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The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema

( McFarland & Company, Inc, 2001, 296 pages )

Book Review by Frank J. Dello Stritto

Not until I read Mark Glassy’s informative and amusing The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema did I fully appreciate that my first introduction to many aspects of the life sciences—evolution and DNA, virology and contagious diseases, cellular biology and regeneration, and lots more—came via science fiction and horror films. The first brain that I ever saw was in the 1931 Frankenstein. In that film and many others, scientists debated life and death, human and animal, aging and mortality. School and church hardly mentioned such provocative topics, but 1950s science fiction movies dove into them with abandon. Their scientists could cheat not only death, but the tree of life itself: humans became insects, insects became gigantic monsters, extinct monsters revived, new ones arose. Amidst all such mayhem, the movies’ scientists delivered profound-sounding explanations of what was going on. Over time—with not much relevant input from school or church—I came to realize that a lot of the science in science fiction movies was very questionable. Many of my generation, the post-war monster boomers, did the same.

One of them is Mark Glassy, a life-long science fiction fan and now a biochemist specializing in human antibodies and cancer therapeutics. He has applied both his loves to this remarkable new study of what’s right and what’s wrong with the biological science of 79 horror and science fiction films.Jurassic Park is among them, but most are low-budget movies, more than half from the early 1960s or before. Thus, The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema brings such films as The Wasp Woman,The Monster That Challenged The World, and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die under the scrutiny of 21st century technology. Surprisingly, the B-movies don’t fare all that badly. Glassy has no fears that that some Dr. Jekyll will become Sister Hyde or that Humanoids From The Deep will be mating with humans. But science lends more credence to such outlandish plots than our elders would have guessed when told how we had spent our Saturday afternoons. Glassy’s case for and against weird science varies from movie to movie, but generally the “big ideas” are moreorless sound, while the angels are in the details. The real world is not awash in reel monsters because some simple ingredient is either utterly lacking (like a nutrient) or cannot be turned off (like DNA or immune response). Basically, H. G. Wells was on the right track more than a century ago in War of the Worlds, wherein humans are no match for the Martians, who in turn are no match for our bacteria.

I suspect most readers on first picking up the book will skip over the introductions and go directly to the write-ups on their favorite films. There is a wide variety to choice from: classic horror from the 1930s (eg, White Zombie under the book’s Pharmacology section, Dr. X under Synthetic Skin), schlock horror from the 1940s (The Devil Bat under Biochemistry¸ The Ape Man under Endochinology), 1950s sci-fi (Them!, The Incredible Shrinking Man, respectively under Entomology and Shrinkology—despite the lighthearted heading, a topic Glassy takes as seriously as any). The three dozen or so post-1965 titles span the spectrum of high and low brow science fiction films, and Glassy digs into some obscure films that illustrate unique points.

One of the films whose science most impresses Glassy is House of Dracula. Dr. Edelman gave Count Dracula and The Wolf Man their only recorded physical examinations. Not only do Edelman’s diagnoses and proposed cures hold up today, but he demonstrates a mastery of medical science far ahead of 1945 (when the film was made), not to mention the end of the 19th century (when the film is set).

In spanning films made over more than six decades, Glassy is dealing with screenwriters whose grasp of science varied widely. He sums up the timeline of fantastic science on screen as:

In the 1930s and 1940s, a practical understanding of DNA was a long way off, so the biological science tended to center on glandular and hormonal effects. During the 1950s, the Atomic Age was in full force, and most of the biological science during this decade centered on radiation-induced mutations. During the 1960s and 1970s some sophisticated biological science concepts began to appear in SF films, such as immunology, cryobiology, biochemistry, endocrinology, and virology. The 1980s and 1990s clearly belong to the DNA age, when the phrase “DNA” is frequently mentioned in movies without really knowing what it is.

Glassy overlooks the fact that 1930s film makers learnt the hard way the cost of mentioning “evolution” (even if only a mad doctor mouthed the word). Until the 1950s, “gland” was Hollywood’s byword for “evolution.” I know of only three 1930s films that even mention the word: Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1933), and Dr. Renault’s Secret (1939)

Prime examples of cinema’s use of fantastic science are the four versions of H. G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau, filmed between 1933 to 1996. Each version is a product of its time and each has a different slant of the science of making humans from animals. Island of Lost Souls is by far the best of them. Almost in the same sentence that Moreau boasts of controlling evolution via “a slight change in the single unit of the germ plasma,” he lets drop that he also uses “plastic surgery, nutrient infusions, gland extracts, ray burns.” Moreau is ultimately defeated by something he cannot understand. “Everything,” writes Glassy, “is controlled by DNA,” and Moreau in 1933 does not even know it exists. Dr. Gerard in 1959’s Terror Is A Man should know about DNA, but he opts for something closer to the methods of the original Moreau in Wells’ novel. He creates a man from a panther only by surgery. Gerard’s numerous operations on the tortured animal, Glassy concludes, must be on the bones and brain, for “all organs, like lungs, livers, kidneys, intestines, spleens, etc., are essentially the same in all animals.” The operation that most troubles Glassy is the one that gives the panther the mental power to speak. Perhaps Gerard agrees with Wells’ Moreau in the novel: the brain is the easy part—simply (and painfully) create enough room in the cranium, and the brain grows and develops to accommodate it. Wells’ agenda was more political than scientific.

1977’s Island of Dr. Moreau is the only period piece among them. This 19th century Moreau stumbles onto “a cell particle” which can only be DNA. He develops a serum that somehow displaces the host DNA, but like the Moreau of 1933 he bootlegs into his procedure some transplants and surgery. All the Moreaus have to cheat a little because their “men” constantly revert to their original form. The script for the latest Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) is little more than a keyword search of the latest terminology. Glassy is impressed with such modern, specialized jargon as “plasmid origin of replication,” “E. Tag,” “gene signal sequence,” and “pCANTAB 5,” but the movie simply does not know what to do with it. Glassy does find one realistic aspect in this abysmal film. “Like too many real scientists, Moreau is extremely arrogant.” So arrogant that Moreau has invented his own DNA alphabet—otherwise his notes on sequencing, that are clearly seen onscreen, are gibberish.

I doubt The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema will inspire many scientists to start watching what are mostly bad movies, but the book may well drive some movie lovers to read up on their science. The ideal readership for this book are people like Glassy and myself, who grew up watching a lot of these movies, and who find more pleasure in searching for their hidden virtues than laughing at their obvious faults. I learned a lot of science and a lot about movies I had seen many times from this book.

In reading of The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema two subtle points that now seem so clear jumped out at me.While our schools were trying to teach us a pedantic version of modern science, schlock films were actively instructing my generation in a much older set of beliefs—wherein man and beast change form, where self is mutable and where the thresholds to other existences are many and near.The mad doctors are not so much scientists as shamans, and their patients/subjects/victims are initiates into new worlds.The second revelation derives from a point Glassy mentions often.If transformations into beasts and monsters are possible at all, they would be achieved only by multiple injections or treatments over long periods, and even then their effects might only be transient. The Moreaus know those problems well, but many mad doctors achieve permanent and profound results with only the smallest, one-time dosages. “Only a pinpoint, Monsieur,” says the sorcerer (Bela Lugosi) in White Zombie of his strange drug, “in a glass of wine, or perhaps a flower.” No way says Glassy—nothing is that powerful.But he admits such a dosage might be sufficient to create hallucinations, to make the victims believe they have transformed.I’ll have to dig out my old videos and watch some of these 1950s movies. If no hard physical evidence of the monster remains after the mayhem (eyewitnesses don’t count—they can imagine things too), than the whole story is suddenly more than plausible.

The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema is designed to look like a grade school science book (can the publisher, MacFarland, at last be developing a sense of humor?). On the laminated cover is, at first glance, what appears to be a typical textbook illustration of a dedicated researcher in his laboratory. But in the foreground is a miniature man, grown like one of Dr. Pretorius’ homunculi, in a glass terrarium. The book is largely written in the terse, no-nonsense style of a textbook. Readers may sense Glassy occasionally straying towards a lighter tone, but he always calls for order in the classroom and returns to form. If he is not serious about hemolytic anemia in Horror of the Blood Monsters or lymphokine activated killer cell therapy in Island of Terror, who will be?

{The Biology of Science Fiction Films is available from McFarland & Company, Inc. Box 611 Jefferson, North Carolina 28640. Order Line: 1-800-253-2187}