:11:02
Former newspaperman Tom Reed
wrote a sequel in June and July 1933,
:11:05
floating random chunks of the Shelley
novel into his own mindless stew.
:11:09
The now-educated monster demands
a mate, killing Elizabeth for body parts.
:11:14
Henry destroys himself and his creatures.
:11:16
The old baron, written as the grumpy
Frederick Kerr from the first film,
:11:20
monopolises the first half of the script
until the monster mercifully chokes him.
:11:24
Then bad comedy with villagers, the
bishop, a gay dance-instructor, take over.
:11:28
Henry steals the legs
of Frau von Hassenbagovitz
:11:31
from a pompous undertaker's
embalming room,
:11:34
he ambulance-chases a train wreck
to scavenge body parts,
:11:37
and steals the hydrocephalic head
of a suicided circus giantess
:11:41
to build the bride.
:11:42
A glimmer or two emerge from the dross
to be retained -
:11:45
the monster seeing his reflection
in a pool, his education in speech,
:11:49
the befriending of a blind man, the mate,
the destruction of the lab,
:11:53
and the thematic seed of religious piety.
:11:55
Josef Berne and Morton Coyne
prepared an independent treatment
:11:59
based on Reed's material
that was equally uneventful.
:12:05
By September 1933, Kurt Neumann
was announced to direct,
:12:08
but the returns on The Invisible Man
:12:10
made Whale the obvious
commercial - protesting - choice.
:12:14
"They've had a script prepared", he told
The Invisible Man's writer, RC Sherriff,
:12:18
"and it stinks to heaven."
:12:20
Whale was preparing
One More River with Sherriff,
:12:23
a property Whale was passionate about,
but that made the Laemmles yawn.
:12:26
A bargain was made: One for James,
one for the Laemmles.
:12:30
Whale resigned himself to the sequel.
:12:32
Two original treatments
were evolved independently
:12:35
by mystery writers Lawrence Blochman
and Philip MacDonald, in December 1933.
:12:40
Blochman's treatment
seems partially inspired
:12:42
by Todd Browning's 1932 film Freaks.
:12:45
Henry and Elizabeth, incognito, have
joined a travelling carnival as puppeteers.
:12:50
They re-enact the monster's drama
with marionettes.
:12:53
All the carnival oddities
have spouses and lovers -
:12:56
even Emma, the lion tamer, who boasts
about how she beats her husband