SPAWN OF FRANKENSTEIN: Remixed by Jorge

[Remixed by Jorge]

SPAWN OF FRANKENSTEIN: Remixed by Jorge

What is it about? This remix of FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN aims for a serious tone by removing all comedy relief, not humanizing the Monster and having a darker ending.
original film name: remix of FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
film studio name: Universal Studios
Original Film Released: FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)
Fan Edit Released: December, 2008?Original Runtime: FRANKENSTEIN 71 mins. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN 75 mins.
New Runtime: 93 min
Amount of time Cut/Added:
- reformatted entire film to 1:85:1 and manually recomposed entire film.
- Color treated entire film for a new look.
- new opening title scene.
- added new score to most of FRANKENSTEIN.
- trimmed most scenes for pace.
- Re-cut little Maria's scene.
- deleted Mary Shelly opening from BOF. Now the films just continues.
- deleted most of Minnie - Housekeeper. No comedy relief.
- deleted sheepherder girl rescue and Blind hermit cabin. No humanizing the creature.
- As usual for my remixes... no happy ending.

DVD - Features:
Menus 16.9
Scene Selection Menus
presented in 1:85:1
Bonus trailers

Concept: FRANKENSTEIN is a brilliant film. Decades ahead of it's time. Karloff portrayal of the Monster is visceral and vicious.
However the sequel BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN changed all that. they succeeded in humanizing the monster. He now emotes and has pathos. For his sins he is crucified and thrown into a dungeon. cries because he wants a friend, falls in love and has his heart broken. Add to this the comedy relief of Minnie the Housekeeper and the Burgomaster and the sequel loses it for me. So the attempt is to streamline both films together while keeping the flavor of the original.

PROJECT TIME:
planning: did it as i went.
editing: 3 months.
sound editing: see above.
DVD layout and features: 1 week.

 

[elbarto1]

ahawwwwwwsome!
been waiting for this one for a while!

 

[Horrorgrind]

There's no way this edit can be bad :}
downloading now.

 

[TMBTM]

At last! yes!

 

[tranzor]

Jorge strikes again!

Only a certain few editors out there can be successful at taking two film classics and combining them into one feature, while being creative enough to give their own additions and alter the plot without ruining the film. Jorge is such an editor.

Here we take the classic of Frankenstein and truly show him for what he is, not an unfortunate, misunderstood creature, but the vicious terrorizing the country side monster he should have been. You no longer feel any remorse for this undead monster and it was very refreshing to treat him as such.

Adding to this is the nice transition and combination of using Bride of Frankenstein to bridge the gap and give you a true full feature while still retaining the nasty elements of the monster that is portrayed in this edit.

The video was color treated and now gives the film an actual finer detail and brownish, sepia tone. In fact I prefer this more than the original black and white. It truly adds a "murky" overall feeling to the film.

My only real complaint is the newer score pieces that were added in. Let me be clear now and say that they do fit the scenes they are supposed to be representing. However they are also very clean sounding and do not match the overall older audio and picture feel that you are viewing. Perhaps if the added audio were given a filter to "age" it a bit so it jives more in place. As it stands now the newer audio drastically sticks out and this kind of ruins the overall feel it should be giving you because of it. Not really a major issue, but it did distract me a little.

Without giving away too much more, I strongly recommend this edit for film classic connoisseurs and horror fans alike.

4 out of 5 stars. This easily would have been 5 stars if it were not for my slight disagreement with the newer audio

One of the best parts not having to do with the edit was the lovely trailer for his "Behemoth" edit which hopefully will be coming out soon. Considering I completely do not acknowledge one of the films used in it, Jorge once again might be able to pull off the impossible..

The dvd has very nice live menus and some bonus trailer material

Get this edit now!!!

 

[tranzor]

review up now in the member reviews section--

 

[boon23]

First of all, let me say "thank you, Jorge" for bringing back such beautiful classics and creating a fanedit from them.
It was well worth the watch.

contains heavy spoilers

please note that this review is just my personal opinion.

video editing: As usual for Jorge's edits, the editing was done perfectly. The sepia coloring adds to the atmosphere.
An incredible lot was done to both movies and I can only assume how long it must have taken to create them. The reformatting to 1.85:1 was masterfully achieved and the movie looked as if it had always been intended to look like that.
The new opening with the green titles was first a bit of confusing, as it presented the movie a lot more modern than it actually was, because the sepia effect made it rather appear older. Still it looked really great. The trimming was done really well, one very long blending transition in the Pretorius speech felt a bit artificial as did a few others, as they were too perfect, when the actual movie comes with loads of what was common for that time: too fast movements, stuttering, artificial backgrounds, artificial objects (like the cemetery in the beginning that is stuffed with ridiculous objects).
The actor change of Elisabeth was about as confusing as the actor change for the oracle in the Matrix sequels, but Jorge could not do anything about it (why did the producers not at least let her have the same hair style and color one might wonder).
The story flows really well and it even kind of makes sense that a mad scientist like Dr. Pretorius could tame the creature a bit. The passing of time was a bit confusing though, as I never really knew how many days, weeks, months had actually passed. The movies were very well joined and especially "Bride" was edited to the better in my opinion. The all destructive lever is one of the most stupid ideas I have ever seem in a movie, yet it kind of did the job: no happy ending. (btw. as for the cast: Elsa Lancaster as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is The Monster's Mate).
The original Frankenstein on the other hand was missing the emotional depth by making the monster just a monster without any other feelings but hate and the wish to destroy. For the later character development in Bride this part would have still been worthy to include. As it is now, the characters are a bit too one-dimensional. Besides that the story was well development and left no plot holes. The landscape that is shown when the monster is killing Little Maria was a bit not fitting to the style of the movie, even though it was repeated for one shot in Bride and from my feelings it reminded me a lot on what I felt in Jorge's Kill Bill X fanedit, when Beatrix shoots the little girl (which is actually a nice trademark for an editor to have a consistent style over the years).
so, even though it was not 100% consistent to me, I cannot give anything else but: 5 of 5 stars for editing.

video quality: perfect. I noticed 2 times slight interlacing stripes though. 5 of 5

audio editing: consistency is an issue here to me. Sound levels, transitions, synchronicity were all perfect. The choice of additional music though was in my opinion not, but most of all just for the Frankenstein part. Bride was perfect. In the first 50 minutes of the movie, the styles of music change quite drastically from classic to almost modern. But the problem is more the technical quality. The new music came crystal clear, whereas the classic music was scratchy, overdubbed and lacked bass. Same goes for a few added sound effects that were crystal clear, while all the original ones were scratchy and old. Now don't get me wrong, it was great to see the monster hunt to Bram Stoker's Dracula score, but it was inconsistent. If it had been possible to keep to one style or quality the audio would have worked better for me.
resulting in a 4 of 5 for audio editing from me (3 for Frankenstein and 5 for Bride).

entertainment: Was it better than the original? No. But that was not what this edit was made for. It was an all new watching experience of Frankenstein and as that it worked really well and kept me well entertained for most parts. I do not at all regret watching it and might even watch it again sometimes.
4 of 5 for entertainment.

presentation: the presentation is simply put: awesome. Great menus, fantastic trailers. Nice cover art. The scene selection is the usual Jorge DVD style and pretty boring and not informative at all, as you get just numbers without any further clue. Still: I wish all fanedits could be presented as nicely as this one.
5 of 5 stars for presentation.

resulting in a 5 of 5 stars from me for this fanedit. Mission accomplished. Really well done.

Epilogue:
This is not the best fanedit I have ever watched, but it is great for what it is: a revival of the classic Frankenstein. I like it and can recommend it to anyone who has a heart for the good old stuff. To me it is an addition to the original Frankenstein, which I still find unsurpassed. And a definite improvement over "Bride Of Frankenstein", which I will probably not watch again, but rather this one.

 

[Mollo]

Well done on finishing this KBM. I will give it a look see as soon as possible. Reading the reviews I do wonder about the music, as Frankenstein (1931) has no incidental score where as 4 years later, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) has a Franz Waxman score through-out.

 

[boon23]

It was brought to my attention that this fanedit contained 2 serious insults to FE members, which cannot be mistaken for fun. Since they are visible for such a short time, I did not see them in my first view.
FE has very strict rules on good behavior and we want to stick to this. Therefore we will not at all allow this fanedit in it's current version on fanedit.org until the issue is repaired.
Insulting FE members in such a hideous and mean way is what we do not take lightly.
Jorge (killbillme) is hereby officially warned.

And let me add this on a personal note: shame on you. I thought you were better than that.

The availability mentioning of this fanedit until repaired is hereby forbidden on all of FE.

 

[boon23]

After Jorge did not comply to "cleaning up" his release, he was banned from this place. However, I consider this fanedit to be a great addition adn have therefore created by myself a clean version of it.
I extracted the 2 trailers containing the insults, replaced the title cards with "clean" ones and re-encoded them. Then I created movie only DVDs from each of the cleaned trailers and inserted them back into the existing DVD structure with Vobblanker. The entire process took me 20 minutes.
So, everything is exactly the same as it was before, except for clean title cards.
Enjoy.

 

[Horrorgrind]

After Jorge did not comply to "cleaning up" his release, he was banned from this place. However, I consider this fanedit to be a great addition adn have therefore created by myself a clean version of it.
I extracted the 2 trailers containing the insults, replaced the title cards with "clean" ones and re-encoded them. Then I created movie only DVDs from each of the cleaned trailers and inserted them back into the existing DVD structure with Vobblanker. The entire process took me 20 minutes.
So, everything is exactly the same as it was before, except for clean title cards.
Enjoy.

Is this the worlds first fanedit of a fanedit? :wink:

 

[boon23]

well, I did not alter the fanedit, just the two trailers and even them not context-wise, just the title cards that are shown before they play. You could call it a re-fan-authored DVD (and even that's too much).

 

[bionicbob]

I LOVE the old Universal monster movies.
Many an autumn afternoon (aahhhh..... remember after school afternoon movies
on the local cable channel? boy, I am feeling my age) were spent
watching Frank's Monster, Wolfman and Dracula. And though I own them
all, I don't think I have actually watched Frankenstein or Bride in
many YEARS. So I was watching this edit in many ways with fresh eager
eyes.


First off, the entire DVD design is very impressive and professional looking.

As always, the actual edit appears to be technically flawless. All the cuts/transitions
were clean and unnoticeable to this viewer.

The new aspect ratio is amazing!

The remixed storyline works very well, the joining of the two movies
together is excellent!!! The new version of poor little Maria's fate is very dark and evil. Clearly cementing Jorge's version of the Monster as
a creature of pure evil. In many respects, it reminded me of John Carpenter's original Halloween. The Monster as the original Boogeyman.
I really liked it.


The new color of the film took me a few minutes to get used to. I
love the classic sharp black and white, but this new version quickly
grew on me. It definitely creates a darker tone and mood. Well done!
Though I thought at the time maybe the opening credits (and maybe the
Universal logo) should have been in b/w instead on in color in keeping
with the period of the movie, but that is small quibble.


The new soundtrack I found works for the most part. Many of the
musical pieces had that 30's haunting type of sound and feel.

This must have been a painstaking process trying to find the right
music, I can only imagine the hours Jorge put into this alone. I think
it mostly works. I particularly loved the opening act with the
graveyard and brain stealing scene and the later hunting of the monster.

The whole "it's alive!" act, the music did not quite click with me, it
seemed a little too modern maybe... can't put my finger on it. Perhaps if
Jorge had lifted some of the music from original Bride and
used it on the Frankenstein portion along with the new music it would
have created a better continuity of musical cues?

Either way, it is a fantastic and impressive piece of sound editing!
Jorge might want to consider adding a tag at the end credits listing the music he used.


All in all, I found it a very enjoyable edit.
Better than the originals? No, of course not. They are classics.
But a great horror alternative.

I will definitely watch it again and pass along to my buds.
Wonderful stuff Jorge.
Thanks.

 

[philmfan]

I am just now attempting my first Fanedit doing essentially the same thing as has been done here. That is, uniting both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein into a more complete telling of the tale, which I plan to call The Complete Frankenstein (something I've wanted to do even before the video age, with Super-8 digest versions of both films). Unlike the version of this project that started this post, I don't plan to do so much re-visioning, choosing to allow most of the original touches to remain out of both deference and preference. Personally, I don't feel it's really possible to truly, completely unite the two films without too totally changing the source material or adding way too many extraneous elements (fine for more ambitious fanedits, but not what I want to see with mine). Mainly, you'd have to totally eliminate every scene in which Henry Frankenstein's fiance Elizabeth appears from one or the other film, since she's played by different actresses, and this leaves too much of a gap, I think. Instead, I'm chopping the Bride prologue up so that Byron begins telling the first part, in which Mae Clark portrays Elizabeth, then when that section ends, Mary Shelly takes up telling the tale and Elizabeth is played by a different actress (as if it was a slightly different version of the same character, this also addresses the other stylistic/storytelling differences between the source films). Let the audience figure it out (if it's good enough for Lost Highway, well...). As for "humanizing" the monster, I agree that it'd be nice to remove these touches as much as possible to make a really sharp, hard-edged horror film, but the original monster in the novel was not all bad so complaining or changing this is a fundamental misconception of the story (again, such changes are okay for Fanedits in general, or a particular fan's tastes, but it's not objectively necessary - it's a personal choice, nothing more). I have already removed most of the Baron's appearances in the first film (he nearly ruins it, I feel), as well as the original introduction, and as much of the comic relief maid as I can from Bride. I am right now trying to craft a couple custom segments to fill in gaps and add a very short "tag" to the end, in which we're reminded that the real "monster" has been Dr. Frankenstein himself all along (ala Hammer's version of the good doctor). For all that typing (and your reading, I assume) I am not totally sure I will be able to offer this fanedit to members of this site because I am not very confident of my technical skills at this point and can't guarantee the results will be watchable. Also, I'm absolutely paranoid about the slightest hint of copyright infringement so I might be too chicken. FYI: I'm converting the films to AVI's (because my initial research indicated AVI was the way to go) and editing them in some cheap editing software called Magix and will burn them to disc sans menus and other fancy trappings that are useless to me, right or wrong that's how it's gonna be since I mainly just wanna see the thing myself. If my plans change, however, I will offer my novice attempt at editing at a later date (maybe it'll provide a decent template for a real pro at this game). The bulk of my re-editing only took a few hours, so since I'm brand new at this I assume it's something anyone here could do for themselves in even less time, if they wanted to.

 

[boon23]

philmfan, please start your own thread in "IN THE WORKS" about your own take. Thank you.

 

[Dwight Fry]

Given my moniker, I of course had to check this out! As Bride of Frankenstein is my fave of both movies, I don't think this new version improves over the originals, but it's nonetheless a fine alternate take. Things I particularly liked: the new twist on the Maria sequence (exemplifying "less is more" to perfection, in fact I've always preferred the old truncated home video version of the sequence than the restored one), the otherwordly brownish tint, the new darker ending which is probably what Whale's original cut looked like (while it could have been a bit tighter edited, a couple of shots scream for shortening), and particularly ALMOST NO UNA O'CONNOR who very nearly ruined Bride for me, despite preferring it to the original overall. BTW, Una DID totally ruin The Invisible Man for me. Maybe I'll get to work on that some day.

What I didn't like as much: It sometimes tends to forget it's a classic, via some dissolves that scream "digital editing software" thus come across as awkward, and the too modern feel of the new credits (the lettering in green for a B&W movie, but also the overall flow of it), the use of the current Universal logo, Karloff second-billed after Colin Clive (!)... yet keeping the end credits cast list card for Bride instead of creating a new one. Now half of the credited performers are not in the movie, and half of the performers in the movie are not credited. As for the score for the first half, it's both too recognizable and too modern-sounding. No way it could pass for something released in the 1930s. Also I must say that the blind hermit sequence is a favorite, but for the purposes of this cut it definitely had to go. The new retooling of Pretorius as the responsible for the Monster's talking ability works fine IMHO.

However, while this comes close to resemble a movie and not two glued together, some problems keep it from succeeding, and I don't mean the two Elizabeths. I think that the Monster-stalking-Elizabeth scene from the first film should go because it becomes repetitive in relation to the second part, and Dr. Frankenstein's line "It's alive! It's alive!" referred to the Bride should go for the same reason. These things work in separate films, in the same one they become redundant. Also, the windmill sequence needs to be shortened, despite it being so good. As a matter of fact, BECAUSE it is so good. It looks like what it is: a movie climax. It needs to be turned into a middle point.

All in all, a solid, worthwhile fanedit. Is a "Prometheus Chronicles vol. 2" intended? The presence of the Monster from Son of Frankenstein in the menu seems to indicate as much. And I'd love to see that! 7/10 overall.

[Edited for newbie cluelessness]

 

[Uncanny Antman]

I understand Jorge has been banned from here

Either you're way behind the times or I missed a really new development. (The former is my guess.)

 

[elbarto1]

yeah, Jorge is fine - there was an issue when SoF was released that led to a short ban but that mess was cleared up and he was reinstated.

 

[zeppelinrox]

Heh.
I just posted a rating and short review and mentioned that Jorge wasn't banned anymore in my review.

Of course, not everybody knows that Jorge is killbillme

 

[Dwight Fry]

Way behind the times indeed. I'm still a newbie, and my only info source on the subject was a post on this very thread. Sorry!