran for two years beginning in 1960.
That year, Curt Siodmak wrote and directed another TV anthology, 13 Demon Street, shot in Sweden, in English. Lon Chaney, Jr., did the introductions, looking disheveled. Siodmak and the Swedish producer ended up not on speaking terms. As with Magnetic Monster years before, editor Herbert Strock was called in to finish post-production and replace Siodmak. The series was never broadcast outside of Sweden.
In later years, Siodmak would claim the producers of Thriller had copied his idea.
A decade after "Tales of Frankenstein" debacle, Hammer Films did make a series for ABC with a major American studio: "Journey to the Unknown." But 20th Century Fox insisted on contemporary stories, without Hammer's customary period decor. They also furnished their own producer, Joan Harrison, late of the Alfred Hitchcock Show.
After a year of mediocre ratings, ABC canceled the series. The frustrating experience of deferring to Joan Harrison on casting, stories, production and tone, led to Anthony Hinds' retirement from Hammer in 1970, at age 48.
If nothing else, "Tales of Frankenstein" provided Hammer with raw material. The company continued making theatrical sequels, with Peter Cushing reprising his role.
Tony Hinds fleshed out Peter Bryan's TV outline featuring a carnival mesmerist. Since it was produced for Universal, Hammer was obliged to use the classic square-headed monster make-up. Ironically, this was probably Hammer's least imaginative Frankenstein monster.
A.R. Rawlinson 's tale of a soulless female became the jumping-off point for Tony Hinds' script, Frankenstein Created Woman.
Hammer even recycled the original Subotsky script title. The final chapter in the company's saga added two words to the provisional title of "Curse of Frankenstein," and became "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell," released in 1974.
Having bought out the company from his father, Michael Carreras tried to diversify the Hammer product. With the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, he made two films, Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a cross of horror and kung-fu, and a crime film called Shatter. For the two character parts, Michael Carreras hired both of his Baron Frankensteins-- Peter Cushing, and Anton Diffring.
Max Rosenberg, whose connection to Hammer's Gothic success was always tenuous at best, claimed to his dying day in 2005 that he had produced Hammer's first Frankenstein. That is, unless someone called his bluff, at which point he would laugh and admit the truth.
And "Tales of Frankenstein," the completed film, was never copyrighted. The project which Columbia saw as a network cash cow, and Hammer viewed as a stave against bankruptcy, lapsed into the public domain. It has been released by assorted video distributors since then, making money for everyone except those who made it.
For my fellow fans:
In 1956, fledgling American screenwriter Milton Subotsky wrote a script, "Frankenstein and the Monster." It's likely that Subotsky and business partner Max Rosenberg knew of the imminent release to TV of the older Universal "Frankenstein" films, Columbia Pictures' TV arm Screen Gems having licensed them that year.
Rosenberg had little luck raising production funds, but New York based financier Eliot Hyman forwarded the manuscript to his friend James Carreras of Hammer Films in England. Subotsky's script, a tired pastiche of "Son of Frankenstein" and only 50 pages long at that, was rejected by Hammer's line producer Anthony Hinds, and the project risked running afoul of legal challenges from Universal Pictures, trodding as it did on elements in their copyrighted Boris Karloff films from the 1930s.
Nevertheless, Hinds acquired the script, assigned it to novice writer Jimmy Sangster, who rewrote it completely. References to any character or incident in the older films was vetted, the character of Frankenstein was promoted from well-intentioned student to Byronic baron, and Hammer shot the film in color. Warner Bros. released it as THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
By August, 1957, Warners reported a box office return of two million dollars in the US alone on CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Despite the success, little of the proceeds dribbled back to the company that actually made the film.
A frustrated James Carreras fired off an angry letter to Warren Cowan at Warner Bros.
JAMES CARRERAS memo:
I am sorry I missed you in New York. If I had seen you I was going to make a complaint of a very successful film handled by your organization and who is told nothing, absolutely nothing as to how the picture is doing in the territories handled by you. I understand that in Singapore you took more money with my film than practically any other picture you have ever distributed in that territory, but nobody tells me this good news. To this, I add the USA and Canada. I have to hear that fourth-hand, which I am sure you'll agree is depressing for an independent Producer who started with such high hopes of American distribution, and who had in mind other such future deals.
Elliot Hyman tells me he has been trying to get an estimate of how much is likely to be the producer's share from the USA and Canada and he has gotten exactly nowhere, which to me, seems quite extraordinary. I should have thought that an Organisation like yours handling this great success of mine would have kept me fully informed as to the great success you are having in distribution.
For some reason, Warners was displeased at the tone of Carreras' letter, expressing no further desire to deal with Hammer.
With his company chronically on the verge of insolvency despite having a world-wide hit, James Carreras sought for commitments that would keep the company active in the long run.
Through the Variety Club, he met Mike Frankovich, executive in charge of overseas production for Columbia Pictures. Eager to obtain the second Frankenstein, Frankovich brokered a deal that included Hammer's two non-horror films at a bargain rate.
Columbia also agreed to finance three films yearly for three years, and threw in a bonus. In conjunction with Columbia's subsidiary Screen Gems, Hammer would make a TV series.
The project would be called "Tales of Frankenstein," but only eight stories would feature the title character. The rest would be generic horror or suspense stories.
Half of the 26 episodes would be shot by Hammer at Bray Studios, the rest filmed at the Columbia facilities. Ironically, the episodes with the Baron would be shot in Hollywood. Budgets for the Columbia shows would be about $80,000 apiece. The Bray productions would have to be made for about $45,000.
Desperate to keep his under-financed company alive, Carreras accepted the terms.
By late 1957, Screen Gems had seen "Shock Theater" break records coast to coast in the US. It assembled a second batch of old films, calling the program "Son of Shock."
The American Broadcasting Company, perennially in distant third place after CBS and NBC, was eager to get out of the cellar.
In 1955, The Alfred Hitchcock Show had debuted on CBS. This darkly comic suspense anthology was a critical and popular success. To ABC executives, an anthology tied into the popularity of horror seemed a godsend.
ABC penciled in "Tales of Frankenstein" on its schedule for Fall, 1958-- but only if a sponsor could be found. For that, an example of the show would actually have to be produced.
By early autumn of 1957, a format was established, and script ideas were solicited.
In October, Jimmy Sangster turned in his feature script for "Blood of Frankenstein," as well as writing a carbon copy of the script entitled "Blood of the Vampire," for a rival company, Eros Films. He wrote to Hammer to volunteer his services.
Dear Jimmy, JC has passed me your letter regarding the "Frankenstein" TV series. Anticipating a deal on these lines will be set up very shortly and knowing how fully booked your future is, I am writing to ask you if you would be available to write six thirty minute stories for the series. If so, when can you start and when can you deliver. Then we can sit down and work out monetary matters? Please advise me as soon as possible.
Sangster reponded:
Dear Mike, as for the further adventures of Frankenstein:
One. He starts to travel, visiting various new cities and countries. There he is feted as an important man by the medical councils, and he does nasties to some of their patients.
Two. He has a set-to with Zombies, on the assumption that he has worked for years putting life into dead bodies, while here there are dead bodies that move around without any life whatsoever. This to him is fascinating.
Three. He dabbles in some voodoo and gets himself a big Black assistant for a while.
Four. He becomes interested in Black Magic and the power of the Devil? he considers the Devil and he have a certain affinity.
Five. He works on mutations and retrogressions whereby his dabblings in time factors turn people into primeval slime.
Six. He works on the preservation of living tissue whereby he freezes bodies in blocks of ice for long periods of time.
Seven. He works on the property of the vacuum, where if you put a human being in one, its blood boils.
Eight. He works on the theory of pain. How much pain can a human stand. To do this he extracts by surgery the main nerve centers. Imagine having a tooth drilled where the drill touches a nerve as thick as your finger. Love, Jim the Nasty. PS., The above are all copyright (as from now)
His vision of the Baron remained consistent with his first script-- a brilliant, obsessive Victorian roué unhampered by decency.
Meanwhile, Tony Hinds developed other, rather less outré stories with different writers.
A.R. Rawlinson had written mysteries for Hammer in the early 50s. In his story outline, a traveler meets girl named Lisa in the castle, apparently held captive. The Baron agrees to let the man take her away-- if he can get any emotional response out of her. The girl, of course, is a creation of the Baron-- and the emotional response is a homicidal one.
Story two was authored by Hugh Woodhouse, later a writer on the Gerry Anderson puppet shows. The Baron creates a duplicate of himself, Frankenstein 2, which shares all his brain impulses.
When the experiment goes wrong, the imperfect duplicate acts out the Baron's repressed urges-- that is, killing people.
In the third outline, penned by Cyril Kersh, the Baron drugs and murders a colleague but keeps his mind alive, to learn the secrets of the world beyond death.
In a fourth story, written by Edward Dryhurst, the Baron freezes an unwary victim in a cryogenics experiment.
Peter Bryan, later to adapt Hound of the Baskervilles for Hammer, and write Plague of the Zombies, drafted the fifth story. The Baron entices a sideshow mesmerist to restore the memory of his latest creation. The revived monster kills the hypnotist-- and the Baron transplants his brain into the monster.
In November, even as Dracula went before the cameras at Bray, Michael Carreras went to oversee Hammer's first Hollywood production.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
Awful, awful recollections. I was there. I don't know, it was just disaster. I mean, the people who were involved, which was Screen Gems, had no idea of what they were trying to make.
When I got there, I took with me six scripts, all written by Jimmy Sangster, and all ready to shoot. I mean, you know, good, professional nick. And the first thing they made me do is to sit down and listen to the title music. They had some jingle. That confused me slightly, that we were listening to jingle music before we even made anything. But they were very proud of that.
And then they started to trot out some directors, who I think they kept in cupboards on the lower floor, ready to work, Have-Megaphone-Will-Travel.
Of all the possible directors available, Screen Gems chose 56 year old Curt Siodmak.The best of Siodmak's scripts were clever, inventive and eerie, in equal proportions-- such as Beast with 5 Fingers and I Walked with a Zombie, a subtle Val Lewton film which was basically Jane Eyre set in Haiti.
At worst, Siodmak was a hack, recycling his own or others' ideas. His assignment for Universal, the script for Black Friday, resulted in his own lifetime annuity, the novel Donovan's Brain, filmed several times (and never with Siodmak involved in the screenplay). Other Siodmak scripts also leaned on the "brain transplant" idea: House of Frankenstein, Hausen's Memory, Creature with the Atom Brain.
Meanwhile, brother Robert directed such film noir classics as The Spiral Staircase, Criss Cross, and The Killers, with Burt Lancaster.
Attempting to equal or surpass his brother, Curt Siodmak became a writer-director, with less than astounding results. In his Bride of the Gorilla, Raymond Burr believes he transforms into a shaggy beast. The original wolf man, Lon Chaney, stayed on the sidelines as a jungle policeman. The female lead was Barbara Payton, a tabloid favorite because of her abusive love triangle with actors Tom Neal and Franchot Tone. With her brief career on an alcoholic downslide, she became persona non grata in Hollywood, and thus affordable to Hammer which cast her in Four Sided Triangle the next year, a film directed by Terence Fisher.
Siodmak's luck as director was only slightly better. On the 1953 film Magnetic Monster, producer Ivan Tors realized director Siodmak's footage did not intercut with stock footage which was the heart of the story. Three days into shooting, film editor Herbert Stock replaced Siodmak as director. The same year, producer Tom Gries hired Siodmak to write and direct a remake of Donovan's Brain. Gries then fired Siodmak before filming began. He wrote the story for "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," but his caustic comments to producer Charles Schneer got Siodmak replaced.
Films that Siodmak did complete were not exactly memorable-- such as Curucu, Beast of the Amazon. The titular beast turns out to be a native in a ludicrous aborigine mask. Also in Brazil, Siodmak wrote and directed Love Slaves of the Amazon. The less said, the better.
Nevertheless, Siodmak's name was linked to the old Universal horrors, and Columbia deemed him acceptable as a director.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I just couldn't believe the whole scene. So I kicked up a bit of a stink and we started again by them getting out a list of writers. And finally, having gone through them with their head writing honcho, he said to me, "There's a guy here, I think lives in England, called Jimmy Sangster, why don't we try him?" So we did full circle. I had the six scripts under my arm, which they hadn't read, probably Jimmy'd put another name on them, I don't know.
So I said to them, "Well, I actually know this man, I have some influence. I think I can get him." Then I told them that all these were his, I mean, the whole thing just fell apart.
Curt Siodmak got himself appointed associate producer of the show as a well. He also wrote the story for the pilot film. With astonishing originality, his plot involved a brain transplant.
Screenplay duties fell to the team of Henry Kuttner and his wife Catherine Moore. As a team or separately, they were masters of short horror stories, mainstays of pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Amazing Fantasy.
However, the Kuttners were ordered to do little more than flesh out Siodmak's outline and add dialogue. Shortly after completing the script, Henry Kuttner died at the age of 43.
The obvious choice for the lead role was Peter Cushing. Since 1952, Cushing had been a mainstay of British television.
Fortunately for him, he was in the position to decline such an offer. For the first time in a career that went back to the 1930s, he had found regular employment in theatrical feature films. Curse of Frankenstein made Cushing a film star. A small-screen series would have been a major backward step in his career. He was also loath to leave his wife Helen for the extended period necessary to shoot in the US. Her chronic respiratory problems were a constant source of concern. In any event, Cushing would be making two theatrical films back to back for Hammer-- Dracula, then the Frankenstein sequel, then--
-- co-star in another company's large-budget swashbuckler, John Paul Jones.
Instead, the role was offered to Austrian actor Anton Diffring, best known for playing cold-hearted Nazis. Anthony Hinds had spotted Diffring in a TV adaptation of "The Man in Half-Moon Street," about a man rendered immortal through surgery and serial murder.
HAZEL COURT
Anton Diffring was one of the premier actors of the Berlin Theater. He was very well thought-of in Germany. There was a wall, always. He was very charming, and very well mannered, but there was always that 'wall.'
Hazel Court, female lead of Curse of Frankenstein, would later co-star with Diffring in Hammer's version of The Man in Half-Moon Street entitled The Man Who Could Cheat Death. Ironically, Hammer had offered that role to Peter Cushing, who declined. But that was a year in the future.For now, Diffring was available at the right price, and willing to go to Hollywood.
American actress Helen Westcott played the heroine, who comes to the Baron for help, only to have the him steal her husband's brain.
Westcott was no stranger to monsters herself. During a brief contract with Universal, she played the suffragette niece of Boris Karloff in "Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde." Character actor Ludwig Stossell provided another link with the old Universal films. German-born Stossell had had a role in the 1945 monster rally, "House of Dracula."
Odd man out and with no input regarding casting, Carreras focused on the physical aspects of production. He arranged a screening of Curse of Frankenstein for principal members of the creative team-- the director, the cameraman, the set designer and the make-up man. With the facilities of a major Hollywood studio-- or even a near-major such as Columbia-- the pilot could be impressively mounted.
Screen Gems assigned Clay Campbell to create the look of the Monster. As head of the department, Campbell's specialty was glamour make-ups, but for the few horror films made by Columbia, Campbell provided the goods. He designed the grisly finale of the 1943 film "Return of the Vampire." The undead villain liquefies in the rays of the sun, courtesy of a wax mask of Bela Lugosi, melted over a plaster skull. Campbell also created a wolf man for the same film, a design he revived a decade later with The Werewolf, a 1956 film for Columbia.
That film's hero was played by Don Megowan-- usually cast as a heavy because of his great size and scowling looks. He also played the Gill Man in the last of the Creature from the Black Lagoon films for Universal. Screen Gems cast Megowan as the Monster in the pilot film.Since Columbia owned the TV rights to Universal's films, they did not feel legally hamstrung as Hammer had been with "Curse of Frankenstein" and ordered Clay Campbell to created a variation on the familiar Monster.
To Michael Carreras, the square-topped brute was old-fashioned-- and not particularly frightening.
MICHAEL CARRERAS Memo to "I.B."
Attached is a much nearer version of how I feel the monster should look. However, I still feel that it does not go far enough. I suggest we seriously consider marking the face itself with further scar tissue and signs of burns, which are called for in the pilot script. I would appreciate your comments.
The comments fell on deaf ears. Screen Gems did not want a make-up that was "too horrible." Paradoxically, they wanted a horror show that would not horrify viewers. Hammer's other hallmark, sexually charged situations and low-cut gowns, were also ruled inappropriate for the television market.
One of Hammer's major selling points was period decor and lush color photography. By 1958, many TV shows were shot in color, though initially broadcast in black and white. In many producers' minds, the slight increase in expense would more than pay for itself in re-run syndication down the line, after color broadcasting systems were perfected. Again, Carreras' suggestions went unheeded. To save money, Screen Gems chose to shoot in black and white and emulate the old Universal look.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I don't know why they ever came to us in the first place, because we had made some fairly good Gothic stories.
From England, Jimmy Carreras argued that half-hour films could be shot at Bray for a mere $45,000, slightly more than half the cost of the Hollywood pilot. Always desperate to attract more cash, Colonel Carreras pestered Columbia executive Ralph Cohn.
JAMES CARRERAS memo:
Why don't we make more of them in England? I know we all agreed that only thirteen should be made here and the reason I am making such a bloody nuisance of myself is because I have tremendous faith in the series and I honestly believe we can make them here better than anyone else. Let me know when you are ready to start." James Carreras.
Screen Gems ignored the entreaty for obvious reasons. The more shows shot in England, the less money they kept in Hollywood. But further production funds were hypothetical at any rate. First, the pilot had to be sold. The chances of that happening were slim.
Siodmak's directorial style was rudimentary, at times even amateurish. Establishing shots did not match medium shots; medium shots did not intercut with close-ups. Other times, reverse angles would throw cinematic screen direction askew. In dialogue scenes, Siodmak invariably chose the most static of compositions, a medium two-shot with both performers in profile. Despite an elaborate and ornate laboratory with a multitude of working props, Siodmak covered these scenes with uncinematic and protracted long-shots.
Instead of contracting for an original music score, Screen Gems saved more money by using inexpensive library music.
Siodmak, who thought a continuing series of Frankenstein stories was fatuous, wrote a generic opening narration with one foot in both camps-- invoking the name Frankenstein, but leaving the stage open for one-shot dramas.
Editors Richard Fanit and Tony DiMarco cobbled together a title montage of scenes from the film and stock shots.
Siodmak's new narration rarely synchronized with the moving lips of the disembodied head in a crystal ball-- a shot lifted by the editors from the Universal movie versions of the old Inner Sanctum radio plays.
MICHAEL CARRERAS
I went home, it was Christmas time, I couldn't bear it anymore, and Tony Hinds went over to finish the project. And even he couldn't get them to make a good film.
The end result was a 25 minute film with none of the elements that made Curse of Frankenstein a success-- nor much of the atmosphere of the old Universal films.
Upon viewing the pilot film, the ABC network was under-whelmed. Though they searched for several months, no commercial sponsor thought the film or the concept was viable.
Screen Gems tossed the half-hour film in a syndicated package of other busted pilots, which it sold as summer replacement filler to various stations over the next decade.
Hal Roach Productions attempted to fill the gap in the ABC's schedule by producing twelve films on speculation. The series, entitled The Veil, featured Boris Karloff as host and star. Despite Roach's association with ABC through programs like Racket Squad and My Little Margie, ABC passed. A syndicated sale also fell through. The series was never broadcast and the company went bankrupt the next year.
In January, 1959, ABC premiered One Step Beyond, sponsored by the Alcoa Corporation. An anthology based on true tales of ESP, its host and director was John Newland, who had portrayed Frankenstein in the abortive live broadcast with Lon Chaney in 1951. For cost reasons, many of the 92 episodes were shot in England, using Hammer Films alumni such as Christopher Lee and Anton Diffring, ingeniously cast as a Nazi officer. The series ran three years.
Twilight Zone debuted on CBS the same year. Like One Step Beyond, it would run for decades after its original five seasons, though it did not attract a large audience originally. Unlike The Veil, a second Boris Karloff series faired slightly better. Thriller, made at Universal, was a sixty-minute anthology which ran for two years beginning in 1960.
That year, Curt Siodmak wrote and directed another TV anthology, 13 Demon Street, shot in Sweden, in English. Lon Chaney, Jr., did the introductions, looking disheveled. Siodmak and the Swedish producer ended up not on speaking terms. As with Magnetic Monster years before, editor Herbert Strock was called in to finish post-production and replace Siodmak. The series was never broadcast outside of Sweden.
In later years, Siodmak would claim the producers of Thriller had copied his idea.
A decade after "Tales of Frankenstein" debacle, Hammer Films did make a series for ABC with a major American studio: "Journey to the Unknown." But 20th Century Fox insisted on contemporary stories, without Hammer's customary period decor. They also furnished their own producer, Joan Harrison, late of the Alfred Hitchcock Show.
After a year of mediocre ratings, ABC canceled the series. The frustrating experience of deferring to Joan Harrison on casting, stories, production and tone, led to Anthony Hinds' retirement from Hammer in 1970, at age 48.
If nothing else, "Tales of Frankenstein" provided Hammer with raw material. The company continued making theatrical sequels, with Peter Cushing reprising his role.
Tony Hinds fleshed out Peter Bryan's TV outline featuring a carnival mesmerist. Since it was produced for Universal, Hammer was obliged to use the classic square-headed monster make-up. Ironically, this was probably Hammer's least imaginative Frankenstein monster.
A.R. Rawlinson 's tale of a soulless female became the jumping-off point for Tony Hinds' script, Frankenstein Created Woman.
Hammer even recycled the original Subotsky script title. The final chapter in the company's saga added two words to the provisional title of "Curse of Frankenstein," and became "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell," released in 1974.
Having bought out the company from his father, Michael Carreras tried to diversify the Hammer product. With the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, he made two films, Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a cross of horror and kung-fu, and a crime film called Shatter. For the two character parts, Michael Carreras hired both of his Baron Frankensteins-- Peter Cushing, and Anton Diffring.
Max Rosenberg, whose connection to Hammer's Gothic success was always tenuous at best, claimed to his dying day in 2005 that he had produced Hammer's first Frankenstein. That is, unless someone called his bluff, at which point he would laugh and admit the truth.
And "Tales of Frankenstein," the completed film, was never copyrighted. The project which Columbia saw as a network cash cow, and Hammer viewed as a stave against bankruptcy, lapsed into the public domain. It has been released by assorted video distributors since then, making money for everyone except those who made it.
