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After he had dinner with his fiancée Elisabeth (Mary Alice Moore) and
her father (Raymond Bramley) and sent hem on their way, scientist
Frankenstein (John Newland) goes over to his lab to give life to the
artificial human (Lon Chaney jr) he has created ... but the monster goes
berserk, kills Frankensteins maid and is only stopped when it falls out of
a window to his death (?). Then Elizabeth and her dad return for no
apparent reason - and suddenly the monster returns from its death as well,
and since bullets can't stop it, Frankenstein figures electricity might do
the trick, so he persuades Elizabeth and William - a young boy who stays
at Frankenstein's place for no apparent reason - to lure the monter to him
... and everything ends happily when the good doctor manages to
electrocute the monster. Much has been written about this
episode of Tales of Tomorrow, especially concerning the
drunk Lon Chaney jr who to the end thought he was only doing a dress
rehearsal when the whole thing was already broadcast live - which shows
the best when Chaney picks up a chair to throw it, then puts it down again
and only pretends to throw it to not ruin any props. However, Chaney is
not the problem of this little tale, he is actually pretty good, and apart
from the one scene of confusion his drunkenness simply does not show. The
real problem of the whole thing is the script that throws out all the
subtleties of Mary W.Shelley's source novel in favour of a little game of
tag involving a man in monster makeup - and even for a game of tag the
script is poorly written. Add to this a flat direction (then television
standard) with no feeling for atmosphere let alone horror and you're left
with very little.
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