[HorrorScience] Frankenstein (1931)

Reading time: 5 minutes

Qualification

Frankenstein

Year

1931

Duration

71 minutes

Director

James Whale

Distribution

Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye, Frederick Kerr, Lionel Belmore

Script

Mary Shelley (original work), Francis Edward Faragoh, Garrett Fort

The monster created by Frankenstein is one of the horror characters that has been used most times in cinema, as I explained in this article about its different versions. However, no matter how much its appearance is updated or new interpretations are made, the Frankenstein monster that everyone thinks of when they hear that word is the one played by Boris Karloff in 1931, in the film that I am going to comment on below.

[HorrorScience] Frankenstein (1931) — Karloff as Frankenstein's monster

After witnessing a funeral, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) steal the body of the deceased in order to progress in the experiment they are carrying out, which consists of creating a man with pieces of corpses and giving him life, however The doctor needs to find one last key piece, the brain, which Fritz will steal from the medical school. Unfortunately, the doctor's hunchbacked assistant damages the healthy brain and decides to replace it with another one that is in the room, without worrying that it was the brain of a murderer.

For her part, Elisabeth (Mae Clarke), Henry Frankenstein's girlfriend, is worried about her future husband, since he hardly appears at home and does not let anyone visit him in his laboratory. Victor (John Boles), their friend, offers to go talk to him, but Elisabeth insists on accompanying him. Finally, the two of them and Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), a former Frankenstein professor, will go to the laboratories to try to get Henry away from his strange experiments.

The visitors' insistence will cause the doctor to let them see his experiment, just at the moment when he is trying to give life to the body he has created. The result of the experiment is just as Frankenstein would have predicted and the enormous body created from corpses begins to move. Dr Waldman warns Frankenstein that this monster will destroy him, that he has gone too far, but he does not listen and shows him that the monster is a normal being, but that he needs time to adapt.

The appearance of Fritz with a torch will upset the enormous monster, which is why they have to lock him up, but not before being punished by the hunchback, who demonstrates a special viciousness against the monster, who ends up killing him as a sign of revenge. After discovering Fritz's lifeless body, Frankenstein begins to realize that perhaps he has made a mistake when creating the monster, after which he will try to destroy it with the help of Dr Waldman. Unfortunately, The monster survives and escapes, leaving himself completely free in a world that he does not understand and in which he is not wanted.. Will the doctor be able to stop his creature? What will happen when the monster meets the townspeople?

After the success they had with Dracula (1931) Universal Studios scored a second goal by creating Frankenstein, creating two of the best classic horror films in history in the same year. Due to the closeness of both dates and the rivalry created between Bela Lugosi (Dracula) and Boris Karloff (Frankenstein's monster) it is impossible not to compare them.

Although Dracula It had an atmosphere as beautiful as it was sinister and great performances by Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield, the pace of the film was somewhat slow and its ending was quite bland. All those errors were corrected in Frankenstein, giving an overall better film, with many memorable scenes and a fairly successful pace.

It is difficult to find negative points about this film despite the fact that It does not have, nor does it claim to have, a strong resemblance to the original book, from which it only takes the concept, since both the monster and the doctor act in a totally different way. This fact is not a coincidence, since the story is not based directly on the book but on the play performed by Peggy Webling.

If you want to see a classic horror movie and don't know where to start, I highly recommend that you watch Frankenstein.

Curiosities about the film:

This film had several cuts due to censorship, for example the scene in which Dr. Frankenstein brings the monster to life and says that “now I know what it feels like to be God” was labeled blasphemy and the audio was edited so that what he said could not be heard.
Bela Lugosi was going to play the monster, but the actor refused to do it because he said that the character only growled like an animal and he did not want to cover his entire face with makeup. Years later he admitted that he had made a mistake in making this decision and even played the monster in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943).
For some reason that I don't know, in this movie the names of the doctor and his best friend were exchanged, since in the book the first is called Victor and the second is called Henry.
This film was selected to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry, like others already mentioned in this section such as The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) either king kong (1933).