Frankenstein (1931)

Written by Francis Edward Faragoh, Garrett Fort, et al.

Directed by James Whale

1998 List Ranking: 87

2007 List Ranking: NA - Removed

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera; so much so that my parents taped off the TV a showing of the 1925 silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney. It was my first exposure to silent films, black and white films, and to the history of Hollywood. I found it fascinating, and as the years went by, I became even more interested in this film as part of Universal’s “monsters” lineup. Despite my interest, however, I’ve never found the time to watch any of the other films in this grouping, until now.

Maker meets Monster

Frankenstein, and its oft-quoted or recreated moments, has been in my memory for a long time. There was even a year that I, only somewhat successfully, dressed up as Frankenstein’s Monster for Halloween! However, I still had never seen the film, knowing the story only through that handed-down aspect that the greatest stories of our lives are passed to us (think: do you remember where you were when YOU first heard the story of Frankenstein?). My closest interaction with the story, besides that Halloween night, is a love of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and having read the original novel more than a decade ago.

All of this to say that, as a film, Frankenstein is WILDLY uneven. There is awful pacing and strange decisions made, not to mention that it deviates so intensely from its source material in plot and themes that I would be reluctant to even compare the two.

He’s behind me, isn’t he?

For me, the problems of the film begin immediately, as we’re introduced to Henry Frankenstein (for some reason changed from Victor in the novel) and his assistant Fritz, whom we all colloquially know as Igor (and whom doesn’t even exist in the novel). They are robbing graves for bodies, and universities for brains, yet, we don’t know anything about them. There’s no lead-up or explanation until Henry describes his experiment to his fiancé and others just before the experiment begins. As an audience, we’re given no time to understand or care about these characters or their actions. As a result, I have no interest in whether the experiment is successful or not, because no stakes have been made either way.

Boris Karloff as The Monster

Frankenstein’s Monster is a shadow of his original self in the novel, reduced to an essentially non-verbal infant with the ability to walk and kill, which he does somewhat regularly. Boris Karloff does, admittedly, do great work with awful material, but I would have rather seen him as the fully-functioning, articulate, towering threat that he is in the novel. There’s a lot of great material, so I really don’t know why the film changes so much as to be almost unrecognizable.

(I promise, I’ll stop the “BuT tHe BoOk WaS bEtTeR”, I just need to point out that it’s true)

“You think I’m crazy, do you?”

As Henry, Colin Clive is appropriately creepy, and his delivery of “You think I’m crazy, do you?” is completely chilling. The other characters don’t quite measure up to the acting successes of Clive and Karloff, but then again, they aren’t exactly given much to do. And, with the film racing through its fabricated plot, we don’t get a chance to really care about any of them. Henry’s fiancé, Elizabeth, is at one point attacked by the Monster (as the damsel-in-distress in these films often is), and honestly I wasn’t caught up in the moment. Her fate, either way, didn’t matter because the film didn’t give me any reason to care about her other than that she’s the innocent fiancé.

In another mark of how rushed and uneven the film is, the storyline just skips multiple days without any indication, other than passages of dialogue. After the Monster’s creation, the next scene tells us that 3-4 days have passed, but it doesn’t look like it. None of the other characters seem alarmed that Henry ROBBED GRAVES AND CREATED A PERSON (which also opens a whole can of ethics issues), and after days have passed for them to get over the assumed shock, they just carry on as if it’s all entirely normal.

Maria, you in danger, girl!

Speaking of ethics, the Monster is constantly referred to as if he is an animal, which starts to beg the question of where that distinction between man and animal is in this case…a great question with lots of juicy bits to explore that the film completely sidesteps and ignores.

I really wanted to like this film, and I’ll honestly say that I did enjoy it more than this review is alluding to, but there are some major missteps that don’t sit well with me. From what I’ve read, Bride of Frankenstein is better than this original film, so perhaps there’ll be a list in the future that I can include it on and see for myself.

(Also, because there wasn’t anywhere else to mention it: this is the first completely sound-film on this list! Huzzah!)

FINAL GRADE: C