| Frankenstein Released: 1931 MPAA Rating: None Genre: Zombie Nuts and Bolts: Henry Frankenstein has discovered the means to create life from lifelessness. Working with his deformed ally Fritz, he creates an undead monster that stalks the streets of a small Austrian village. Summary: A funeral commences in a small German/Austrian village. After the body is laid to rest, two figures step out into the early evening. The first is Henry Frankenstein a former medical student from Goldstadt; the second is a haggard hunchback named Fritz. Frankenstein has Fritz disinter the body and they get to work to cutting down another body from the gallows. Realizing that the body of the hanged man is no good, Frankenstein remarks that they will need to acquire a suitable replacement. He sends Fritz to Goldstadt Medical College to steal for him a healthy suitable brain. Fritz breaks in to the building but accidentally drops the brain destroying it. Pressed for time, he grabs the next brain available, that of a deranged criminal. Back in the village, Henry’s fiancée Elizabeth expresses her concerns over Henry’s experiments to close friend Victor Moritz. Victor more than implies that he’d like to see the sunny side of Liz’s panties himself. However, the two agree to go seek council with Henry’s Professor from Goldstadt, Doctor Waldman. Waldman reveals that Henry was kicked out of the school because his experiments became too controversial. Frankenstein was attempting to bring life to dead tissue. Worried that Frankenstein may be taking his experiments too far; the three go to his sequestered watchtower. That night, Henry places the brain that Fritz stole for him into the head of a dead body on an operating table. The body is a patchwork of varying body parts sewn together. Before Henry can run the final battery of tests, there is a knock at the door (Isn’t that always the way?). They try to get Elizabeth and the others to fuck off, but the trio is pretty adamant about seeing what the fuck is up with Henry. Reluctantly, Henry lets them view the final stages of his experiment. Channeling the ‘light ray of creation’, Henry charges his experiment with hundreds of volts of electricity. Franky’s mania overwhelms him as he sees the monster’s hand begin to twitch. He caterwauls about the lab shrieking, “It’s alive!” over and over again. The following day, Elizabeth and Victor return to the Frankenstein ancestral home while Waldman stays at the watchtower with Henry. Henry’s father the Baron is furious at his son’s absence and is convinced that he is running around with another girl. His anger is compounded by the fact that Elizabeth and he are set to be married within a few days. Elizabeth refuses to tell the Baron the truth behind Henry’s neglect. Back at the laboratory, the monster awakens and Henry and Waldman are amazed that the creature is actually alive. Fritz comes along and fucks everything up by brandishing a torch around the place. The monster fears only one thing and that is fire. Unable to control the monster’s rages, Henry and Waldman chain him up down in the cellar. Fritz hates the monster and heads down there to torment him even further. He whips the creature repeatedly and keeps him at bay with the lit torch. The monster finally breaks out of his chains and attacks Fritz. Somehow he manages to hang Fritz along a length of rope and the dirty little dickhead is killed. Henry and Waldman are forced to sedate the creature. By this point, Baron Frankenstein is completely knocked off his rocker and he goes down to the tower to collect his son. Henry is heartbroken and depressed over the failure of his creation and lets his father and fiancée take him back home. Waldman decides to perform an autopsy on the creature to see what makes him tick. The monster revives and crushes the old man’s neck. With no one at home to rein him in, the creature flees into the woods. A few days later, Henry is feeling a bit saner and Elizabeth and he prepare for their wedding. The entire village has turned out for the affair and bratwurst and lederhosen are flying everywhere. Elizabeth however suspects that something horrible is to happen. (A bit clairvoyant there are we Liz?) Meanwhile, the monster wanders about the forests until he comes upon a little girl (Maria) playing by the lake. She befriends the ugly fucker and begins throwing flowers into the lake to watch them float away. The monster wonders how well Maria would float and chucks her into the lake as well. Maria drowns and the monster realizes that he fucked up. Without so much as a “My Bad”, the creature leaves the forests. Maria’s father Ludwig finds her body shortly thereafter. Later that day, the creature finds the house of his creator. He sneaks through Elizabeth’s bedroom window and attacks her. Elizabeth shrieks and brings the whole house running to her aid. The monster leaves her be and flees out the window. Talk about your pre-wedding jitters! And just to disrupt the wedding even more, Ludwig brings the body of his daughter into town and the entire village discovers that the little girl was murdered. Burgomaster Vogel calls all the villagers together to hunt down the murderer and even Henry Frankenstein is included in the lynch mob. They track the creature down to an old windmill and Henry enters the building. He climbs to the top of the mill to face his creation for the last time. The monster whoops the shit out of Henry and hurls his body from the top of the mill. Henry lands on one of the spinning blades and falls to the ground below. The villagers put the windmill to the torch and before long; the entire building is a blaze of fire. The monster is pinned beneath a falling timber and presumably dies. (Don’t worry. He’ll be back.) On a jollier note, Henry unbelievably survives and goes on to finally marry Elizabeth. Acting/Dialogue: This one is all Karloff. Since his character has no speaking lines, all of his acting must be emoted through facial expressions. Karloff pulls this off brilliantly. There are some great scenes where Karloff shows off the monster’s sensitive side such as when he is trying to catch rays of sunlight with his hands and when he is playing with little Maria. Colin Clive is very acidic as Henry Frankenstein. There are some compelling scenes where Clive weaves back and forth between Frankenstein’s obsessive mania and his cold calculating lucidity. Clive makes great work of his dialogue and his manic nature contrasts nicely to that of his colleague Doctor Waldman, played by Edward Van Sloan. Van Sloan is very solid as well and his performance as Waldman reminds us of his portrayal of Doctor Van Helsing in Dracula, released that same year. Dwight Frye plays the disfigured Fritz. Like all of Frye’s rolls, Dwight hams it up by giving us an aching over acted performance that would make William Shatner blush. Gore: There’s nothing inherently gory in Frankenstein, but there are some slightly gruesome scenes. We see a brain splattered upon the floor amidst some broken glass. We see a little blood on Frankenstein’s lip after getting punched in the snot-locker by the monster. And we also see a very bone chilling moment where Henry’s body is hurled from the top of the windmill, landing on one of the moving blades. Ouch! How he survived THAT one, I have NO idea. Guilty Pleasures: Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t everyone suppress a perverse giggle whenever they see Karloff chuck little Maria’s ass into the lake? The Good: The story of Frankenstein has always been one of my favorite film concepts. Although each incarnation of the tale varies greatly from the original source material, each one manages to capture a portion of the spirit of Mary Shelly’s work. Karloff is a fucking chameleon in whatever roll he’s placed in. It’s no wonder that he became the Lon Chaney of his generation (An accolade that Chaney’s own son never quite succeeded in achieving). When talking about a film such as Frankenstein its difficult to not compare it to its 1931 companion, Dracula. As much as I appreciate Todd Browning’s work on Dracula, he doesn’t hold a candle to director James Whale. Browning achieved tremendous atmosphere with Dracula, but Whale’s use of matte paintings and camera angles gave Frankenstein such a sharp crisp texture, its easy to determine which is the superior film. Now whereas Dracula greatly suffered because of its lack of a film score, I find that Frankenstein actually benefits from it. The slow panning silent shots of the monster’s intro are still amazing even by today’s standards. At no point did I find this film to be lacking due to the absence of music. Thematically, this film stands severed heads and bloodied shoulders above the rest. The man vs. God aspect is very strong here, and Whale stridently shows us that when man decides to tamper with nature, he’ll have his ass handed to him every time. There’s also a strong man vs. nature sentiment flowing through here. We have Henry Frankenstein who feels like a stranger in a strange land because only he can appreciate the discovery that he has cultivated. He’s at war with his own sanity and his God complex becomes so dominating that he ends up believing that it is HE who is the sane one, and that everyone else is crazy. I really got a kick out of the character of Baron Frankenstein, Henry’s father. A cantankerous old bastard, he brought a great amount of levity to the roll. Watching Frederick Kerr’s character whining and complaining reminded me a lot of…well…ME! You almost feel sorry that Henry had to grow up in such a household. A tremendous story complimented by solid acting, intense dialogue and vivid looking visuals, Frankenstein is a must-see for all fans of the classic horror genre. The Bad: The movie’s largest detractor is its overall length. It’s only seventy minutes long! (Depending upon which version you see.) I’m certain that if Whale had made the running time at least an hour and a half he could have fleshed out more of the father/son dynamic between Frankenstein and his creation. Colin Clive detested portraying the role of Henry Frankenstein and it shows. Although he plays the roll well, the character is full of anger and is completely unsympathetic. At no point do we feel sorry for him and we are almost clamoring for his death when the monster heaves him off the top of the windmill. There’s something about the lynch mob sequence that always rankled me. First off, how did Ludwig come to the conclusion that Maria was murdered? As far as I’m aware, he simply found her bloated little corpse floating in the lake. Who’s to say the clumsy bitch didn’t pitch herself into the water? I also have issue with how quickly the villagers clamored to Ludwig’s side. The entire town was up in arms and hot for blood before they even realized what was going on. Ludwig just wandered through the village carrying his daughter’s body. He didn’t say anything to anyone, but nonetheless the whole town seemed to know what had happened. Not only that, but I guess these rubes routinely bring torches and pitchforks to a wedding. On one man’s say-so, a throng of people was ready to lynch some guy they never even heard of. There wasn’t even an investigation! It kind of makes you wonder how O.J. Simpson would have fared had there been a squadron of drunken Germans pursuing the white Ford Bronco, eh? I’m still trying to figure out the purpose of Victor Moritz. He’s basically meant to be the Henry Clervell of this story. But he’s completely useless. Aside from giving Elizabeth the ‘Fuck Me’ eyes, he contributes absolutely ZERO to this film. He doesn’t even serve as a useful vehicle for getting Elizabeth to inquire about Henry. I guess Whale figured that the movie had an extremely small cast of characters and they needed to add one more. I thought for sure that this clown was going to get strangled before film’s end. My last little pet peeve concerns Fritz. We see this guy stumbling about with a gnarled up walking stick. But if you look at most scenes, he doesn’t even need it. What’s he trying to prove here? The bad traits of this film are truly trivial and barely even affect the film’s overall rating. This is the Benjamin Franklin of Horror films and should be watched and appreciated by all. Great Lines: “Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!" --Henry Frankenstein howling at his new found success. Note: This line was actually censored from many of the original prints of the film. “Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.” --Henry talking to Elizabeth. “Don’t touch that!” --a personal favorite of mine. This is the ubiquitously over-acting Dwight Frye as Fritz yelling at Elizabeth in the laboratory. “It’s a monster! Shoot it!” --Professor Waldman just after the creature first goes ape-shit. This one is just funny. “And when has the Burgomaster ever had anything important to say.” --Baron Frankenstein bitching about the Burgomaster. “It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive! --Henry losing his fucking mind. Overall Rating: 9 out of 10 severed heads. |
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