WHALE OF A MOVIE; `GODS AND MONSTERS' DEFTLY PROFILES LATE HORROR DIRECTOR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

James Whale was the greatest film director nobody's heard of. Not only did he make the most influential horror movie of all time, Universal's 1931 ``Frankenstein,'' he was responsible for its even better sequel ``Bride of Frankenstein.'' His work includes two other, much-copied thrillers (``The Old Dark House'' and ``The Invisible Man'') and the first and still vibrant screen version of the musical ``Showboat.''

By the 1940s, however, Whale's career was essentially over, due mainly to studio interference that resulted in a few flops. Some say it was also because the unapologetically gay Englishman refused to stay in the closet, decades before coming out was even considered an option. Regardless, Whale retired to a life of painting and leisure in Pacific Palisades - where he was found, fully dressed and drowned in his swimming pool, in 1957.

``Gods and Monsters'' (the title is a line from ``Bride''), is a fictionalized account of Whale's last days, and it is so unique and compelling a movie that it could bring him the kind of immortality that Boris Karloff's creature enjoys.

Indeed, the film ingeniously weaves the fundamental ``Frankenstein'' themes of memory, decay and regeneration into a witty and touching tale of unlikely friendship and the enduring power of the imagination.

Condon's masterpiece

Based on Christopher Bram's novel ``Father of Frankenstein'' and adapted and directed by Bill Condon, the film is a complex piece of pure cinema, shot through with subjective time shifts, dream displays, convincing re-creations (the ``Bride'' lab is an authentic kick) and metaphorically loaded tableaux. Despite its psychologically charged surrealism, however, ``Gods'' is never hard to follow.

This is due in large part to the fact that Condon keeps character the main focus and has gotten career-best performances out of Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser - and a darn amusing one from Lynn Redgrave - to put the story's complex ideas and difficult emotions across.

While recovering from a mild but debilitating stroke, Whale (McKellen) takes a fancy to his hunky new gardener, Clayton Boone (Fraser). Something of a dolt, definitely a loser, the sullen Boone agrees to model for the artist. During these sessions, the erudite Whale tells his story - loveless lower-class upbringing, horror and loss in the trenches of World War I, succeeding beyond his wildest fantasies in Hollywood - to the befuddled but fascinated ex-Marine.

Whale's cultivated attention has an effect. Boone likes the new ideas and sensitivities his friend inspires in him. But he is perceptive enough to understand what Whale is really after, and Boone is revolted by the man's homosexual overtures. Yet the difficult friendship grows and deepens.

Then, on the proverbial dark and stormy night, the director requests something far more intimate and alarming than sex.

Stellar performance

Good as McKellen is as the crafty old Nazi in ``Apt Pupil,'' he more than tops that performance here. Rueful yet still lusting for life, proudly fey yet too much the individual to fall into queer stereotype, McKellen's Whale is, most of all, a man enraged by his own incremental decline and determined, like Dr. Frankenstein, to defy nature's inevitability. McKellen expresses this with all the subtlety and slyness at his formidable command, while keeping in mind that Whale was a marvelously entertaining old joker, too. It's the finest, richest acting you'll see this year.

And yes, surprise of surprises, George of the Jungle keeps up with him. Fraser juggles so much - dawning intelligence, repulsion/attraction, escalating unease, Boone's own unexamined secrets - you'd expect it would daunt a master Shakespearean like his co-star, let alone a Hollywood pretty boy. Yet he invests the character with a ready emotional availability that is not only impressive, it's uplifting. If Boone is the monster to Whale's mad scientist, Fraser makes you belief that the experiment could have some merit after all.

And what's a good horror show without a nutty European servant? Redgrave seems to have thought it would be incomplete. As Whale's judgmental, protective German housekeeper Hanna, she plays it suspended between a kind of comic-relief Frau Blucher and Prussian domestic goddess. The approach steps dangerously past the line of caricature, but Redgrave knows when to draw back and illuminate the humanity of yet another bewildered and appalled, yet fiercely loving, creature.

On every level, ``Gods and Monsters'' is a marvelous achievement. And it's that rare movie that seems to evolve, rather than just unfold, before our eyes, from something provocative into something closer to transcendent and eternally true about the human condition.

Mary Shelley couldn't have imagined the movies when she wrote ``Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus'' in 1818. Had she known a film like ``Gods and Monsters'' could be made, she might not have been so pessimistic about man's presumptuous determination to create something that could live forever.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Gods and Monsters'' (NR; language, sex, violence).

The stars: Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Bill Condon, based on Christopher Bram's novel ``Father of Frankenstein.'' Produced by Paul Colichman, Gregg Fienberg and Mark R. Harris. Released by Lions Gate Films.

Running time: One hour, 45 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Westside Pavilion, West L.A.; Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Four stars.

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Photo

Photo: Ian McKellen is director James Whale, and Rosalind Ayres is the actress playing the lead in ``Bride of Frankenstein'' during a scene from ``God and Monsters,'' a film about the director who died in 1957.