Gods and Monsters **** (1998, Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave) – Classic Movie Review 264

Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave finally both won Oscar nominations for their enjoyably extravagant turns in the crowd-pleasing 1998 behind-the-cameras movie Gods and Monsters. Brendan Fraser plays gardener Clayton Boone, a young ex-marine.

After 30-odd years in films, both Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave finally both won Oscar nominations for their enjoyably extravagant, jolly turns in this 1998 crowd-pleasing, behind-the-cameras movie. Gods and Monsters was nominated for three Oscars, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay (Bill Condon). And Redgrave won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

It focuses sharply on James Whale, the suave, sophisticated, waspish and worldly-wise British film-maker of the original 1930s Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and the original 1930s Show Boat (1936).

McKellen, as gay director Whale, and Redgrave, as his crazy housekeeper Hanna, rejoice in the kind of roles actors die for and audiences lap up. The former George of the Jungle (1997) star Brendan Fraser redeems himself for ever for his subtle and sensitive portrayal of Whale’s handsome, straight gardener, Clayton Boone, a young ex-marine.

The film recounts the somewhat fictionalized last days of the director. In the period just after the Korean War, the elderly Whale, with his great film career now behind him, is much impressed by Clay, the new gardener who starts working on his yard. Whale is a painter and asks Clay to pose for him.

Clay is reluctant at first and uncomfortable at taking his shirt off, but eventually does. As Whale starts sketching, the two begin talking about their lives and find they have things in common. Whale develops a close, special friendship with the young man which eases both men over this troubled period of their lives.

This charismatic picture oozes with the kind of good humour and great warmth that win friends and influence people. Especially entertaining are its spot-on re-creations of the old movies and the wicked impersonations of personalities as diverse as Boris Karloff (Jack Betts), Princess Margaret (Cornelia O’Herlihy), actress Elsa Lanchester (Rosalind Ayres), director George Cukor (Martin Ferrero), actor Colin Clive (Matt McKenzie) and actor Ernest Thesiger (Arthur Dignam).

You’re guaranteed a whale of a time.

Director Bill Condon won the film’s only Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published for his adaptation of the novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram.

The title references a line in The Bride of Frankenstein when Dr Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) says to Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive): ‘To a new world of gods and monsters.’

Whale insisted on casting Thesiger as Dr Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein instead of the studio’s choice of Claude Rains. Pretorius is famously introduced to Frankenstein by his maid Minnie (Una O’Connor) with the line: ‘He’s a very queer-looking old gentleman, sir.’

Pretorius, who is based on Mary Shelley’s friend John Polidori and the Renaissance physician and botanist Paracelsus, became Thesiger’s most famous role. In the US for the film, Thesiger set up a display of all his needlework in his hotel suite, all with price tags, and worked on the needlework while filming.

Lynn Redgrave (1943–2010) won two Golden Globes.

[Spoiler alert] To reassure his loved ones that he was not depressed, but only wanted to end his constant physical suffering, Whale wrote a suicide note before jumping into his Pacific Palisades swimming pool and committing suicide by drowning on 29 May 1957 aged 67. Whale’s longtime partner David Lewis suppressed the suicide note until shortly before he died in 1987, so the death was ruled accidental.

The note said: ‘To ALL I LOVE, Do not grieve for me. My nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and night –except when I sleep with sleeping pills – and any peace I have by day is when I am drugged by pills. I have had a wonderful life but it is over and my nerves get worse and I am afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony and it is best for everyone this way. The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye and thank you for all your love. I must have peace and this is the only way. – Jimmy.’

Up to 2022, McKellen (though Oscar nominated again for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001) has still never won an Oscar or, more surprisingly, a Bafta award. He is Bafta nominated for Richard III (1995) as both actor and writer, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Dresser (2015). He is a five-time Primetime Emmy nominee. He is a Golden Globe winner for Rasputin (1996).

McKellen reunited with Condon for Mr Holmes (2015), Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Good Liar (2019).

Brendan Fraser recalled: ‘I’ve been grateful enough, smart enough to take the work with Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters. Ian McKellen is brilliant with research. I paid really close attention to the sources he goes to. He’s a very, very intelligent man.’

Fraser went on to star in the 1999 and 2001 blockbusters The Mummy and The Mummy Returns but did not have another massive hit until 2022 in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. However, he does not consider this career resurgence a comeback, saying: ‘I was never that far away’. He has mainly been working on TV.

Lynn Redgrave (1943–2010) was first Oscar nominated for Georgy Girl (1966) in 1967. She never won and never won a Bafta award either (though she was nominated four times). She did, however, win the Golden Globe for Best Actress for Georgy Girl and Best Supporting Actress for Gods and Monsters. She died after a seven-year battle with breast cancer on 2 May 2010, aged 67. Fraser attended her funeral.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 264

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