Frankenstein (1931) Review

Frankenstein (1931) Review

 

For a long time, the original King Kong (1933) was the oldest feature film I had ever seen. Then, it was Freaks (1932), which I reviewed in the first year of Clayton’s Creepy Cinema. Then, not long after that, it was Frankenstein, a movie which likely needs no introduction at this point. The name alone has become synonymous with the horror genre, and monster movies in particular, with numerous clichés that have been copied, parodied, and recreated over and over and over. When I first sat down to watch Frankenstein I was skeptical that it would live up to the mythic hype that old school horror aficionados had been generating about it for decades, but let me tell you, it still lives up to the hype.

The movie begins in a graveyard with a coffin being buried, and two incredibly sketchy-looking guys bide their time until the burial is complete, then sneak in and dig up the body. This is our protagonist, Dr. Henry Frankenstein, and his hunchbacked assistant, Fritz. You might be wondering where Ygor is. He’s the henchmen that helps Frankenstein create a monster, right? Nope, that’s a common misconception. Ygor doesn’t appear until later Frankenstein films. Right away the eerie set design is striking, and even though it’s obviously not real, the way it is shot gives it an intriguing aesthetic. The whole movie, visually, is fantastic, with wide open shots of the castle and tight close-ups on the actors.

All Henry needs in order to create a living being out of the various dead body parts he’s collected is a brain and some lightning. Fritz steals a brain in a jar from Henry’s old teacher, but he makes a mistake and brings back the brain of a criminal for them to use in the experiment in Henry’s laboratory, which Henry built in a watchtower. They rig up the electrodes, lightning strikes the body at the top of the tower, and he says the most famous line from the film, laughing maniacally after repeating it several times: “It’s alive!” There are plenty of other great lines besides this one, but it’s one of the most important exclamations, and actor Colin Clive absolutely nails his performance as Henry Frankenstein. He set the standard for mad scientist characters.

Frankenstein was considered a truly scary theatrical experience when it first came out, and it’s still recognized for being one of the most important horror movies of its kind. Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, had come out earlier that same year, and Frankenstein was lauded as even scarier. I respect what Dracula also means to the history of horror, but I agree: Frankenstein is scarier and a better movie overall. Both films were adapted from classic horror novels, and both had been adapted other times on stage and on screen prior to 1931, but Frankenstein was a very different kind of monster film. Count Dracula was the suave, seductive creature of the night, and Frankenstein’s Monster is the creation of a madman that doesn’t know what it is or how to exist in this world.

So The Monster, played by Boris Karloff, rises from the slab, and Henry and Fritz quickly learn it isn’t very intelligent. But, it is large, powerful, and instinctual. The scenes of The Monster trying to break out of its imprisonment and being antagonized by Fritz with a blazing torch are still disturbing to watch, and I think it’s worth noting that the actual creation of the monster, while clearly a huge moment in the film, is not the climax as it has been in other similar stories. It happens pretty early on, and the latter half of the film follows The Monster quite closely. Unlike other monsters that get hidden in shadows or only come out at night, Frankenstein’s Monster is shown plenty, and Boris Karloff is still (rightfully so) remembered best for this role. You feel bad for him while also being scared of him and scared of what he might do next. When he escapes his imprisonment and finds a young girl throwing daisies into a lake, he plays along with her, and what starts as an oddly sweet scene quickly sours when The Monster, not realizing the consequences of his actions, throws the girl into the lake and watches her drown. The climax is, aside from the creation of the monster, the part that has remained the most well-known for even those who have never seen the original film or any others called Frankenstein. The angry mob chases down The Monster, and it carries its creator into a windmill, where the mob corners them. Henry is thrown from the windmill, but miraculously survives, and the mob burns the windmill to the ground with his creation inside. Even though a short denouement after this spectacular and tragic outcome tries to wrap the whole thing up with a quick happy ending, this was far from the end for either Henry or his monster.

The original Frankenstein had arguably the best legacy of sequels out of all the Universal monsters. Creature from the Black Lagoon, while still my favourite overall, only had two average (though still entertaining) sequels, Dracula had two sequels that featured his daughter and son but not him, and the Mummy series kept getting rebooted with subsequent Mummy films, but Frankenstein was followed by The Bride of Frankenstein, which is undoubtedly one of the best horror sequels of all-time and often cited as being better than the original, then there was Son of Frankenstein, and The Ghost of Frankenstein, all of which are considered classics of the genre. After three sequels with The Monster returning in all of them (and only Ghost not featuring Karloff as the Monster), Lon Chaney Jr. reprised his role as the Wolf Man and battled Frankenstein’s creation, making the fifth Frankenstein film the first crossover film ever made, as well. This robust legacy of sequels is partly what contributed to the lasting impact The Monster and the original story have had on pop culture, but all of them were working off an already impeccably done original film.

If you are going to watch one truly classic horror film this October, consider making it Frankenstein. It’s in my top three all-time-favourite Universal monster movies, and even if you struggle a bit with dated, black-and-white movies like this, I think it is still worth giving a chance because with a runtime of only one hour and ten minutes, it won’t even take long, and there is just something timeless about how entertaining and scary it still manages to be.