“Mr. Ryzkruski is loosely based on Vincent Price,” Frankenweenie producer Allison Abbate told Wired of the character. “But there are a lot of old movie icons that served as inspiration. Even the casting of Martin Landau seemed like a natural [fit].”
And it’s not just Price that’s being brought back to life. Reanimation is at the heart of Burton‘s stop-motion feature — the whole film is a reboot of his cultastic 1984 short of same name.
Landau deservedly scored an Oscar for his dead-on performance as Dracula icon Bela Lugosi in Burton’s brilliant Ed Wood. But it is Price, who appeared in Edward Scissorhands, that remains Burton’s renewable muse. From serving as narrator and inspiration for Burton’s impressive debut 1982 short film Vincent to this year’s feature-length Frankenweenie , Price’s influential spirit inhabits some small or large part in almost everything the decorated director has ever made.
So it only seems natural that Burton would evoke the horror movie icon while creating a character designed to blow the minds of impressionable students. He is, essentially, the science teacher every kid wishes they had.
“We really enjoyed developing this character,” Abbate said. “Mr. Ryzkruski is free-thinking and open-minded — the kind of teacher that is able to break through and make us think in a new way. When Tim designed the puppet, he wanted him to be imposing and intriguing, but also cool and appealing.”
That sums up not just Price, but other horror immortals like Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Their avatars appear as classmates of Frankenweenie ‘s young Victor, who soaks up Mr. Ryzkruski’s electrifying performance and decides to reanimate his canine pal Sparky.
In Burton’s delightful Frankenweenie short, Victor was the only prepubescent reanimator on the block. But in the fleshed-out feature remake Victor’s classmates are equally inspired to reboot their own dead pets.
But like Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s mythic modern Prometheus, they’re reborn instead as monsters in search of compassion. It’s a conceit, of course, that offers Burton, who’s a walking horror cinema library, the chance to shout out even more monstrous progeny from the past.
“The monsters also reference old movie classics, like The Mummy, Godzilla and Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Abbate, the BAFTA-winning producer of director Brad Bird’s indispensable animated film The Iron Giant, told Wired. “The other kids are desperate to win the science fair. But since competition and greed are their intention, they create monsters instead of beloved best friends.”
Frankenweenie hits theaters Oct. 5.
