Trivial Tales Of.. A Day In The Life Of Young Frankenstein Monster

Listen to them, the children of the night. What sweet music they make. Bram Stoker’s Dracula – The movie. Hump? What hump?

'Igor' - Young Frankenstein

When I wasn’t drawing Batman or Spiderman or even Superman, who’s costume I liked even if the character seemed oddly one-dimensional, I liked to draw faces punctuated by scars with their stitches prominently sown, with sharp or missing teeth or both, usually branding a menacing looking knife. To me this was funny: it had impact; my way of dealing with the images from feature films that scared me or if they didn’t, I knew of course that real menace and danger lurked out in the world; this was my way of dealing with it. To draw or even paint a pretty, innocuous little picture would be like a joke without a punchline. Drawing people who were a combination of monster, villain, and victim was like a joke with a twist, as any good gag should have. I could loop my tongue so that it protruded from the sides of my mouth like the fleshy teeth of Dracula. Nothing so compelling as a man with sharp fangs where his teeth should be. When I saw and heard The Beatles my ‘cousin’ Graham and me would jump up and down on the settee playing out imaginary guitars and shaking our imaginary Beatle-cuts while singing our heads off to She Loves You on Radio One through the TV. After I saw Lon Chaney as the tormented Wolfman, my favourite ‘turn’ was to go through his transformation from man to snarling, growling, ferocious Wolfman. It could be unsettling just how much I submerged myself in the role, thrashing around for all I was worth. I could be aggressive at the best of times and this was almost a way of expressing pent-up frustration and anger I suspect, though I was never aware of that. This was probably the reason why we played cowboys and Indians and the rest. I preferred to be the ‘Indians’ as they were exotic as were their weapons. And anyway, the bad guys were always were interesting – until it became apparent all was not quite as the Westerns portrayed with the cowboy settlers and the Native Americans. On the other hand, when we went to Graham’s place, he had a cowboy belt with holsters and a Cold 45. Combine this with a cowboy hat with the frills around the brim and I was in my element, practicing whipping the gun form the holster and whirling it in my fingers as I’d seen in the movies, or at least until I got bored with trying and gave up. Better to practice my aim with darts at the board for a while – we were never allowed anything like this; not because I might impale my younger bro or just as likely, the other way around, but due to the damage we might cause and the noise. But at Graham’s, my mum and his were so engrossed in their problems and gossip, we were left to ourselves. I could practice with a small sharp kitchen knife on his door, trying to throw it like in the movies so that it stuck but not knowing about weighted knives I could never get the hang of it, to my intense frustration. Everything worked like clockwork on the movies but that was films for you. No one I knew ever imitated any superheroes and neither did I as it would be decidedly naff, but every kid practices Spidey shooting his web at some point, though only a kid who’s soft in the head or on drugs could ever imagine they might jump off a roof and fly, but it happens. The epitome of lacking in common sense, as in what planet do they think they live on? I think I can imagine putting myself in their shoes. That it’s a combination of wishful thinking and confusing vivid dreams with reality. That or a combination of Ritalin and a few screws loose. I can talk; my favourite movie monster, criminal, and victim rolled into one that I loved to imitate was Frankenstein, with his stiff gait and bolted neck (at least in some comics) and outstretched arms as if he was lost or searching for something, his was the most emotive character of all. That, and I could mimic the angry and incoherent noises Karloff made playing the

monster. Like him, I could be the lost soul, temporarily in control, venting my fear and anger on the world. Something like that. To anyone else, including my classmates I just liked to imitate famous monsters. My mother didn’t know anything about it as it was intended to entertain and as my feelings were so mixed towards her and I knew she’d have no patience with me anyway, I’d only end up feeling foolish. I was undemonstrative in her company; it never crossed my mind. Unfunnily enough, her bo imitated Karloff, this some year later. Predictably he focused on Karloff’s lisp. ‘Thome people thay I’m a monthter but I’m not a monthter’ etc. We knew to laugh on cue. I managed a convincing grin to appease his vanity. The awareness of which always spoiled the effect he was striving for, for me at any rate. His egotism contradicted the essence of good humour or any humour for that matter. The irony was that they behaved as if they were possessed themselves. They were the everyday monsters, whether through rage in my mum’s case or alcohol in his, no one batted an eyelid over. I might not have any say in or control over their behaviour but I could regain a sense of control if not exactly taming the monster, through becoming it in a sense. I had immense depths of sympathy for the Frankenstein Monster and even the Wolfman due to Lon Chaney’s haunted portrayal in a way I couldn’t muster for my mother, as it was too immediate and too real. Further, I could identify with the monster (Frankenstein, to us as we took it for granted the title of the movie referred to the monster, or I did) in a subconscious and existentially horrified sort of way in that like myself, he found himself alive and up to his neck in hassle and horseshit, none of which he had asked for, alone in a hostile world. But worse, he wasn’t even a real human being but a ragbag construct of various bits and pieces of different bodies, as horrifying to himself as he was to others, the mind-numbing situation compounded by the question of what kind of God would allow such a thing? None of which came up in the original film, but I was intelligent enough to squirm subconsciously over his desperately horrible predicament. It and he was a living nightmare. I watched the film mesmerised in a kind of dazed horror as it went from unbearable to worse, as he thought he’d found friendship through the old blind man in the shack – maybe ‘Frankenstein’ could live happily ever after there, under the circumstances if he could keep hidden, but it wasn’t to be. Then he went on to compound his nightmare existence in the scene with the little girl where they threw flowerheads into the water then run out of them and he’s so happy and frustrated at the same time, Karloff’s emotive portrayal making each scene in the movie all the more heartrending, as he looks at her and the scene cuts to the father carrying the drowned girl though the town. He does throw her into the water, but that scene was cut from the movie then. Now the murderer, constructed form the bodies and brain of a murderer will never escape from the web of guilt he’s made for himself – but then as he never made himself, this seemed only to confirm his fate and malignant destiny from the outset, as if even God Himself were out to screw him over – destroy him or worse. This was the most terrifying thought of all. His death by fire at the hands of the mob – many heads with no brain – was the inevitable conclusion. To me, he was the most reviled, unfortunate, human who had ever ‘lived’; he couldn’t even claim that in any true sense. His life and death were unspeakably tragic on so many levels; it was almost irrelevant he was a fictional character. He wasn’t even a bad guy. He was a child himself in many ways. Killing the little girl through drowning had been an accident through his childlike ignorance, if a pretty backward child to be sure, but a mistake all the same and no more backward than the one-dimensional mob in a way, who were out for his blood. The whole thing was oddly circular, but the people never seemed to have any doubt over his motivations and born badness. It was all pretty black and white to them. I had idea how others interpreted the movie. I identified with and felt sorry for the Monster – along with the little girl. But to have hated Him for it would have felt the same as allowing myself to

be duped as the rather obtuse villagers so obviously were in their unthinking reactiveness. And I was just a kid, going through a phase, pretending to be my favourite monsters. But I really liked when Fred Gwynn played Herman Munster of The Munsters, this in the ‘60’s, still. He was obviously the Frankenstein Monster, only with a big likable grin, and usually cheerful. Every face he pulled was hilarious. The homely Granpa was clearly Dracula. I wasn’t quite sure about the tall guy as Lurch and the squat chrome-dome as Uncle Fester, if he was in the original series. I took Lurch to be some kind of zombie and Fester as a Golem - or imbecile sex fiend–if I knew what that was. The empty flats at the bottom of the road on the corner, not far from school was the perfect environment for me to instigate a monster hunt and I would show them how it was done to get the ball rolling so they wouldn’t feel foolish and would get into the spirit of it. The building was perfect as each flat was easily reached either by stairs to each floor and because all the doors, where there were doors, were unlocked. In effect we could chase each other all over the building to our hearts content. Earlier, farting around outside, I‘d had an interestingly surreal reality dislocation when cheerful ginger, John, had said, ‘Hey Bobe, catch’, and lobbed what looked like a boulder at me. I simultaneously grinned in response then lurched in subdued incredulity and disbelief that he’d thrown something large enough to injure me. I braced myself in semi-shock to catch it as I’d no to me to dodge it, as it bounced harmlessly off me. It was a dirt-covered piece of foam. I was as fascinated by my own reaction and perception of the event as by his wit; that I could so easily be deceived by my senses. That the shock of apprehension had been so real only because I had believed it was. I felt as if there were a wider meaning, some deeper metaphysical truth I couldn’t grasp. This wasn’t the ideal time or situation to expect to find an answer. It was another experience to file in the subconscious, put on the back burner for some equally obscure moment in the future when I was magically wiser as well as older. The moment passed almost as soon as it happened. Meanwhile back in the real world, my head was full of monsters. My enthusiasm soon overcame any reservations or inhibitions. Any stick-in-the muds were obliged to join in with the rest of us. They were probably intrigued to see how I’d pull this off. In class I could be quite subdued as that was the nature of the situations as well any reserve I would feel in the presence of girls. Alone with my mates – and I really did see them all as friends – my artistic and organisational abilities came to the fore. It had to be fun on the basis of equals as trying to bully anyone into anything would only spoil the vibe, and anyway they’d have point-blank refused and went their own way. Only good-natured enthusiasm could set this up. Now I had participants, actors in my monster fantasy, it came to unexpected life. I was in my very own movie, with a whole set at my disposal. It was Carry on Screaming combined with every horror movie I’d ever seen – and some I hadn’t or had forgotten. I started the ball rolling of course and chased them with stiff and outstretched arms as fast as my stiff little legs would take, sprinting through a sea of plaster on old floorboards, barely keeping it in mind until the last moment, to avoid walking straight into any gaping holes and gaps near the centre of the floor where the plaster had worn away. At other times if I caught up with one I would lay into the broken plaster that surrounded the thin slats of wood and plaster that were left in a section of wall as if I was so obtuse or frenzied with insane rage I was barely in control of my own actions, all the better to carry on the illusion of the chase with. I think it worked. They couldn’t get away from me quick enough. When I began to feel too tired it was easy to get one to take over then the situation was reversed for me. I was in abject, if hilarious terror. I scrambled up and down stairs and over the sides of banisters as a short cut as if my life depended on it. Otherwise we wouldn’t have pulled it off, it wouldn’t be real for me. Then, idiotically, when I felt I was cornered, I threw myself out of the frameless window, forgetting not only that we were on the top floor - though in reality I hadn’t – but also that there were no railings on the landing – the

plettie – outside. I stopped myself short anyway as I quickly ‘came to’. There was only a lone if thicker and square metal pole jutting up from the corner of the plettie. Maybe it was the thought that if I had thrown myself a couple of feet further, the railing was the only thing to have stopped me if I was lucky, or maybe it was the thought that I had missed such a dramatic if unlikely opportunity – I suspect I was almost disappointed I wasn’t discovered clinging to it for dear life or that it had so obviously stopped my fall – but I was suddenly hit by the pathos of the situation as well as the awareness of the precariousness of it, surrounded by open air at the side of the building and the expanse just over the edge, that, to my intense embarrassment I burst into tears, and lay there for a while, slumped and feeling mighty relieved over the potentially close shave and sorry for myself over the thought I could have snuffed out my future possibilities in the space of a few seconds. The truth was I tended to get far too overexcited, though now I can look on it as typical of my ability to enter into other worlds, whether of music or landscape or character. No one said anything or even laughed. They were as embarrassed I was. It was Carry on Bubbling. The demonmonsters Frankenstein and The Wolfman and the rest were ignominiously back in the real world, their illusion shattered. Monsterworld was never mentioned again. Not by me, anyway.