Monster Mash

A loving tribute to the director who gave the world 'Frankenstein' and 'Bride'

by David Elliot
San Diego Union Tribune
11/19/98

Gods and Monsters


James Whale may finally come into his 15-plus minutes of non-cult fame due to "Gods and Monsters," though the constituency may remain in the gay community, which now claims Whale as one of its more subtle martyrs, and horror buffs, who recall that Whale directed "Frankenstein" and its grand hoot of a sequel, "The Bride of Frankenstein."

Not based upon James Curtis' acclaimed new biography of Whale, "A New World of Gods and Monsters" (a line from "Bride"), but upon Christopher Bram's novel "Father of Frankenstein," Bill Condon's passionately affectionate salute is both delicious and a touch dubious. We can enjoy Ian McKellen's performance almost beyond wondering if it truly serves Whale (it certainly serves him as a colorful guy).

The story is set in 1957, with Whale retired from the film industry (where his gayness and his artistic integrity perhaps doomed him), though not living in a dump like cast-off Bela Lugosi in "Ed Wood." He has a very swank home, if not a rival to the Hollywood pile of a deeply closeted totem of the industry, George Cukor (who wins Whale's envy and contempt).

McKellen offers more elegant wreckage than Martin Landau's very funny Lugosi. Beautifully tailored, infallibly sardonic, he has British, catty purring and scratching down so well that we can imagine George Sanders dropping by for lessons. "Jimmy" Whale's Hollywood lover has left, fearing to be outed in an intolerant time, but Whale, though ill and often bored, has a fine new Cezanne on the wall -- and a new yard man outside.

The "boy" is Clay Boone, played in the mode of a beefsteak Brando, mostly inarticulate except when declaring his compulsive heterosexuality. He does not blare "Stella!," but roadhouse temptress Lolita Davidovich is briefly around to ratify his straightness.

Brendan Fraser put on muscle for the role, and has an amusing hint of Frankenstein in his slab physique and flat-cut hair. Whale, when he's having a brain seizure or a hellish memory of World War I, looks rather like gaunt Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius in "Bride."

Whale's loyal, Catholic and homophobic housekeeper, Hanna -- Lynn Redgrave, far from "Georgy Girl" but still amusing -- has something of the verve of the old horror dames like Una O'Connor, Maria Ouspenskaya and the spoof update, Cloris Leachman of "Young Frankenstein."

Those ghostly vapors are snappy, as are the film clips and a brief scene on the set of "Bride." Where the movie sloshes around is in teasing us with Whale's hands-off (but eyes-all-over) interest in Clay, who poses for Jimmy's drawings. The coy skirmishes come to climax on a stormy night, as the tangled pipes of pent-up feeling burst open. There is even some horror-kitsch symbolism with an old gas mask, along with Jimmy's haunted visions of his lost love during the war.

McKellen, no Rock Hudson, is perhaps the most famously self-outed of leading actors. He has a devilishly smart time with the intricacies of candor and subterfuge, of winking code and pampered hauteur, though he is not quite so subtle in his sly leching as John Hurt, hunting Jason Priestly in "Love and Death on Long Island."

Whale is never beached by this film, but does enter some shallows. Still, McKellen's feeling for Whale is inflected and rich. The sense of a gifted artist who used horror films (and others, like "Show Boat") to vent his bottled fears and fantasies, while needling the class system he fled from, and the sexual bigotry he could never escape, is touching and resonant.

Fraser is a sort of boy-toy for the old pro (the role of Clay is a contrivance, and it shows), but he brings into play some nuances of his own. Clay is so fearful of being thought gay and not "a man" that he refuses to acknowledge his Adonis allure. It is not by seduction but by honesty that Whale helps him to become a bit more, well, interesting.

As writer and director, Bill Condon shows pluck and skill. He plays loose with the facts of Whale's life (and a death soaked in aspects of "Sunset Boulevard"), in order to serve a valid sense of him as a creative individualist (Jimmy's zingers at Cukor's party for Princess Margaret of Britain are priceless). But despite the flashbacks, Condon doesn't take us far into the forces that molded Whale, or into his art, or into his gayness as a shaper of creativity.

A compelling master of film camp long before that word was outed by Susan Sontag, Whale usually knew just how far his acts of sparkling subversion went; he did not live in a John Waters era. The glints of knowingness in McKellen wittily clue us into that.