Review: Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

Approved by the Production Code Administration of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America

Score: 5 out of 5

Frankenstein. What else is there to say? It's the original mad scientist movie, adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley that invented modern science fiction and, by extension, sci-fi horror. One of the biggest changes it made from the book was to make the monster a lumbering brute rather than give him human intelligence, and in doing so, it foreshadowed the zombie as an iconic monster of horror cinema and later gaming. It's a film that not only left an indelible mark on its source material and how it's perceived, but also, together with their adaptation of Dracula earlier that year, enshrined Universal Pictures' status in the '30s and early '40s as Hollywood's masters of horror who shaped the genre's contours in ways that are visible to this day. Nearly every scene in this 70-minute film is now iconic. It's been imitated, homaged, parodied, dissected, and simply ripped off so many times over the years that one might think it would lose some of its impact watching it in 2023, ninety-two years after it premiered.

One might think.

I decided to finally watch this film for the first time last night, and while so far I've enjoyed my trip into the classic Universal monster movies, this one has easily been the standout for me. It moves at a surprisingly brisk pace that builds a constantly escalating tension as the consequences of its protagonist's crime against nature become clear to everyone involved, Boris Karloff's take on the title character's monster is iconic for a reason, and the cast and production values all around remain impressive even after nearly a century of advances in special effects technology. It's a film that's at once beautifully gothic, larger-than-life, and treads close to camp, yet remains distinctly grim and melancholy throughout, without ever feeling slow or plodding. So far, I'd easily rank this as not only my favorite of the Universal monster movies, but as one of the all-time great horror films in general and sci-fi horror films specifically.

While this film may have a literal monstrous creature at the center of its plot, there's a reason why, as generations of pedantic nerds have pointed out, he's not the title character. No, that would be his creator, Dr. Henry Frankenstein, who's played brilliantly by Colin Clive and, despite being perfectly human, may well be the film's metaphorical monster. Henry is guilty of many sins, the big one being pride. He's nakedly out to prove himself as the greatest scientist who ever lived and the man who conquered death, not least of all to his former professor Dr. Waldman, his father Baron Frankenstein, his friend Victor (with whom he swaps first names from the book), and his fiancé Elizabeth. He compares himself to God in the mother of all blasphemous boasts shortly after he brings his creature to life, one that several state censorship boards ordered to be cut. He genuinely cares about the life of his grand achievement, but chiefly as a trophy of his accomplishment, and soon finds that he is in no way ready to care for him. He's an egomaniac high on his own supply, one who's set up for a terrible, well-deserved fall in the third act as the consequences of his creation come back to bite him and the horror of what he's done starts to sink in.

Even here, however, rather than swallow his pride and admit he made a mistake, he sets out to salvage it instead, not merely joining the mob of angry villagers but insisting on leading it. Whereas once he made the bold claim that he now wielded the power of creation in his hands (just don't ask about how he was too careless to check the quality of the brain his assistant Fritz gave him), now he insists that only by those same hands can this horrible creature be destroyed. After all, only Dr. Henry Frankenstein, the most brilliant man who ever lived, knows how to stop the monster he made! At risk of getting sidetracked into a rant, watching Henry's transformation I couldn't help but be reminded of the far more recent phenomenon of tech gurus who made their fortune with advanced technology, from social media to self-driving cars to AI, insisting that their expertise as the creators of these technologies leaves them uniquely qualified to manage their deleterious consequences on society. Watching this movie today, its portrayal of Henry was one of the most frightening things about it, a shockingly prescient portrait of what a lot of the boy wonders of Silicon Valley who convinced everyone around them, not least of all themselves and each other, that they were saving the world and uplifting humanity were actually like. He may mean well and have a ton of technical knowhow, but outside his area of expertise, he's a fool. I'm specifically reminded of Larry Fessenden's recent Frankenstein homage Depraved, which I saw four years ago at Popcorn Frights' 2019 festival, and which updated the basic plot to the present-day world of Silicon Valley biohackers but otherwise hewed very closely to this movie's themes.

A great monster isn't enough to make a great monster movie, though. And that brings me to the other monster. If Henry is a self-serving jackass with a bloated head, then his creation is a different story entirely. Boris Karloff's performance brought to mind nothing less than a dog, specifically one who's been mistreated for so long that he can't help but be violent and has no idea that he's doing anything wrong. Drs. Frankenstein and Waldman horribly mistreat him, Fritz the assistant hates him and tries to kill him, and it's no wonder when he starts to lash out like a chained-up junkyard dog with the strength of ten men. Even when he tries to be friendly, such as when he escapes his creator's castle and meets a little girl on a farm, his lack of knowledge of how human beings operate has terrible consequences. Make no mistake, Frankenstein's monster is just that, a monster who, at the end of the day, needed to be put down and never should've been created in the first place, much like the rest of the Universal Monsters. But if Jack Griffin was the trollish monster and Imhotep was the sexy monster, then Frankenstein's creature is the tragic monster, one whose entire brief existence on Earth was practically engineered for suffering and whose ultimate fate may as well be mercy after everything he's gone through. Even after what he does, you can't help but root for the monster, if not to prevail then simply to find peace.

The look and feel of the film are exactly what you'd expect from a classic, classy 1930s monster movie. The sets are lavish, and director James Whale incorporates a lot of clear influence from German expressionism into the film, giving many locales a heightened, creepy, and unreal feel to them of a sort that Tim Burton would become famous for decades later. The film is short, and it moves briskly, focusing on building up a situation that slowly but surely spirals out of the control of everybody involved due to their own hubris. It gets moving early, and scarcely lets up from there, with only a brief lull in the middle after the monster escapes and everything suddenly starts to sink in for Henry just as his wedding to Elizabeth is about to get going. Whenever the monster was on screen, I knew in my heart that he didn't mean any harm, but that didn't change the tension in the air at the knowledge that he could still snap and turn on the characters around him at any moment, as he often did. This wasn't really a slow burn, but it wasn't a "jump scare" movie either; a lot of the frights were built around the characters and the mood, and Whale pulled them off.

The Bottom Line

Even now, Frankenstein is a film with no less power to frighten and amaze, its themes still relevant to this day and the performances by Colin Clive and Boris Karloff crafting a pair of legendary monsters. It's a must-see not just for fans of horror interested in its history, but anybody who wants to watch a sci-fi horror classic that still holds up.