Doctor Septimus Pretorius
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Septimus Pretorius is a fictional character who appears in the Universal film Bride of Frankenstein. He is played by Ernest Thesiger.
Because of his name and his open disregard for the traditional concepts of life and death, as well as his "seduction" of Henry Frankenstein to the "dark side", many view Pretorius as being the Devil in human form.
Septimus Pretorius, Henry Frankenstein's former teacher, was a tall, emaciated-looking man with an unusually large nose and devilish pointed ears. A professor of philosophy, it was Pretorius who first pointed young Henry on the path toward his unwholesome experiments in giving life to the dead. When the horrors committed by the creature Frankenstein created were traced back to Pretorius, he was fired. Pretorius sought his former student out after learning that the Monster had survived being trapped in the burning windmill in the climax of the first film.
Pretorius performed experiments creating life similar to Henry's. He unveils to Henry a group of various homunculi—miniature living humans which he has kept in bottles, and claims to have grown from "seed". Each figure represents a different character: a king, a queen, a dancer, a bishop, and the Devil. Pretorious gleefully compares his own visage to that of the Devil: "Rather a resemblance to me, don't you think? Or do I flatter myself?", a possible allusion to his role as the evil villain. He has been unsuccessful, however, in creating a full-sized human. He proposes to Henry that together they create a mate for his monster, with Henry building the body and Pretorius supplying an artificially-grown brain. Henry initially balks at the idea, but Pretorius had an ace up his sleeve: he had encountered the Monster within a crypt while he and his assistants Karl and Ludwig were robbing graves, and told his pupil's creation about his plan to make a mate for him.
The Monster, eager for companionship of any kind, considered Pretorius his friend, and from then on was willing to do anything that the impish scientist desired, such as kidnapping Henry's wife, Elizabeth, in order to force him to help Pretorius. Henry agreed, and together the two scientists created the Bride of Frankenstein. Unfortunately, even the Bride found her would-be husband repulsive, and the heartbroken Monster decided that the Bride, Pretorius and himself belonged among the dead and destroyed the laboratory. Although the Monster allowed Henry and Elizabeth to escape, Pretorius was killed when the tower exploded.
