Frankenstein Page #9

INT - CONFESSION BOOTH - DAY

... and into the confessional where they launch at each

other in harsh whispers.

Dialogue here is overlapping and intense:

HENRY:

You're making a scene!

VICTOR:

Why Waldman? He of all people should have cheated

death!

HENRY:

You can't. Death is God's will!

VICTOR:

I resent God's monopoly

HENRY:

That's blasphemy!

VICTOR:

Blasphemy be damned! Waldman spent his life

trying to help people!

HENRY:

All the more reason for us to continue his work

with the poor!

VICTOR:

(beat, low)

No. He had more important work.

HENRY:

There are sick people who need our help. Here and

now. Not in some future time. Consider that.

(CONTINUED)

41

Henry exits. Victor tries to compose himself, clasping his

hands together as if in prayer ... or quiet rage. He gazes

up. There on the wall hangs a crucifix.

VICTOR:

Life and death.

(beat)

Why should You alone have the final say?

VICTOR"S POV PUSHING SLOWLY IN on the Christ figure before

him, bleeding from a crown of thorns, arms thrown wide.

DISSOLVE TO:

DA VINCI'S STUDY OF MAM rises from the image of Christ,

striking an eerily similar pose, arms thrown wide within the

perfect circle. We hear a DOOR BEING UNLOCKED as ...

INT - WALDMAN"S WORKSHOP - DAY

... a WIDER ANGLE reveals the deserted workshop. the door

swings open as MARIE lets himself in. He sees the finished

locket lying open on a table, picks it up, studies the

beautiful miniature portrait it contains. Snaps it shut.

He looks up, eyes falling upon the Da Vinci print hanging on

the wall. He stares. Intense.

INT - WALDMAN'S WORKSHOP - NIGHT

TRACKING SHOT:
Things are in the process of being sorted and

boxed. We find Victor poring over Waldman's notes:

VICTOR:

To understand the causes of life, we must first

have recourse to death ... and examine the process

in minutest detail ...

EXT - TOWN SQUARE - DAY

A gray day. Waldman's ferret-faced MURDERER stands weeping

helplessly on the scaffold as sentence is read:

MAGISTRATE:

... his body to be left on public display for a

twenty-four hour period, thereafter to be

consigned to an unmarked pauper's grave. So the

court has spoken.

(CONTINUED)

42

The EXECUTIONER draws the hood over the murderer's head,

cinches the noose tight. The condemned man is blubbering,

pleading for his life.

Victor stands in the crowd. 'Watching. Waiting. we hear the

THUMP of the body dropping, the CRADK of a snapping neck..

EXT - TOWN SQUARE - NIGHT

Dark as Hades. Pissing down rain. A FLASH OF LIGHTNING and a

CRASH OF THUNDER. The dead man still hangs from the

scaffold, lashed by the wind.

Victor looms from the storm, hands jammed in the pocket of

his greatcoat. He pulls out a thin, glittering blade. The

very weapon which took Waldman's life. He gazes up at the

dead man ... at the rope from which he dangles ...

INT - VICTOR'S GARRET - NIGHT

The dead murderer lies pale and naked on a slab. Victor

leans close, still dripping, studying the face closely. A

FLASH OF LIGHTNING throws wild Littering shadows through the

dormer windows and skylights. Softly:

VICTOR:

No longer pathetic and useless

INT - VICTOR'S GARRET - DAY

The dead man, dissected and wired, jerks bolt upright,

flopping and convulsing, eyes opening and closing, mouth

gaping open and shut. He falls back limply as Victor shuts

the power off, making careful notations in his journal.

INT - VICTOR'S GARRET - DAY

TRACKING the dissection table ... up the length of the

murderer's body ... now in an advanced stage of decay ... we

hear the SOFT BUZZING of flies ...

We find Victor standing over the corpse. Gaunt and hollow-

eyed. Exhausted and obsessed. Wearing a butcher's apron.

Staring down at one of the dead man's forearms. Maggots are

swarming in the flesh. He abruptly raises a cleaver and

WHACKS it off at the elbow.

INT - VICTOR'S GARRET - NIGHT

TRACKING SLOWLY past the forearm lying in a steel pan, we

find Victor performing an intense chemical analysis. Dead

tissues are breaking apart in solvents, distilled over a

slow-burning flame. Victor smears a glass slide, places it

under a microscope.

(CONTINUED)

43

INT - GASTHOF - DAY

Victor is hunched over his notebook, pale and unhealthy,

scribbling notations next to a rendering of the human form.

Henry is across from him:

HENRY:

Victor. This has got to stop.

(Victor glances up)

Nobody's seen you in months. You haven't attended a single

class.

VICTOR:

I've been preoccupied.

HENRY:

We all know how hard you took Waldman's death.

Even Krempe is sympathetic. But it is time to move

on. It is time to concern yourself with life.

VICTOR:

That is my concern.

(faint smile)

I'm involved in something just now. I want to

finish it in Waldman's memory.

HENRY:

How much longer?

VICTOR:

Few months perhaps. I'm gathering the raw

materials even now.

EXT - GRAVEYARD - NIGHT

The wrought-iron doors of a crypt have been forced open.

CAMERA PUSHES through to find Victor standing inside over a

stone sarcophagus with a pry bar in his hands. He's nervous,

working up his courage:

VICTOR:

Materials. That's all they are Tissue to be re-

used.

He pries off the stone lid. It THUMPS heavily to the floor,

cracking in half. He opens the casket, reaches in, raises

the pale arm of the deceased to inspect it.

EXT - GRAVEYARD - NIGHT

Stone monuments. Bare trees. Ivy-covered ground. Victor

shoulder-deep in a grave. Shoveling. A lamp burns low.

(CONTINUED)

44

COFFIN - NIGHT

Pitch black. The lid swings open, cascading dust and soil.

Victor peers down, holding the kerosene lamp high.

VICTOR'S GARRET - NIGHT

TRACKING ALONG the shelves, crammed now with formaldehyde

jars of feet and hands, brains and kidneys, the occasional

head staring through the glass, dead cats ...

... and we find Victor working into the wee hours. Hunched

over his specimens. Candle flame flickering low. Referring

back to Waldman's notes. Making notations in arcane books

such as "De Occulta Philosophia," by Agrippa, and "Le

Sciences et les arts D'alchimiste," by Paracelsus.

FRANKENSTEIN ESTATE - LATE DAY

A magnificent backdrop of mountains against a cloudless blue

sky. TILT DOWN to Elizabeth and Justine with the mansion

distant. A steady breeze ripples the fields as Elizabeth

regards a stack of mail.

ELIZABETH:

Nothing. Still nothing.

JUSTINE:

It's been months. It's not like him.

ELIZABETH:

Something's wrong. I know it.

(off her look)

I've heard rumors of cholera spreading south from

Hamburg.

JUSTINE:

So have I

ELIZABETH:

I should go. I should leave today.

JUSTINE:

Elizabeth. If it's true, travel into Germany

would be banned. You'd never get near Ingolstadt.

(beat)

Besides, they're only rumors.

ELIZABETH:

(beat, nods)

And not a word of them to Father. He's agitated

enough not hearing from Victor.

(CONTINUED)

45

JUSTINE:

Read him one of the old letters and rephrase it.

We'll say it came today. It'll set his mind at

ease.

Elizabeth gives her a hug. They walk toward the mansion

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