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Podcast logo of black retro UFO on a red background with the text Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*. *Almost.

12. Mad Scientists: Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll & Boris Karloff

As with all episodes of this podcast there are spoilers ahead!

 

​Description:

The idea of the ‘mad scientist’ has been with us for a very long time. In the early 1930s science fiction (and horror) films proliferated with the trope. Metropolis (1927) had already had the remarkable Rotwang who was a prototype that would go on to be referenced in Stanley Kubrick’s character Dr Strangelove (1964) with his black-gloved hand.

 

But why has the mad scientist become a staple of cinema? And why were the 1930s and 40s a time when Dr Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and the many other crazed scientists (including several played by Boris Karloff) became so commonplace? Luckily we have two wonderful brains ripe for picking!*

 

The Experts

Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University; he is a cultural historian with a special interest in Hollywood cinema on which he has written extensively.

Xavier Aldana Reyes is a Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University with a special interest in the Gothic. His books include the fiction anthology Promethean Horrors: Classic Tales of Mad Science.

 

*Disclaimer: No human brain transplants were carried out on unwilling participants during the making of this podcast.

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

03:05 The Great Depression and the Hays Code

06:24 How World War I changed perceptions of science

07:38 Frankenstein, Faust and forbidden knowledge

11:33 The male mad scientists and the lack of female ones

16:13 Religion, magic and science

20:20 Eugenics, miscegenation and The Code

25:26 Anti-authoritarianism, psychoanalysis, Leopold and Loeb

33:34 Einstein, real science and science biopics

43:00 The legacy of the mad scientist

48:12 Recommendations for the listeners and outro

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Shownotes

  • The clips at the start are taken from: Frankenstein (1931), The Man with Nine Lives (1940), The Invisible Ray (1936), Black Friday (1940), The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936). (The Man Who Changed His Mind was also known as The Brainsnatcher, The Man Who Lived Again and Dr Maniac.)

  • The Great Depression was a global economic downturn that began with the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and ended in 1939.

  • Although there had been films with sound in the late 1920s, by 1930 and 1931 almost all the USA’s movie theatres were wired for sound.

  • This is the Wikipedia page on the Hays Code which outlined a set of guidelines for Hollywood filmmakers to abide by.

  • World War I is also known as The Great War (due to its scale) and took place between the 28th July 1914 till the 11th November 1918.

  • Thomas misspeaks, Frankenstein was released in 1931 not 1932.

  • Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18 years old. The book was published in 1818. You can learn much more about Frankenstein and Mary Shelley in this episode of the podcast.

  • Faust is a character from German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust who was an Alchemist from the 15th century. Many books have been written about Faust including a play by Goethe in the late 18th century.

  • The Greek myth of Prometheus tells the story of him being punished by Zeus for sharing the secret of fire with humankind.

  • Percy Shelley was a British writer and political radical born in 1792. He was also the man who eloped with and eventually married Mary Godwin Shelley (the writer of Frankenstein).

  • William Godwin was a British writer born in 1756. He wrote St Leon in 1799. Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley and the husband of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

  • Lord Byron was a British poet born in 1788 and a hugely famous figure of the romantic movement. Manfred is a poem written 1816-1817.

  • Christopher Marlowe was a British writer from the later 16th century who wrote the play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus which is commonly known as Doctor Faustus.

  • George Méliès was a pioneering French filmmaker born in 1861. You can learn more about him and the first science fiction film in this podcast episode.

  • This is the article by the wonderful Jess Nevins from 2011 which is a short history of female mad scientists.

  • You can learn more about Caroline Herschel the astronomer with her Britannica entry here.

  • Xavier misspeaks, it is Eleanor (not Elizabeth) Davies-Colley who became the first woman to join the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1911.

  • The Blazing World was written in 1666 by British writer Margaret Cavendish (who was also the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne). The story is often cited as a precursor to science fiction.

  • The Mummy was written in 1827 by British writer Jane Webb at the age of 20.

  • Alruane (1928) is a silent German sci-fi film directed by Henkrik Galeen and starring Brigitte Helm (who also stars in Metropolis). The film was remade by Richard Oswald in 1930 starring Brigitte Helm again.

  • You can learn more about the horrific Leopold and Loeb Trial here.

  • You can learn a little more about Albert Einstein here

  • Sir Christopher Frayling is an academic, educationalist and writer who wrote the book Mad, Bad and Dangerous?:The Scientist and the Cinema.

  • Some of the films about real life scientists are: Young Tom Edison and Edison, the Man (both 1940), Madame Curie (1943), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940).

  • Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for Polio which was first given to children in 1954. Salk decided against patenting the vaccine to maximise its global distribution.

  • Thomas is talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick.

  • From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film is written by Siegfried Kracauer.

  • The IMDB page for The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster can be found here.

  • The IMDB page for Lisa Frankenstein can be found here.

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NEXT EPISODE!

I have a lot of detours planned ahead (which you can learn about in the outro) but one of the films I will definitely be covering will be Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) for a crossover episode with The Lorehounds podcast. Alien can be found to buy or rent on many channels as well as hard copies.

 

To keep up to date with what’s coming next you can join me on Instagram.

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