"...No wonder Dr. Pretorius was a welcome relief--no slavering wolf jaws, no messy bloodletting or plebeian whacks up-side the head--Pretorius' only apparent weapons were an aristocratic glint in the eye and a droll sense of humor..."

by ELIZABETH STEIN

That shock of snow-white hair,
That smile so debonair,
An undertaker's air--that's witchcraft!"
                                       --Frankenstein Sinatra

"Ah, Dr. Pretorius, we meet again. I so enjoyed our picnic that summer in Italy, dining al sotterraneo with Gore Vidal in the Roman catacombs. (You know all the hot spots!) We must plan another picnic soon-and next time, do bring your tiny friends."

Or so goes my imaginary encounter with Dr. Pretorius, the George Saunders of the horror set, the dandy of creepy cool.

Unlike most movie monsters and their sidekicks, Dr. Pretorius (Bride Of Frankenstein) is viewer friendly. As a kid I used to watch monster movies with my older brother and sister, huddling between them on the couch. "Tell me when I can look," I used to plead, my face buried in my sister's shoulder. She (being evil) would wait for the gory bits and say, "Okay, it's safe now. Look!"

No wonder Dr. Pretorius was a welcome relief--no slavering wolf jaws, no messy bloodletting or plebeian whacks up-side the head--Pretorius' only apparent weapons were an aristocratic glint in the eye and a droll sense of humor. True, there is something a bit off about him. His laugh tends to grow a bit too hearty (especially in a graveyard), and his underlit face in the last act does resemble a simian death mask-but he is so much fun.

It's hard to imagine anyone else playing Dr. Pretorius besides the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, who seems born to the role. To fully appreciate his skill, have a look at The Ghoul. Thesiger appears as Laing, Boris Karloff's Scottish manservant. Far from dining atop a tomb like Dr. Pretorius, the quavering Laing won't even get near one. At the climactic scene the hero and heroine advance towards a crypt where Karloff is soon to resurrect. Laing hangs back. "I'll go no nearer! I'll go no nearer!" he bleats in his Scottish accent.

Could this be the same actor?

If Thesiger's Laing is the epitome of fearful emotion, his Pretorius is all rational intellect-the Enlightenment gone awry. Pretorius-the Latinate name conjures up magi and alchemical transformation, while the doctor's expulsion from the university suggests an intellect too radical for academic fuddy-duddies.

"You and I," he tells Frankenstein, "have gone too far to turn back."

As jettisoned professor ("Booted out for knowing too much!"), Dr. P gives new meaning to the word downsizing by creating a community of six-inch-high homunculi. Not content with just creating life, Pretorius has a sense of presentation as well-not for him a botched monster stitched together from necrotic body parts.

No, Pretorius fashions exquisite, seamless creatures and places each of them in a glass bell jar with a velvet drape. (One wonders where Dr. Pretorius got the little costumes-the crown, capes, tutus and ballet slippers. Did he sew them himself? Is the good doctor a closet fashion designer?) Filmed before today's special effects and computer-generated images, the scene with Pretorius and his tiny entourage holds up marvelously well.

Miniatures fascinate; giants terrify. If regular-sized humans appear monstrous to a shrunken Gulliver, the opposite is also true: Dr. Pretorius' tiny people delight and astonish us, shrinking our own human foibles into comic perspective. Even in the test tube, it's nature over nurture, as each homunculus displays his or her own personal bent.

Is this little creature imperious? Well then, let's call him the king and dress him as wit demands, in kingly robes. He's proud, brave, and mad about the Queen in the jar across the table. Watch his impassioned escape and dash to her side! Uh oh, it appears she doesn't want to be rescued. Better pick him up with the tweezers and set him back in his jar. So much for heroics. The enchanting ballerina fares no better. After watching her take a turn or two, Pretorius shrugs. "My little ballerina is charming, but such a bore!" he sighs. "She won't dance to anything but Mendelssohn's Springtime, and it gets so monotonous."

Pretorius is bad, but in this scene he appears to be a truth-telling, nose-thumbing entertainer, at least at first. His miniatures grant us the distance to see ourselves, and the lens we look through is akin to the satirical eye of a Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift. Satire skewers romantic cliché and sentimental convention. False heroism is revealed for what it is-a vanity. The false is trimmed away to better reveal what is true. Conversely, those outside the loop often misinterpret the truth.

Thus the townspeople scream every time the monster appears, ignoring his plaintive gesturing. Pretorius-an outcast himself-keeps calm and offers the monster a smoke. His winking eyes seem to say, Look at that, someone has taught the monster to smoke-how amusing!

Yet Pretorius is "overfond of irony." He is not a virtuous outcast, like the blind man in the forest who teaches the monster both the word and meaning of "friend." The same satiric bent that delights us by unmasking folly can degenerate into a cynical leveling of all things human. To an exhausted sensibility, everything begins to look ridiculous. One gets the feeling Pretorius sees all people in the same way he views his collection of miniatures.

Such devaluation paves the way for Pretorius' next move-a nod to his henchmen to bring back good, fresh body parts. This is not the tempered rationalism of the 18th century, where one knew one's place in the scheme of things. This is the voice of a tiny devil-in-a-jar who asserts, "life would be much more amusing if we were all devils-no nonsense about angels and being good."

It's a neat trick--Pretorius' scientific amorality leads him into what his alter-ego Laing would call barbaric and "heathenish" practices, yet such practices are exactly what makes Pretorius feel superior to less adventurous, "medieval" minds. While piecing together a body, Pretorius gaily observes that "during medieval times, we would have been burned at the stake as wizards."

Pretorius does not believe in wizards, even as he has become one. Let's not forget that the origin of modern science has its roots in alchemy, and that the rationalism that pervades science today began as an effort to legitimize science by divorcing it from its (by now suspect) magical/philosophical beginnings.

In an Escher-esque doubling, the cool intellectual approach scientists employ to separate experimentation from superstition has now led Pretorius into fantastical practices akin to those that such "objectivity" was designed to avoid. The end result of intellectual curiosity without moral restraint is made evident when Pretorius raises his glass in a toast: "Here's to a new world of gods and monsters!"

Those caught between godhood and monsterdom are fair game for experimentation-bits of human tissue in bell jar petri plates. Such "shrinkage" of human value is what makes Dr. Pretorius truly spooky underneath his lovable eccentricity. He treads the line between intellectual curiosity and ruthless experimentation. And it is a fine line-all inquiry necessarily leads into the unknown.

Today's geneticists have succeeded in cloning life, but do we picture them with frizzled hair and mirrored glasses, raising a glass of sheep's milk as Dolly springs into existence? Pretorius crows about how he "grew (life) like cultures, as nature does," but what would he say of our ability today to grow (and harvest) an ear off a mouse's back? Genetic engineering, fetal tissue research, and the truly odious black market trade in transplantable organs have all become a reality.

When does inquiry become arrogant or cold blooded-and incur "the punishment that befell [the] mortal man who dared to emulate God"? Any question of ethics or human feeling has an retro cast for Pretorius--a god in a world of miniatures is necessarily always slumming. Maybe that's why the jilted monster lets Dr. Frankenstein (the lover) escape at the end, but blows up Dr. Pretorius.

If the Romantic monster resembles his sturm und drang creator, Dr. Frankenstein, the scornful Bride takes after her designer, the cerebral Pretorius. He never cared for the sentimental monster's longing anymore than he did for his miniatures' emotional dramas.

Elsa Lanchester (in real life was married to The Hunchback Of Notre Dame's Charles Laughton) does a memorable job as the stiff-armed Bride, who looks somewhat like a figure from an Egyptian frieze, done up like Theda Bara. A woman of few words, she makes her feelings clear via one staccato cackle, two great screams, and one impressive hiss: "You're not my type, ya big lunk."

One can't help wonder what would have happened if she went for Dr. Pretorius-after all, their hairstyles are similar. I have a feeling Dr. P. would have taken it in stride, perhaps outfitting the Bride in stylish duds and reeducating her ala Henry Higgins:"The pain of the insane comes mainly from wolfbane," or some such. Now there's a sequel we'd like to see.

Thanks so much, Elizabeth!   Dr. Pretorious is surely one of the best-rendered "mad scientists" in the classic horror film genre.  We confess to a real fondness for him--it's our only weakness...

Article copyright © Elizabeth Stein

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