Frankenstein- 1931- Director James Whale

The desire to create a new life consumes Dr. Henry Frankenstein, his plans to reconstruct the new life out of the remains of the dead pushes him into seclusion, away from his family and bride to be. Dr. Frankenstein and his assistant Fritz, go as far as digging up a corpse from a freshly buried grave site and go on to steal an abnormal brain from the University. Dr. Frankenstein is obviously determined to get the human remains by any means necessary. His odd behavior and seclusion strikes a growing concern amongst his family and friends, so his fiancé and friends decide to show up unannounced to Frankenstein’s lab. To add to the tension it just so happens to be on the dark and stormy night Frankenstein is preparing his collaged corpse to rise from the dead, as Frankenstein is about to begin the process they knock on the door and demand to come in, out of the storm. After failed attempts to convince him to come back home they begin to call him crazy. Dr. Frankenstein decides to show them just how crazy he is and begins to raise the puzzle piece cadaver into the stormy night sky allowing the lightning to dance with the corpse for just a few moments. Upon lowering the body everyone can see the hand begins to move and Dr. Frankenstein screams “It's Alive!” Shortly after Dr. Frankenstein and Fritz attempt to confine the monster in a locked room, Fritz scares the monster with a lit torch and the fear of harm seems to change the monster’s behavior. It is from this point on the monster becomes harder and harder to control, even over powering Fritz and killing him when left alone with the monster. Dr. Frankenstein seems to realize that the monster must be destroyed and attempts to drug him in order to kill it. Believing that the monster is dead Dr. Frankenstein goes back home to get married, he soon learns that the monster not only survived but escaped the lab and has been terrorizing people along the riverside, even killing a little girl by throwing her in the river. Soon the monster finds himself in the Frankenstein residence and is eventually face to face with the doctor at a nearby mountainside, they begin to fight and even with a torch, Dr. Frankenstein is knocked out. The monster carries Dr. Frankenstein to the top of a windmill and throws the doctor off the windmill but the doctor has his fall broken by one of the windmill blades. It is around this time that an assembled mob of citizens looking for vengeance on the monster that killed the little girl show up, they help Dr. Frankenstein while starting to burn down the windmill with the monster a top of it. There is a great shot of the windmill burning in the distance at this point and it feels like the moments after a storm, a clutter of devastation with an overtone of solace. The final scene is quite strange; it is a shot of the Frankenstein maids are bringing a resting Dr. Frankenstein a glass of wine to celebrate but the glass is then intercepted by Baron Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein’s father, and then they toast to the future. The end.

Frankenstein is a short and to the point film that dives into the oddities of post mortem context and excites our imagination when the cadaver is brought to life with a mixture of science and circumstance. This adventure into the unknown is exciting and terrifying, the disclaimer at the beginning of the film is a nice touch that not only builds up anticipation and sets the viewer up for a scare but also gives us insight now into just how cutting edge this movie was in 1931. The film as a whole is well shot with interesting set designs and costumes that help visually tell this tale, and the cast is strong with Boris Karloff as the monster. Overall it is easy to see why Frankenstein has become such an iconic horror/ science fiction movie; it simply takes us into the mysterious and unknown while giving our imaginations and psyches plenty to play with.