The Literary Monster on Film: Five Nineteenth Century British Novels and Their Cinematic Adaptations

219 Pages·2010·2.18 MB·English

by  Abigail Burnham Bloom

The Literary
Monster on Film
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The Literary
Monster on Film
Five Nineteenth Century
British Novels and Their
Cinematic Adaptations
ABIGAIL BURNHAM BLOOM
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Bloom, Abigail Burnham.
The literary monster on film: five nineteenth century British
novels and their cinematic adaptations / Abigail Burnham Bloom.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4261-4
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Monsters in motion pictures. 2. Monsters in literature.
3. Horror films—History and criticism. 4. English fiction–
19th century—Film adaptations. 5. Film adaptations—History
and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.M6B56 2010
791.43'67—dc22 2010023148
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2010 Abigail Burnham Bloom. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover information: Robert De Niro as the Creature in the 1994 film
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (American Zoetrope/TriStar
Pictures/Photofest); (inset) frontispiece to Frankenstein, Colburn
and Bentley, London, 1831 (Engraving by Theodore Von Holst, pri-
vate collection, Bath, England)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Introduction 3
1 CREATOR AND MONSTER
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818) 9
Frankenstein, dir. James Whale (1931) 20
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, dir. Kenneth Branagh (1994) 30
2 THE DUALITY OF GOOD AND EVIL
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis
Stevenson (1886) 42
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. John S. Robertson (1920) 54
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. Rouben Mamoulian (1931) 62
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. Victor Fleming (1941) 74
3 BEAUTY AND ETERNAL LIFE
She,by H. Rider Haggard (1887) 83
She, dir. Lansing C. Holden and Irving Pichel (1935) 94
She, dir. Robert Day (1965) 104
4 MAN AND ANIMAL
The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells (1896) 112
Island of Lost Souls, dir. Erle C. Kenton (1933) 120
The Island of Dr. Moreau, dir. Don Taylor (1977) 127
The Island of Dr. Moreau, dir. John Frankenheimer (1996) 136
5 VAMPIRE AND VICTIM
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897) 146
Nosferatu, dir. F. W. Murnau (1922) 159
v
vi Table of Contents
Dracula, dir. Tod Browning (1931) 168
Bram Stoker’s Dracula,dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1992) 177
Conclusion 189
Notes 195
Bibliography 199
Index 205
Preface
When my son was a teenager, he delighted in watching horror movies. He
wanted to see as many as he could, and I frequently accompanied him. I had
never watched many before, and I was amazed by the manner in which the
monster was an aberration from ordinary life and unconnected with the main
characters. Often there was no motive involved in the murders committed by
the monster, or the explanation was given so quickly that I didn’t get it. In
Child’s Play (1988), Chucky, a “good guy” doll, destroyed those around him
without any reason whatsoever. A character like Michael Myers, whose mon-
strousness stems from insanity, remained unconnected with his victims. Some-
times, as in Scream (1996), the explanation for the murders was much more
forgettable than the machinations involved. The Blair Witch Project(1999) pre-
sented disappearances from no coherent cause. Monsters could also be created
by scientific mishap, as in Godzilla (1998), but the monster remained an out-
sider, a threat to anyone in its path and unconnected with the protagonist.
Then there was Hostel (2005), in which the torture and murder was done for
the pleasure of torture and murder alone. The monsters in these films are gen-
erally unacquainted with the protagonist and drawn to murder a victim for no
particular reason. Interest in the film comes not from who is murdered or why,
but how and in what manner.
These horror films struck me as completely different from the nineteenth-
century horror novels that I read and taught. Within these novels, the monster
is a manifestation of the protagonist or intimately connected with him.
Frankenstein and his creation are doubles of each other. Dr. Jekyll develops
Mr. Hyde as a means of behaving as he likes while maintaining his reputation
in society. The monster reflects what is wrong with an individual or even within
society as a whole. These monsters reminded me of what kind of person I should
and shouldn’t be.
I began to watch the films adapted from nineteenth-century horror novels
as I wondered if they showed the monster as unconnected to the victim or the
protagonist, as in most of the modern films I had seen. I observed that many
different means of connecting the monster with another character were used
by filmmakers. For example, connections were often made through the parallel
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2 Preface
placement of actors or by cutting back and forth between characters and actions.
Telling the story from the point of view of the monster added to identification
with it. However, the identification of monster and protagonist was seldom as
sustained as in the novel.
I believe the differences between the portrayal of the monsters in the novels
and the films occur for several reasons. People of the nineteenth century had
the leisure to absorb the meaning of what they read. Books can be put down
and read slowly; readers expected novels to have a moral message that they
could apply to their lives. In today’s world the movie must deliver an immediate
visceral punch. Movies seek to make the viewer react emotionally rather than
intellectually. They evoke a relentless fear aroused by watching an unstoppable
monster bent on destruction. Whereas readers of horror novels feared they were
like the monster, the watchers of horror movies fear they will be the monster’s
victim. By examining nineteenth-century horror novels and adaptations made
from these novels, I seek to examine the monsters within and without our-
selves.
Introduction
An uncontrollable creature who slaughters innocent people in his search
for revenge, a man who maims and murders for pleasure, an all-powerful and
exquisitely beautiful woman with eternal life, a doctor who creates men from
animals, and a vampire who has made his home amongst us—all five monsters
arouse fear in the reader. This fear may come from many things: surprise, dis-
gust, fear of harm to characters in the novel, and ultimately a threat to our own
safety. We fear both becoming the victims of these monsters and that we are
these monsters.
During the nineteenth century most people believed in original sin, the
sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which is transferred
to each individual at birth. Since mankind was conceived in sin, each person
must be protected from the evil within himself. If all goes well, if a child is
restrained and educated correctly, eventually the child will grow up and can
overcome, or at least repress, the evil within himself or herself. In the nineteenth
century the source for monsters is within the ordinary human. The most fright-
ening part of nineteenth-century novels comes from the discovery of our own
similarities to the monster. By the time films were routinely produced in the
twentieth century, most people believed that people are basically good and born
innocent. In twentieth century films, the monster, for the most part, does not
know his victims and seeks to destroy one person rather than another by chance.
No longer is the monster intimately connected to his victim. Horror in movies
evolves from how different the monsters are from us.
Rationale of This Book
In this work I will examine five British nineteenth-century horror novels:
Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, She, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Drac-
ula. Although Sheis more like an adventure novel,and The Island of Dr. Moreau
is closer to science fiction, all of the novels contain a monster who disrupts the
world of the novel. In each of the five novels, the monster bears a distinctive
relationship to the protagonist. In looking at the monsters in nineteenth-cen-
3