Frankenstein’s Head

Perusing the origins of the 2013 horror movie Frankenstein’s Army…kinda reminded me of King Charles’s head. You know, from Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield, in how the severed monarch’s cranium keeps intruding into the mind of poor, befuddled Mr. Dick, preventing him from completing his epic self-history. A similar fixation seemed the case with the director Richard Raaphorst, who made this film…mainly because of Boris Karloff’s head. Although, oddly (or not), it wasn’t an impediment but an inspiration. “What influenced me tremendously,” he said in an interview, “was James Whale’s version [of Frankenstein], with Boris Karloff’s square head. It all came from the square head. It’s so mechanical, so unnatural. That image kept haunting me for years and took me into the industrial look of the [film’s] designs. I just wanted,” he added, “to push it further.” Push it further he did. (Just remember, we have Boris Karloff to thank for this.) For those who can take its all-out carnage,…