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Dwight Frye:
Body Snatcher to the Stars
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June 2005, same old
review but now with new screenshots! In Frankenstein,
he played the deformed assistant Fritz,
thereby completely sealing his typecasting fate. But it gave him an
opportunity to work with Van Sloan again, which must have been fun. Fritz has
to do all the dirty work for Dr. Henry Frankenstein. Fritz digs up graves, cuts down hanged corpses, and steals organs
from nearby universities. I don’t know about
you people, but if I sent someone to steal an organ necessary for an
experiment, I would not send the guy with the hunchback and gimpy leg. Come on! There’s no way that he could make a clean getaway with
those kinds of handicaps. Frankenstein brings his Monster to life, shrieking
like a banshee all the while. When the Monster turns out to be violent, Frankenstein locks it in the
basement of his castle. Fritz
goes down to the basement as well.
Does he discuss the cruelties of Fate deforming them both and bond with
the Monster? Nope, he sadistically tortures the
Monster with fire and imitates his master’s banshee shrieking. Pissed off to no end, the Monster
takes matters into his own hands and hangs the shrimp. Thus ends Fritz. Fritz
and Dr. Frankenstein Looking Like They’re On Some Sort of Father/Son Field
Trip Fritz is a Mean Bugger In the sequel, Bride of
Frankenstein he played the delightfully amoral Karl. Karl is a murderer/grave-robber who works for the
notorious Dr. Pretorious.
(I apologize for that but I really just had to do that.) He kills a young woman at
Pretorious’ request so that the scientists can have a young heart. “Oh Shit” face version 2 comes
into play when Frankenstein asked exactly how Karl got the heart. Apparently James Whale deleted entire
chunks of Bride of Frankenstein in order to tighten up the film. Unfortunately, almost every single
one of those scenes involved Dwight Frye. There was even an entire subplot devoted to Karl that
was cut out! Grrr. In the cut scenes, the Monster
rampages around. During the
rampage, Karl kills his miserly Uncle and steals the money. Karl then frames the Monster for the
murders. The scene closed with
Karl thinking that “The Monster” might take care of his Aunt. I would have loved for this scene to
have been included in the bonus features but no. . . that would have been
logical. Oh, well. Back to your regularly scheduled
movie. Sidenote: During the DVD commentary on the film, Scott MacQueen
refers to Dwight as “Dwight Frye, Body Snatcher to the Stars."
That's how this page got its title. : ) Karl is also involved in helping the
Monster kidnap Dr. Frankenstein’s
wife as insurance that Frankenstein will build his Monster’s bride. Anyway, so after Karl retrieves the
heart, he helps set up the
equipment on top of the castle. During
the lightening storm that is supposed to bring the Monster’s bride to life,
the Monster goes to the top of the castle. Karl and the Monster get into a totally unmotivated fight that makes
no sense. The Monster wins and tosses Karl off the castle
battlement. Is it just me or
does Dwight seem to die an awful lot in these movies? Although director James Whale cut
out the Karl subplot, he did give Dwight a major break with this movie.
Because James liked Dwight as a performer, he combined not two but three
separate small roles to create Dwight's Karl. His original role was Ghoul 1, a graverobber who
helps Pretorious dig up bodies. Fritz was resurrected in one of the
early drafts of the story, but Whale wisely recognized this as stupid and
just had Dwight's Karl fill the
part. The nephew who killed his uncle was also a separate role, and
since that ended up on the cutting room floor anyway it didn't matter. Frankenstein! Rumor has it that Dwight was in Son
of Frankenstein but his performance was left on the cutting room
floor. Unfortunately, the copy I
got was on a cheapy two-movie DVD that had no extra features so I have no
clue if there’s any truth to the rumors at all. It did, however, have Ghost of Frankenstein, for
which I do have Dwight screencaps.
In Ghost, Dwight plays a random villager whose big line is, “Let’s blow it [Frankenstein’s castle]
up!” So he and a bunch of
other guys go blow up the castle where Bela Lugosi’s Igor (yes, there was a guy named Igor in
the franchise, but he looks more like Lon Chaney’s Wolfman than a
hunchback) hangs out being creepy and playing a horn. The castle blows up and then the
movie starts. No, I’m not
kidding. The castle blows up first,
and then all the rampaging happens.
I decided to spare myself the pain and just quit after the Dwight
part. For some reason, the makeup guys and
the lighting crew decided to make everyone look as shitty as possible, which is why
Dwight looks so terrible in Ghost and then looks terrific a few years
later for Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Just an observation, but Dwight’s character looks a hell of a lot like
Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lector. That may just explain my obsession
with both actors. In Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman,
he was a random villager named Rudi. I really wanted him to say,
"I can lead you through the castle. I played the assistant in the
first movie!" Then there would be a collective Mel Brooks-type
gasp. It would have been great.
At least Rudi, unlike most of Dwight’s characters, actually lived
through the movie. Stevelil Art has a new portrait up. It is of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster. It is also linked to from www.karloff.com for all of your Boris Karloff needs. Back to Dwight Frye On to Something to Sing About On to Dead Men Walk On to The Vampire Bat On to Cameo Roles On to The Crime of Dr. Crespi On to The
Wayne Murder Case Send
feedback to joeanne_b@hotmail.com Screencaps from Bride
of Frankenstein are property of Universal. No infringement of copyright is implied or intended.
Please do not use pictures without my permission. All pictures were
screencapped by me. |
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![Let’s blow it [Frankenstein’s castle] up!”](dwight/frankenstein/son1.jpg){kind=link}
