:20:14
The cabinet of Dr Pretorius.
He has donned a medieval skullcap,
:20:18
an archaic fashion
associated with alchemy,
:20:21
as depicted in Murnau's Faust
and Paul Wegener's The Golem.
:20:25
More like black magic than science.
:20:27
Pretorius is wardrobed in black, with high,
white, nearly clerical collar and cuffs,
:20:32
like an English country vicar.
:20:34
The skullcap makes
the image discordant:
:20:36
The Reverend Dr Pretorius,
High Priest of Satanic Arts.
:20:42
Special effects men
John Fulton and David Horsley
:20:45
shot the little people over two days
in full-scale jars against black velvet.
:20:49
This was meticulously lined up
to match the production plates
:20:52
of Thesiger, Clive and the practical jars.
:20:55
The film, or foreground plate,
of the tiny people was rotoscoped,
:20:58
then matted into the background plate.
:21:01
As usual with John Fulton,
the optical work is flawless.
:21:06
Joan Woodbury, formerly Nana Martinez,
:21:08
was at the start of her career
portraying the queen.
:21:11
In short order,
she was a busy B-picture ingénue.
:21:14
The king is the image of Henry Vlll,
16th-century English sovereign.
:21:18
Henry defied the Catholic Church
to divorce Catherine of Aragon.
:21:23
The rutting monarch is portrayed
by English actor Arthur S Byron.
:21:26
No, not Sir Joseph Whemple in The
Mummy - that was Arthur "Pops" Byron.
:21:31
Elsa Lanchester's husband,
Charles Laughton,
:21:33
had just copped an Academy Award
playing Henry for Alex Korda.
:21:37
Norman Ainsley
is the drowsy archbishop.
:21:39
The religious parody is probably
institutional, not canonical.
:21:43
The screenplay even indicated
the cleric's mitre askew
:21:46
at a "deliberately nonepiscopal angle".
:21:49
Peter Shaw plays the devil - not as
a cloven-hoofed satyr, as in the script,
:21:53
but as an urbane Mephisto.
:21:55
Franz Waxman provides an off-kilter
quotation from Faust by Charles Gounod.
:21:59
He would again write musical miniatures
for Todd Browning's The Devil-Doll.