Day 315
Friday 11 May 2018 7.08pm
‘Frankenstein’s Spirit and the Beehive’ 2018
Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
“The movie’s coming! The movie’s coming!”
– Spirit of the Beehive, Screenplay
Spirit of the Beehive (1973) is a most unusual film about a young girl in Spain in the 1940s watching and being affected by the forty-year old film, Frankenstein (1931). The nature of the human body and all of its different parts and knowing what to fear in a human being, as processed through the brain of a ten-year old, is the kind of brilliant idea which comes along once in a lifetime. The idea of Frankenstein is also one of those once in a lifetime ideas, as is putting the together and watching way that could affect someone – a young person’s – mind, many years later after the Frankenstein‘s first release.
The film occurs in three fairly even sections. In watching the movie, we see the mystery of death and whether we can believe death (or films) when we see it (or them); and the young girl has a very real encounter with someone who could be bad, who dies. The combined effect of both does something to the young girl’s impressionable mind.
