A Review of "Frankenstein" (1931)

I have come here to chew bubblegum and strangle villagers... and I'm all out of bubblegum

The counter piece to Bela Lugosi's Dracula, from 1931. So much of a counter piece that it included a few of the same actors. That, or it could've just been because it was the same studio. Anywho, fresh off the incredible success of Dracula, Bela Lugosi was offered another part almost immediately; the mute, murderous creation of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in director James Whale's Frankenstein, based off of the Mary Shelley novel where a doctor plays God and creates another man. Lugosi disliked being offered a role with no lines where he would be caked in make-up, made unrecognizable, so he made the highly notable decision to pass. In came then-unknown, 44-year-old actor Boris Karloff... a late-bloomer when it comes to breaking into Hollywood... and he accepted the role. Little did anyone know that Jack Pierce's make-up work to turn Boris Karloff into the monster would make him the most famous, iconic image in Hollywood history.

"Fritz, we really should've done something about
this guy's fingernails. Yeesh!"

Frankenstein begins with Edward Van Sloan, Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula, stepping from behind a curtain and delivering a brief caution before the opening credits. It seems laughable by today's standards but back then, this movie was a rather scary, gut-wrenching experience, with highly questionable material about to be portrayed. So this warns the audience to leave if they don't "wish to subject their nerves to such a strain". It's parodied in Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, same deal. After the opening credits, we find ourselves in a village of the Bavarian Alps, where a young scientist named Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), a hunchback, piece together a human body, the parts of which have been collected from various sources, including stolen freshly buried bodies in a cemetery, and the bodies of recently hanged criminals. Frankenstein desires to create human life through electrical devices which he has perfected. He then sends Fritz to a school where Dr. Waldman (Van Sloan), Henry's old medical professor, teaches, to steal a brain; Fritz drops the normal brain and has to take the brain of a criminal. This is spoofed in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, with the "Abby Normal" routine.

You guys ever get the feeling you're being watched?

Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), his fiancée, is worried over his peculiar actions. She cannot understand why he secludes himself in an abandoned watch tower, which he has equipped as a laboratory, and refuses to see anyone. Hopefully thinking it isn't her, like a precarious women would in this situation. Thankfully social media wasn't a thing back then. She and a mutual friend of Henry's, Victor Moritz, go to Dr. Waldman, and ask Waldman's help in reclaiming the young scientist from his experiments. Waldman tells them that Frankenstein has been working on creating life. Elizabeth, intent on rescuing Frankenstein, arrives just as Henry is making his final tests. He tells them to watch, claiming to have discovered the ray that brought life into the world. In one of, if not the best mad scientist laboratory set and scene that has ever been put on film, they watch Frankenstein and the hunchback as they raise the dead creature on an operating table, high into the room, toward an opening at the top of the laboratory. A terrific crash of thunder booms, and Frankenstein's electric machines flash, crackle and buzz. Shortly, the hand of Frankenstein's creature begins to move. This prompts Frankenstein to shout his famous line 'It's alive!'. Side note, the rest of the line had to be censored, as Frankenstein claimed "Oh in the name of God! Now I know what it's like to be God." The censors felt this was sacrilegious, so they cut out the second half of the line and overdubbed it with thunder. It has since been restored.

The manufactured creature, despite its grotesque form, initially appears to be a simple, innocent creation. Frankenstein welcomes it into his laboratory and asks his creation to sit, which it does. He then opens up the roof, causing the creature to reach out towards the sunlight. Fritz enters with a flaming torch, which frightens the creature. Its fright is mistaken by Frankenstein and Waldman as an attempt to attack them, and it is chained in the dungeon. Thinking that it is not fit for society and will wreak havoc at any chance, they leave the creature locked up, where Fritz antagonizes it with a torch. As Henry and Waldman consider the creature's fate, they hear a shriek from the dungeon. They run down and find that the creature has attacked and hung Fritz. It then lunges at the two but they escape, locking the creature inside. Realizing that the creature must be destroyed, Henry prepares an injection of a powerful drug and the two conspire to release the creature and inject it as it attacks. When the door is unlocked the creature lunges at Frankenstein as Waldman injects the drug into the creature's back. The creature falls to the floor unconscious. The injection was also cut by the censors in 1931. So originally, the film looked to show to the creature attacking Henry and Waldman before just becoming delirious and collapsing. It, too, has been restored.

"Dr. Frankenstein, have you seen the chompers in this thing?
He could probably chew bricks!"

Henry collapses from exhaustion, and Elizabeth and Henry's father arrive and take him home. Henry is worried about the creature but Waldman reassures him that he will destroy it. Later, Henry is at home, recovered and preparing for his wedding while Waldman examines the creature. As he is preparing to vivisect it, the creature awakens and strangles him, killing him. It escapes from the tower and wanders through the landscape. It has a short encounter with a farmer's young daughter, Maria. She is not afraid of him and asks him to play a game with her in which they toss flowers into a lake and watch them float. The creature enjoys the game, but when they run out of flowers he thinks Maria will float as well, so he throws her into the lake where, to his puzzlement, she drowns. Upset by this outcome, the creature runs away. This scene was met with backlash by the 1931 audiences, as expected, but surprisingly it was either not cut at all or minimally altered. I haven't found word online about it, but I've watched the scene and while you don't see the girl drown, the sounds of her struggling are there. Meanwhile, with preparations for the wedding completed, Henry is serenely happy with Elizabeth. They are to marry as soon as Waldman arrives. However, Victor rushes in, saying that Doctor Waldman has been found dead. Henry suspects the creature. Meanwhile, the creature enters Elizabeth's room, causing her to scream. When the searchers arrive, they find Elizabeth unconscious on the bed. The creature has escaped. Luckily, she is unharmed.

I actually don't have a joke for this one.

Maria's father arrives, carrying his daughter's drowned body. He says she was murdered, and the villagers form a search party to capture the creature, and bring it to justice, dead or alive. In order to search the whole country for the creature, they split into three groups: Ludwig (Michael Mark) leads the first group into the woods, Henry leads the second group into the mountains, and the Bürgermaster (Lionel Belmore) leads the third group by the lake. During the search, Henry becomes separated from the group and is discovered by the creature, who attacks him. The creature knocks Henry unconscious and carries him off to an old windmill. The peasants hear his cries and they regroup to follow. They find the creature has climbed to the top, dragging Henry with him. The creature hurls the scientist to the ground. His fall is broken by the vanes of the windmill, somehow saving his life. The prop that hits the blade is clearly a dummy, but I mean still; the fall should've killed him either way, and would've been a far more satisfying conclusion to both, but if a sequel had to be made, this is the best course of action to make sure Colin Clive can return. Anywho, some of the villagers hurry him to his home while the rest of the mob set the windmill ablaze, killing the entrapped creature inside. At Castle Frankenstein, Frankenstein's father, Baron Frankenstein, celebrates the wedding of his recovered son with a toast to a future grandchild, who could be the future Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, played by Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein eight years later.

Frankenstein is my favorite of the classic Universal Monster films. For being 1931, it was incredibly groundbreaking. It took chances, terrified audiences and made a career for Boris Karloff. Karloff wasn't even credited until the end of the film. In the beginning, the monster is credited as "?". It's weird this movie decided to do a 'name switch', so to speak. In the novel, the doctor is called "Victor Frankenstein" and his friend is called "Henry", but then in this movie, the doctor's name is "Henry Frankenstein" and his friend is called "Victor", so I guess they just decided to Americanize the main character? Whichever the case, there's also the subject of 'the monster'. That's another thing. Ever since this film, people around the world constantly call the monster "Frankenstein". They think when they see that green face, big forehead, bolts in the neck that "that's Frankenstein". He's simply 'the monster', 'the creature' or 'Frankenstein's monster'. He's a nameless creature, but still it persists even to this day that people call him "Frankenstein". Maybe it's because the old posters feature Karloff's face as the monster, with the title "Frankenstein" plastered over him. Name association, I dig it. Also for being 1931, the acting is superb. Usually in these old movies, you find that the acting is quite hokey, and dialogue is clunky, but neither of those are the case for this film. It was groundbreaking in more ways than one, and is easily watchable by anybody, even today nearly ninety-years later.

Do yourself a favor, if you have time after Dracula and trick-or-treaters are still coming to your door, pop in Frankenstein. It's just as eerie as it's ever been, a true timeless horror masterpiece.