How can I pick apart something that has become so much a part of our culture? Karloff's portrayal of the Monster is timeless and Colin Clive is bug-nuts as the Doctor. He's quite insane and I still have not been able to buy the fact that he could have or would have wanted a bride for his own. He supposedly snaps out of the work funk he was in when he created the Monster but his character is too crazy for me to believe he could have or would even want a normal marriage. The guy is a grave-robbing, mad scientist! Back to Karloff, there's nothing really frightening about the Monster. I was much more sympathetic to it than I was toward any of the characters of the film. I don't think that was the original intent of the director, though. When this film was released, audiences were probably appalled by it. Maybe it's the Herman Munster effect that endears Karloff's Monster to us.

One thing that made me laugh was when Dr. Frankenstein gets thrown off the top of the windmill, lands on one of the vanes and then drops to the ground. The Doctor is injured but he survives. Tough guy to survive that fall.

The fact that this was scary to audiences of the day is hard to believe because its really quite tame to view today. The original Dracula is the creepier of the two, but I do prefer the look of "Frankenstein" to that of "Dracula".

Frankenstein, a movie primarily about how Doctor Henry Frankenstein deals with the fallout of his monster actually coming to life, holds up very well almost ninety years from its release.

Starting with the monster itself, we find a fantastic character. Without any lines of dialogue, the filmmakers and Boris Karloff had to use actions and emotions to display the motivations of the monster, and they did a fantastic job of it. The fear, confusion, and longing that the novel describes are evident in the monster's actions, to the point of pushing the audience to root for him.

The rest of the characters are also a bit of fun. Baron Frankenstein, played by Fred Kerr, was also a hoot. He played a no-nonsense character that functioned well in the comic-relief role needed with Edward Van Sloan's Dr. Wladman and Mae Clarke's Elizabeth being quite serious, even dramatic. Colin Clive, the man who played Doctor Henry, did a decent job in his role as well, pulling off the role of being consumed by his work, even when he desired to be free from it.

The acting, overall, was a touch more theatrical than I would prefer in a horror movie, but it wasn't so distracting that it pulled me out of the film. The film is a ton of fun to watch, but I do have to say it isn't exactly terrifying. The atmospheric creepiness is somewhat lacking compared to modern-era horror, even going back fifty years. That being said, the movie, if thought about and rewatched, does a good job of displaying how the fear of the unknown, and letting that fear take over, can be the real monster.

How can I praise or pick apart something that has become so much a part of our culture? Karloff's portrayal of the Monster is timeless and Colin Clive is bugnuts as the Doctor. He's quite insane and I still have not been able to buy the fact that he could have or would have wanted a bride for his own. He supposedly snaps out of the work funk he was in when he created the Monster but his character is too crazy for me to believe he could have or would even want a normal marriage. The guy is a grave-robbing mad scientist! Back to Karloff there's nothing really frightening about the Monster. I was much more sympathetic to it than I was toward any of the characters of the film. I don't think that was the original intent of the director though. When this film was released audiences were probably appalled by it. Maybe it's the Herman Munster effect that endears Karloff's Monster to us. One thing that made me laugh was when Dr. Frankenstein gets thrown off the top of the windmill lands on one of the vanes and then drops to the ground. The Doctor is injured but he survives. Tough guy to survive that fall. The fact that this was scary to audiences of the day is hard to believe because its really quite tame to view today. The original Dracula is the creepier of the two but I do prefer the look of "Frankenstein" than "Dracula".

Made the same year as the Lugosi-*Dracula*, this is the other star-making (for Boris Karloff, this time), hugely influential (or archetypal, you might wanna say) Universal horror vehicle. Both films have in common a rather stunning, german expressionism-influenced gothic visual style and a plot that seems rather simplistic for today's standards, kinda like the writing and editing is still stuck in the silent era and has yet to catch up to the storytelling possibilities of sound film. Dramaturgically though, this one is much better paced than *Dracula*.

I can't help but notice how rooted in catholicism both of these films are, so it's easy to understand why they were percieved as shocking and blasphemous at their time. Both revolve around a particular sin - in *Dracula* it's the sin of promiscuity (after all, Count Dracula is coming for your daughters...), while in *Frankenstein* the sin is hubris, playing god if you will at a time when medicine and particularly surgery was making rapid progress - to the layman, it probably wouldn't have seemed too unlikely that humans would soon create life out of dead body parts. The religious aspects become all the more obvious to me considering that the Jehova's Witnesses still forbid blood transfusions - and thus, most kinds of surgery - to this day.

Not a totally faithful adaptation of the Mary Shelley book, still extremely important for not just horror movies, but movies as a whole. I thought about coming at this review from the perspective of what 1931's _Frankenstein_ meant for the future of cinema, and how it was still essentially in its infancy and doing anything even close to what _Frankenstein_ did, changing the culture forever and remaining in the zeitgeist even now, almost a hundred years later, is a monumental achievement and should be viewed as such. But that's never really been my jam. _Frankenstein_ might have been great for the time, I don't know, I wasn't there, but I personally only ever found it to be okay. Re-watching it this Halloween was, I think the fourth time I've given it a go, and it's really not as enthralling as people seem to give it credit for. My roommate fell asleep. It's not that it's black and white either, it just doesn't have as clear a philosophical intention as the book, nor as gripping an output as more modern offerings.


_Final rating:★★½ - Not quite for me, but I definitely get the appeal._