CL: I’d get a call from Jimmy Carreras, in a state of hysteria. “What’s all this about?!” “Jim, I don’t want to do it.” “You’ve got to do it!” “Jim, I don’t want to do it, and I don’t have to do it.” “No, you have to do it!” And I said, “Why?” He replied, “Because I’ve already sold it to the American distributor with you playing the part. Think of all the people you know so well, that you will put out of work!” Emotional blackmail. That’s the only reason I did them.
JL: “Emotional blackmail” is a tradition in the movie business. Tell me about The Mummy[Terence Fisher, 1959].
CL: The Mummy was a real person at one time, a high priest, and he falls in love with a princess.
JL: It’s a romantic story.
CL: Oh yes! This love is forbidden, and they find out, cut out his tongue, and ball him up.
JL: Was that terribly uncomfortable?
CL: Yes! Swathed in bandages. Boris [Karloff, star of the original The Mummy, Karl Freund, 1932] said it was absolute hell, because he was covered in make-up and wrapped so tightly in bandages. If he took a deep breath, the bandages would crack and you would see there was a real person underneath.
JL: Luckily for him, Karloff is only the bandage-wrapped Mummy in one scene…
CL: The way I played it, I tried to make people feel sorry for me. The problem with the role was a physical one. I had to move like an automaton, but the Mummy also had a mind of its own. Because of the bandages I could only act with my body movements and my eyes. In one of the most effective scenes, I come crashing through the windows and Peter Cushing thrusts a spear into me, which goes right through, and shoots me. And then Yvonne Furneaux comes in. And Peter shouts, “Let down your hair! Let down your hair!” while I’m strangling her with one hand. And she does. And it’s Ananka, the princess I fell in love with. I see her and I am riveted. And after quite a long time, I just turn around and walk away. Which I thought was very moving.
JL: And didn’t you have to go into a swamp?
CL: Ah, the business in the swamp: I had to carry about three or four girls, sometimes as much as 80 yards, and they were pretending to be unconscious, so they were dead weight. It didn’t help my shoulder muscles! In the swamp, Yvonne was saying to me under her breath, “Don’t drop me, don’t drop me,” and I was using the most appalling language, because I was crashing into these pipes which were producing the bubbles in the water and the mud.
JL: Which brings us to Mr. Hyde.
CL: I’d forgotten that one. I think that was one of the best things I’ve ever done. But it had a ridiculous title: I, Monster[Stephen Weeks, 1971]. And they changed Jekyll’s name.
JL: He’s not called Dr. Jekyll?
CL: Jekyll and Hyde became Marlowe and Blake. But all the other people in the story have the correct names.
JL: Why on earth would they do that?
CL: Don’t ask me!
JL: Fredric March played Hyde as a bestial, ape-like character.
CL: Yes, and Spencer Tracy was very frightening, too.
JL: Tracy played him more like a psychopath. It was John Barrymore who first made Hyde into a physical monster.
CL: Oh yes, that was extraordinary.
JL: And he did it live on stage on Broadway!
CL: I don’t know how he did that.
JL: George Folsey, the camera operator on the silent Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde[John S. Robertson, 1920], told me that on stage Barrymore would drink from the flask, then stagger and fall down behind a desk and quickly get right up again transformed into the hideous Mr. Hyde! It happened very fast. All he did was put on a pointed, bald cap and shove crooked teeth into his mouth. He could distort his face so grotesquely.
CL: I played Hyde in stages of degeneration. I became worse and worse and worse. In the name of science. Curiosity. What would happen if I took this drug? All scientists are curious. The make-up man, Harry Frampton, did a wonderful job. There were about five or six stages of degeneration.
JL: Is there any particular monster that you were frightened of as a kid?
CL: Well, I remember after seeing Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, aged 11, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and think he was in the room. And I wasn’t the only one!
The Wolfman[Joe Johnston, 2010] An atmospheric shot from the very disappointing remake.
WEREWOLVES
The belief in shape-shifting is universal. In every culture, from the ancient Greeks to the Native Americans, men and women often become animals and vice versa. In stories like the god Zeus turning himself into a swan to seduce the mortal Leda, or the magical Puck giving Bottom the head of an ass in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theme of man-into-animal appears countless times in art and literature. In cinema, by far the most popular shape-shifter is the werewolf.
The shape-shifting “rules” change from film to film. Usually a man becomes a werewolf by being bitten by another werewolf, as in Werewolf of London[Stuart Walker, 1935], The Wolf Man[George Waggner, 1941 and Joe Johnston, 2010], and An American Werewolf in London[John Landis, 1981].
In The Curse of the Werewolf[Terence Fisher, 1961] Oliver Reed is born a werewolf because his mother was raped and he is born on Christmas Day! This movie claims that for an unwanted child to share his birthday with Jesus Christ is “an insult to heaven.” When the poor bastard baby is to be baptized, the Holy Water in the baptismal font begins to boil. Not a good sign.
In the Underworldseries of films, an entire race of werewolves battles a race of vampires for supremacy, and in Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers[2002], a troop of British soldiers has the misfortune of running into a family of werewolves in the Scottish Highlands. In How to Make a Monster[Herbert L. Strock, 1958], an insane make-up artist uses Michael Landon’s actual make-up and mask from the earlier film I Was a Teenage Werewolf[Gene Fowler, Jr., 1957] to turn an innocent actor into a homicidal wolf man! Val Lewton’s production Cat People[Jacques Tourneur, 1942], centers on a beautiful woman (Simone Simon) descended from an ancient European race. When her passions (jealousy and lust) are aroused, she turns into a murderous black panther!
The full moon has long been associated with violence and madness—the word “lunatic” shows the power we give the full moon. Against his will, the body of the lycanthrope changes into that of a werewolf whenever a full moon appears in the night sky.
A common term for the natural menstruation cycle of women is “the curse.” This idea is explored in the clever Canadian picture Ginger Snaps[John Fawcett, 2000]. This film, like I Was a Teenage Werewolfand The Beast Within[Philippe Mora, 1982], uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for adolescence. In adolescence, youngsters begin to grow hair in unexpected places and parts of their anatomy swell and grow. Everyone experiences these physical transformations in their bodies and new, unfamiliar, sexual thoughts in their minds. No wonder we readily accept the concept of a literal metamorphosis.
In Curt Siodmak’s original screenplay for Universal’s seminal The Wolf Man, he emphasized the notion of the werewolf as a victim. The Wolf Man of the title, Larry Talbot, (played by Lon Chaney, Jr. in all five Universal Wolf Manmovies), is horrified by his plight and spends most of his time trying to find a cure or contemplating suicide.
Every single werewolf film always has a major “transformation” sequence: Larry Talbot’s transformation was accomplished by a series of optical dissolves. Chaney sat very still (usually with his head, hands, and feet held in place) while make-up man Jack Pierce gradually applied more and more yak hair and putty to his face. This was a tedious, time-consuming process, and the use of optical dissolves resulted in a rather gentle transformation from man into wolf man.