Must Knowledge Lead to Progress? Part Two

Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) with the access terminal to his supercomputer, Colossus, in 1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI,” recently remarked that “machines could take over” because they have the ability to learn independently and share their knowledge.
He then went on to say that it’s conceivable that AI could “wipe out humanity.”
The fact that artificial intelligence is rapidly altering human society makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein particularly relevant.
See my memorandum Artificial Intelligence and Human Fears.

In Colossus: The Forbin Project, Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) builds Colossus, but despite its’ superior intelligence, he still expects his creation to be subservient to him, and to human instruction.
Colossus (at this stage, at least) does wish to preserve humanity as a whole.
However, it also believes that by being a dictator over humankind, it can do a better job than any humans could, and is willing to sacrifice human lives along the way.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates a being who is better able to learn, and also physically more powerful, than himself.
In all aspects, except attractiveness, it seems to be superior in many ways.
He’s unable to be a good father to this creature, however, and the creature murders all the beings who Victor Frankenstein loves.

Mary Godwin Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Before Bridget Fonda played the role in 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound, Elsa played Mary Shelley.

When Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley began her first novel Frankenstein (1818), she was 18 years old.
Despite her age, she created a work—arguably the first true science fiction novel—that still inspires other artists today.
While Mary Shelley didn’t believe in organized religion, she did believe in the existence of God.
In Frankenstein, this teenager explored themes of good and evil; prejudice; loneliness; human control; and the limits of scientific knowledge.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but her mother died a few days after giving Mary birth.
Her father, William Godwin, was an influential journalist, philosopher, and publisher, who wrote An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Alienation must have been an easy subject for Mary to write about.
She had a fraught relationship with her stepmother.
She was shunned by society after she escaped from her father’s influence with a married man, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Only one, of her four children with Percy Shelley, survived to adulthood.
She and the great poet, Shelley, eventually wed.
However, she became a widow when she was 25.
Mary Shelley died at the age of 53, of a brain tumor. 

One idea that Mary Shelley’s novel, Whale’s two films—Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)—and the Corman film Frankenstein Unbound (1990), have in common is that the monster is not a true monster at all.
He’s a lost desperate soul, who turns to vengeance and murder, after his needs are met with cruelty.
Can such a creature have a soul?

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the main piece of evidence against Justine (Catherine Corman) is a locket belonging to the little boy. In Mary Shelley’s novel, the Frankenstein creature planted the child’s locket on Justine.

In the 1818 book, the monster kills at least four people.
He kills Victor’s young brother William, and frames William’s nanny Justine for the crime.
Later, he rapes and murders Victor Frankenstein’s fiancé Elizabeth on Victor’s wedding night.
Finally, he murders good Henry Clerval, Victor’s friend since childhood.
However, he comes to love the DeLacey family, especially the old grandfather.
By the end of the book, the creature is filled with remorse for his crimes, and wanders off, to commit suicide.

Although the “creature” in the 1818 novel, is much more articulate than the “monster” in the 1931 and 1935 films, there are key scenes in the films that reveal his capacity for goodness: the scene with the little girl by the lake, and the scenes with the blind hermit (a similar character to the DeLacey grandfather).
Both scenes are given power by the magnificent performances of Boris Karloff.

The blind hermit (Oliver Peters Heggie, left) shakes hands with the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff, right) in Bride of Frankenstein.

However, the monster does murder the little girl (perhaps because he believes she can float); does throw “his Master” off the old windmill in the 1931 film; and kills or injures people in both films.
At the end of Bride of Frankenstein, the monster is filled with self-loathing.
He tries to commit suicide, and allows Victor and Elizabeth to escape the lab.
Note: When Frankenstein was reissued in 1938, the scene with the little girl was cut.
The footage was lost until 1985, when the scene was partially restored.

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the monster murders Victor’s fiancé Elizabeth, Frankenstein himself, and several villagers.
Unlike other versions, this monster doesn’t commit suicide, but is killed by scientist Dr. Joe Buchanan for being an aberration, not created by God.
By the end of the film, Buchanan identifies completely with Victor Frankenstein.

The monster (Nick Brimble, left) shows Dr. Joe Buchanan (John Hurt, right) who’s boss, in Frankenstein Unbound.

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the creature interrogates Dr. Joe Buchanan as to when Victor Frankenstein created Buchanan.
He’s surprised to learn that Joe thinks himself created by a being called “God.”
Corman’s monster is intellectually between the articulate being in the Shelley novel, and the grunting child-like creature in Whalen’s Bride of Frankenstein.

Humans are using human-created artwork, and our written work, to educate AI, and make AI more intelligent than we are.
Victor Frankenstein used odd parts from graveyards to build his creature, and this resulted (in Mary Shelley’s words) in a “thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.”

The data in ChatGPT comes from wild sources like forums, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook, as well as from edited books.
These sources contain conflicting information!
No wonder, ChatGPT sometimes goes mad and spins tales about fake people, and events!
How can software like ChatGPT believe in an absolute truth?

Midjourney images are “built” from billions of images stolen from the open web.
Much of the “raw material” is not keyworded* correctly.
That’s why a video of New York was used to represent London crime in an TV ad for mayor of London (2024).
That’s why a video of a Ukrainian man was used to represent a basement-dwelling American, in a 2023 Republican commercial blaming President Biden for inflation.
Many stock images, and videos on the world market, are generated by Russian, Ukrainian, and Estonian photographers.
It’s an easy way for creatives to obtain another “revenue stream.”

Android David (Michael Fassbender, left) pours tea for his industrialist creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, right), in Alien: Covenant.

Ridley Scott’s film Alien: Covenant (2017) is a modern retelling of Frankenstein, with Walter as the “good side” of the monster, and David as the “evil side.”
In the prologue, Peter Weyland explains to David that “one day they will search for mankind’s creator together.”
Years after Weyland has died, David drops a bio-weapon on the planet of the Engineers (a giant alien race that facilitated the evolution of humans), thereby punishing the creators of his creator. 

In the original Frankenstein novel, Victor (traumatized by his mother’s death) develops a method to give life to non-living matter.
This experimental creature kills all the people who he loves.
In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, Dr. Joe Buchanan believes he can create a super weapon that will end all wars.
Instead, he creates timeslips and ends human civilization.
In Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Peter Weyland creates a synthetic in the image of Michelangelo’s David.
The superior android David is scornful of his weak, human master.
Yet, later he feels a type of love for scientist Elizabeth Shaw (2012’s Prometheus).
Nevertheless, he plots vengeance on the alien race (the Engineers), as well as all the life forms that they “helped along.”

Today, scientists like Dr. Frances S. Collins (former leader of the Human Genome Project) and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton all believe that science can help humankind make great advances.
At the same time, both warn that there are ethical issues to consider.
Yes. Knowledge can lead to progress, but scientists must tread carefully.
A false step can lead to the end of humankind.

*The rights to photographs and videos sold by commercial agencies (like istock, Shutterstock, and Getty), are routinely associated with “keywords,” so that these images may be used accurately. Sometimes, the keywords are not correct.

Losing a Dime Making a “Message” Film

How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, Roger Corman with Jim Jerome.

Director, screenwriter, and film producer Roger Corman died on May 9, 2024, at the age of 98.
Obituaries praised him for mentoring great directors, and actors, as well as the art films he distributed.
However, his work as a director and screenwriter was dismissed.
After all, Corman was known as the “King of the B-Movies,” and the producer of Sharkopus vs. Whalewolf.
American newspaper editors, and movie critics, tend to be confused by the ideas of “low” and “high” art.

The title of Corman’s autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, was inaccurate.
By 1990—when the book was published—Corman had already made over 100 movies.
Second, although Corman was a master of staying under budget, he had lost money on at least two films.

Adam Cramer (William Shatner) in 1962’s The Intruder.

One was a film he’d directed—1962’s The Intruder*—about a northern bigot named Adam Cramer (William Shatner) who travels to southern towns stirring up racial hatred.
The other was a film he’d produced—1974’s Cockfighter—which starred Warren Oates as Frank Mansfield, a man determined to win a Cockfighter of the Year award.
(According to Beverly Gray’s biography of Corman: his “heart was in this project; he should probably have directed it himself.”)

The Intruder was also released under the title I Hate Your Guts.

The Intruder and Cockfighter have in common that they are ambitious, well-acted films that are difficult to watch.
Both were also box office failures that you can only watch on YouTube.
However, they’ve each held up well.
I read a few Corman obits; none mentioned either film.

Pam Grier was in several Roger Corman films, including The Arena.

One lesson that Corman learned from making The Intruder was that attempting to teach the mass audience was a bad idea.
He also learned that message movies wouldn’t break even.
In later films—exploitation/thrillers like 1971’s The Big Doll House (Pam Grier’s first major role), and 1975’s Crazy Mama—he veiled social consciousness with violence, humor, and trashiness.

According to IMDb, Roger Corman directed 56 films between 1955 and 1990, some of them under the pseudonym “Henry Neil,” or uncredited.
His first was a Western: Five Guns West.
A few years later, his creations included memorable black-and-white science-fiction—among them, It Conquered the World (1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), and Wasp Woman (1959)—designed for double bills at drive-in theaters.

Europe was more impressed by Corman’s work, than America.
In 1966, his biker film The Wild Angels was nominated for the Venice Film Festival “Golden Lion.”
This was the film that gave Corman his rep for being “anti-establishment.”
However, as Corman put it in 2000: “I was always the squarest guy in a hip group.” (pg. 85: Roger Corman, by Beverly Gray)

Roger Corman (left) with Vincent Price (right).

I developed my taste for horror films watching Roger Corman’s “Edgar Allen Poe” films of the early 1960’s.
I especially adored Vincent Price in The Tomb of Ligeia, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Raven.
(The Tomb of Ligeia was Martin Scorsese’s favorite Corman film from his youth.)
Corman films always had a touch of humor.
I first saw these films, not at a drive-in, but in a small movie theater that played second-run triple features.

Roger Corman was the producer or executive producer for nearly 500 films.
These included 1977’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (nominated for four Oscars) and 1979’s Saint Jack (nominated by BAFTA).
After he started New World in 1970, he was Distribution Producer for well-known art films: including, Cries and Whispers, (1972), Amarcord (1973), Fantastic Planet (1973), The Story of Adele H (1975), The Tin Drum (1979), and Breaker Morant (1980).
Big studios at the time didn’t want to “take a chance” on foreign films.
Frank Moreno (VP at New World) and Corman took financial risks on films they admired. 

The monster (in Frankenstein Unbound) has eyes pieced together with three different iris colors. According to Beverly Gray, Corman was shocked to learn that Producer Thom Mount spent so much (a cool $100,000) on the poster art.

Corman was in his mid 60’s when he directed his last film Frankenstein Unbound (1990).

This film involved time travel (from 2031 to 1817); a scientist (Dr. Joe Buchanan) who accidentally creates “time slips” while trying to create a weapon; and an insane Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia).
It’s a fever dream of a movie.
The plot is interspersed with dream sequences in which Dr. Buchanan (John Hurt) is being chased and tormented.

The original black and white sketch (by Dave Christensen) for the Frankenstein Unbound poster.

Corman believed that the $11.5 million budget for Frankenstein Unbound was excessive, and he insisted on cutting corners during the making of the film.
(Some of the practical special effects could have used some CGI, if such had been invented.)
The film bombed at the box office, but it wasn’t a critical failure.

The British movie edition paperback of Frankenstein Unbound, that shows the monster (Nick Brimble) and his bride (Catherine Rabett).

Frankenstein Unbound was based on the novel of the same name by British author and anthology editor Brian Aldiss (1925-2017).
However, turning the film’s hero from a presidential advisor, into a scientist, was likely Corman’s idea.
(Corman was a screenwriter for the film, as well as the director.)

The romance between the hero (John Hurt) and Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) was taken from the book.
Aldiss greatly admired Mary Shelley, and credited her with writing the first science-fiction novel, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

Corman never lost his affection for making “guilty pleasure” movies.
Beginning in the early 21st century, he began producing CGI-dependent TV movies—like Dinocroc (2004), and Sharkopus vs. Whalewolf (2015)—for direct-to-video and the Syfy channel.
(Mostly, he just approved the scripts and the budgets.)
This was a return to his drive-in themes of the 1950’s and 1960’s, except with CGI.

*A caption in Ed Naha’s book, The Films of Roger Corman, calls The Intruder “a noble experiment.” In the text of Naha’s book, Corman is quoted saying: “I had never believed in any picture as much as I believed in this one.”