: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
:13:00
even as she dallies with Fifi, the giantess.
:13:03
Enter the monster, wanting a love match.
:13:06
The bride is produced in a carnival wagon
:13:08
and the enraged monster dies
in the jaws of Emma's lions.
:13:13
Philip MacDonald's story
was absolutely up to date,
:13:16
equally original as Blochman's
and equally useless.
:13:19
War clouds over Europe, and Henry
has developed his delta death ray,
:13:23
that he wishes to sell to the League
of Nations as a deterrent to war.
:13:27
Henry has neglected
his sickly wife Elizabeth,
:13:29
over whom family friend Victor Moritz
is still spooning.
:13:33
A nocturnal demonstration of the ray
inadvertently revives the monster,
:13:36
and a second exposure
gives him superhuman strength.
:13:40
The monster plays with
the apparatus' dials like a child,
:13:43
inadvertently raining death
and destruction across Europe,
:13:47
decimating whole cities.
:13:48
A remorseful Henry apologises to
his creature, vaporises him with the ray,
:13:53
and then immolates himself in its beam.
:13:58
It was written that Elizabeth's vision
would be a classical grim reaper,