8mm Forum: The Trial of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's New Brain

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Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on October 14, 2008, 04:07 AM:

These two collections of scenes from GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN were some of the last digests Castle put out before morphing into Universal 8 (along with the two HOUSE OF DRACULA cutdowns.) I won't go into full-blown reviews because I do not have source materials for accurate synopsis. Aw, heck, I'll try anyway.

TRIAL: The Frankenstein Monster and Ygor wander into town. The monster helps a girl retrieve her ball from a roof, to the horror of the townspeople. The monster is subdued, hauled off to court, and escapes. The villagers storm Castle Frankenstein, blowing it up.

BRAIN: At a medical clinic, a doctor is found dead. The killer is the Frankenstein Monster, who is incapacitated by gas. Dr. Frankenstein plans to revive his dead colleague by transplanting his brain into the monster's body. Ygor convinces the always-villainous Lionel Atwill to sneak his brain in instead! However, due to mismatched blood type, the monster becomes blind and goes wild, destroying the lab and himself in a fire.

Both digests are entertaining, and I think TRIAL is arguably the more enjoyable of the two. That said, I think NEW BRAIN sports a better editing job.

The thing that has always irked me about Castle's treatment of GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN is the need to shoehorn it into two different mini-movies. Had this come out a year or two later from U8, a single, superior 400' reel might have been created (though I doubt it.) The shifting in TRIAL of the villagers' siege on Castle Frankenstein to the end of the digest is not only unnecessary (though I get why they did it) but also more or less forces the editor's hand to eliminate two of my favorite sequences: the monster's revival and his lightning encounter in a graveyard. This same general problem would also affect HOUSE OF DRACULA and its companion digest, THE WOLFMAN'S CURE.

Posted by Charles Phelps (Member # 1341) on November 14, 2008, 06:05 AM:

Castle put out more new horror titles that year than in its whole history. I guess they could see the U-8 writing on the wall.

For the climax in each film, they split the feature's footage between the two movies making the final destruction scenes for each quick and choppy.

I had extra sound copies of both films and cut together my own GHOST or rather THE TRIAL OF FRANKENSTEIN'S NEW BRAIN. It is a rough edit and whenever I have the inclination, I will have to redub some of it, at least the intercut climax and the abrupt segue between the castle blowing up and Ygor and Monster coming into town.

The total combined footage is under 16 minutes, plenty of room for the monster's revival and the lightning shots for a 400'.

I did the same cutting job with the HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN digests and HOUSE OF DRACULA digest. FRANK works better than DRAC.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on April 03, 2009, 08:43 AM:

My prints of the two "Ghost" digests are very dark, but the sound is good. Anyone else have this or is just me? My 16mm prints of these two titles are the same. I guess there was no escaping this issue - I was certain if I got them in an entirely different format I'd get lucky - nope!

Posted by Kevin Wardle (Member # 1680) on August 12, 2009, 03:12 PM:

Nice review! I got both copies cheap from Derann £2.99 each! And was going to edit mine together, but decided not to. I spiced FRANKENSTEIN'S NEW BRAIN with THE WOLFMAN in the end to make a Lon Chaney double bill 400ft, works a lot better that way... [Big Grin]

Kevin.

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on January 09, 2014, 10:03 PM:

As a kid I had the silent versions of the two GHOST digests. Hadn't seen (or owned) them for decades, but recently obtained the sound versions and was surprised to see that "Trial" actually DID contain the monster being freed from the sulfur pit. Yay.

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on January 10, 2014, 07:52 AM:

Marshall The finest Standard 8 sound feature for me will always be 'Ghost of Frankenstein' and the print was really nice. Bela Lugosi was on top form as Ygor and even though much less money was spent on the making of this film than others it was always tops for me which we ran oh so regularly.

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on January 10, 2014, 06:08 PM:

Agreed, Lee, in terms of budget and running time, this is SON OF FRANKENSTEIN's little brother, but I like it much better.

Posted by John Capazzo (Member # 157) on January 11, 2014, 05:58 PM:

Brad, I've had a few dark copies of FRANKENSTEIN'S NEW BRAIN more so than TRIAL.

I agree both were nicely edited. My problem was the shortened time for each film; running well under 8 minutes when 10 years earlier, the other 25 horror digests were over 8 minutes. Critical; when you paid $16.99 each back in 1976, 1977. The same goes with the other "newer" editions along with WOLFMAN'S CURE and HOUSE OF DRACULA, Castle got more frugal with their editing.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on January 11, 2014, 09:11 PM:

I believe the word you're looking for is...C*H*E*A*P. You just know that this cheapness was the result of the new U/8 management making decisions about running times and such and not the original collector-minded people who ran Castle from their hearts and not their bums. By the time these were issued, I'm sure the new executives were already in place even if the Castle name was still on the box. I know the price of silver was unltimately what killed film collecting overall, but had it not happened I'm confident the new executives at U/8 would have eventually run the business into bankruptcy as a result of bad management decisions. Take titles like "The Nude Bomb" and 5-minute versions of "Emergency +4" for instance. Seriously? The TOF and FNB would have been done with the proper care for such a gem had they been released back in the early 70s. It's my fondness for the film that made me buy them and keep them, but what annoys me to this day is that this is exactly what U/8 was counting on whenever they released anything. Quality wasn't even up for discussion and it shows. Don't the Hitchcock 200'ers also run under 8 minutes each? Hmmmmmm.

Posted by John Capazzo (Member # 157) on January 12, 2014, 08:26 AM:

U/8 only created a few shorts that weren't in the castle catalog; such as "scenes from.." and a couple of others, but Castle did produce TRIAL and NEW BRAIN and they were under 8 minutes. One clocked at 7:39. And they charged the same amount when you bought them. Both Hitchcock digests were well under 8 minutes also. The early monsters and most Abbott and Costello were well over 8 minutes.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on January 12, 2014, 09:27 AM:

Thanks, John. I always figured anything released after 1975 was branded as Castle,but really was a U/8 release. It's a shame that we had to pay the same amount for less footage. Curious that the running times were below average when there was so much great material to draw from. In addition, I always felt cheated being that the last 2-3 minutes were identical.

Posted by John Capazzo (Member # 157) on January 12, 2014, 01:26 PM:

1977 was when Castle was bought by U8 and the only thing changed was the box. The 1976 released digests were still Castle at the time and titles such as TRIAL, NEW BRAIN and WOLFMAN'S CURE, HOUSE OF DRACULA and the two Hitchcock films. If you notice, none of those were produced in headlines. They did away with 50' headlines in 1971.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on January 12, 2014, 06:44 PM:

Are you sure about the headliners, John? I know I've seen headliners of Castle titles like "House Of Frankenstein" with U/8 packaging.

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on January 12, 2014, 07:16 PM:

I have seen them too...maybe U/8 revived a few select titles at the end of the 70's. I'm pretty sure Castle did stop making them at some point and some of the later titles didn't have headliners available.

Bill [Smile]

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on January 12, 2014, 11:27 PM:

Or perhaps they simply re-packaged old new stock that was left over. They also didn't release the two GOF and HOD cutdowns in Standard 8 either. Were "Psycho" and "Frenzy" issued in Standard 8?

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on January 17, 2014, 09:15 AM:

John, you're correct about the running times being shorter. I just looked through a 1979 U/8 catalog and all the titles from 1976 and later all run under 8 minutes. As if another 20-25 feet would have broken the bank. What a jip.

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on February 18, 2014, 12:10 AM:

I will soon have extra prints of TRIAL/BRAIN, with the intent of cutting them together. I'm sure it will be a very messy affair, far less elegant than some of the other Castle intercutting projects out there. I'd love to hear advice from anyone else who has tried this. I picture it breaking down like this:

TRIAL: Townspeople meet, raid Castle Frankenstein. Then cut to earlier in the digest where the monster is freed from the sulphur pit. Continue on through entire scene of Frank and Ygor in town.
BRAIN: Entire abridgment, capped off by final shot from...
TRIAL: Monster, engulfed in flames. The end.

I'm sure that last shot will cause havoc with the audio, but it seems too cool to leave out. The other major problem I foresee is the transition from the castle being assaulted (from the beginning of the film) to the monster being freed from the sulphur pit. In the TRIAL edit, they start with a shot of Ygor playing his horn. I believe this is pulled from the middle of the scene where the townspeople are discussing the "Frankenstein curse," and they may have even sourced the sound of the horn from elsewhere in the movie, because I believe that shot originally had a voice-over from the town meeting. Then there is a shot of lightning (probably from the graveyard scene) and then the monster emerging from the pit. Possibly the smoothest edit would be to go right from the explosions being set off to the monster being freed. Leaving the lightning shot in would help the transition visually, but the audio for the lightning would actually be advanced 18 frames, on the shot of Ygor playing his horn. Leaving in THAT shot would be a bit odd. It doesn't belong there, and would be a weird transition considering that moments ago Ygor was toppling parapets on the townspeople.

(Anyone following any of this?)

Posted by Joe Taffis (Member # 4) on February 18, 2014, 05:44 PM:

Marshall, In case you didn't know, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN is available full length in super 8. Since this seems to be a favorite you may want to just buy the feature [Smile]

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on February 18, 2014, 06:14 PM:

Probably can't afford it, Joe, but would love to know more...

Posted by Joe Taffis (Member # 4) on February 18, 2014, 09:18 PM:

I know you can get the GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN feature from CHC in the UK, but maybe Steve Osborne would have it also. I don't know the price....

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on March 07, 2014, 02:30 PM:

Spent some time this morning splicing together my extra prints of "Trial" and "Brain." A couple of the edits turned out much better than I dared hope, and the other two were acceptable. Weirdest moment is at the very end--left in a shot of the villagers cheering just avoid one more audio calamity. Kind of comes out of nowhere. The villagers DO show up at the end of GHOST, but you'd never know it from the way "Brain" is edited. Plus, the shot is taken from much earlier in the film. Oh well, had fun, and I mostly like the results.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on February 09, 2017, 02:52 PM:

Frankenstein's New Brain - Castle # 1069 - Adapted from Universal's "The Ghost Of Frankenstein" 1942

200ft - black & white - picture quality A1, sound quality A1.

Starring:-
Cedric Hardwicke as Ludwig Frankenstein
Lon Chaney,Jr as The Monster
Lionel Atwill as Dr. Bohmer
Bela Lugosi as Ygor

Ygor brings the monster to Doctor Frankenstein and asks if the doctor could give the monster a new brain. The doctor proposes to use the brain of his recently deceased colleague who was a very clever man.
But Ygor arranges for his own brain to be substituted and the transfer is completed. The monster speaks and surprises the doctor by saying that his new brain as that of Ygor's.
Suddenly the monster goes blind, "what's the good of being clever but blind". This is because the blood of Ygor and the monster are incompatible.
Enraged, the monster inadvertently sets fire to the castle, and himself.

A brilliant cut-down by the Castle editors to produce a compelling 9-minute film even down to a brand new title. A film which I can thoroughly recommend.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on February 09, 2017, 02:54 PM:

Arghhh!! Brings back memories of spending nearly two days solid trying to sync the sound on this, as a 400 foot digest of the original Frankenstein film.

I can recite it word for word backwards to this day!

None of it would have been possible without the help of another dear collector named Hugh! [Wink]

Posted by Joe Vannicola (Member # 4156) on February 09, 2017, 10:49 PM:

In general, I've noticed that when Castle Films became Universal 8, the quality dropped on both the Super 8 and 16mm cutdowns. The rich contrast on their cutdowns was replaced by a lighter, dupe like quality. I was especially shocked when Gary Crawford showed his Super 8 400ft cutdown to A&C'S Mexican Hayride at a Cinesea and the contrast was washed out and dupey looking, unlike how Castle printed their cutdowns back in the day. Universal 8 more than likely ceased to care at this point.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on February 10, 2017, 02:37 AM:

In the main, Castle used 35mm originals for their 16mm and 8mm issues, this resulted in very good prints. However, when Universal took over they turned to 16mm originals with a somewhat decrease in quality.

Posted by Joseph Randall (Member # 4906) on February 10, 2017, 07:41 PM:

That's what I have always heard, too. The question is: why?

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on February 11, 2017, 02:19 AM:

In their haste to put their new release plans into motion Universal used lower-grade 16mm source prints. 16mm masters were handier than 35mm vault materials.

Posted by Jose Artiles (Member # 471) on February 11, 2017, 03:17 PM:

I recomend to everybody that can to buy the full feature from CHC or Steve,its a wonderfull print with perfect contrast and definition.

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