Frankenstein (1931) Reviewed

21Sep09

I found Carl Laemmle’s 1931 production of  Frankenstein to be considerably more unsettling than I expected. In fact, before the film even begins, Edward Van Sloan steps out onto a stage from behind a curtain to warn the audience about the horrific nature of the film they are about to watch. This seemed like little more than a tongue-in-cheek attempt at comic relief when I first saw it, but as the film went on, I came to realize that perhaps this sort of warning was necessary for audiences in 1931, and that perhaps Laemmle was sincere and earnest in his warning.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The film is certainly tame by today’s horror standards, but throughout, I found the performances to be both human and horrific, and the general chaos and uncertainty of any given scene causes a sort of tinderbox effect, as anything could go wrong at any minute.

Boris Karloff as The Monster

A quick plot summary: The film opens with Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his hunchback assistant Fritz (a once again terrific Dwight Frye) awaiting the end of a funeral service so they can steal the body from its grave. Shortly thereafter, Frankenstein makes Fritz cut another body down from the gallows. The intention is to piece together a body from mismatched parts and to create life in the laboratory. Fritz is also sent to steal a brain from the local Medical College, where Frankenstein was once on faculty. Fritz, however, bungles the assignment and accidentally steals the brain of a career criminal and murderer. Lost in his research, Dr. Frankenstein (who is played here with much more humanity than I would have expected; he is not the stereotypical mad scientist, though he may well be the archetypal one) loses interest in his engagement to his fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), who continually pesters him at his secluded tower laboratory. Frankenstein’s Monster (Boris Karloff)  is brought to life by a lightning storm and imprisoned in Frankenstein’s lab, until he murders Fritz and escapes, to terrorize the countryside. Eventually, Dr. Frankenstein’s wedding to Elizabeth is cut short by news of the Monster’s rampage, and a group of torch-wielding villagers traps the monster in a windmill, killing (?) him in a fire, but not before Dr. Frankenstein comes dangerously close to being brutally murdered by his own creation.

Review: As I mentioned above, this film is much more unsettling than I would have expected. Boris Karloff brings such an intense humanity to the Monster, that it’s impossible to view him as only a horror, but it’s also impossible not to see him at least partially as such. His out-sized shoes and arms-too-short blazer have since been aped ad nauseum, most notably by the television show, The Munsters, but here, despite its now cliché status in popular culture, Karloff’s monster remains an enigma. For instance, the scene in which the little girl, Maria, Karloff portrays a sense of real joy at finding human connection, even in something as simple as watching daisies float in a pond, and when he finally throws Maria in the pond, it’s conveyed clearly that the monster immediately regrets his action, and that he had no intention of killing her.

The above caught me totally by surprise. In a later scene, as Maria’s father carries her limp body through the streets of the village, the horror comes around full circle (before this point, the audience does not realize that she is dead). Similarly, Karloff’s portrayal of the Monster’s outrage and confusion in the windmill is truly amazing and entrancing to watch.

The most gruesome moment in the film comes when the Monster hurls Dr. Frankenstein from the top of the windmill, and his seemingly lifeless body catches and hangs for a moment from the blade of the windmill, reversing its spin until he finally falls to the ground below. This is a scene that is even difficult to watch today; I cannot imagine how macabre it must have seemed in 1931.

Dwight Frye as Fritz, tormenting the Monster with fire

Dwight Frye is once again terrific as Fritz, the ambling, eager-to-please hunchback lab assistant. He equally earns sympathy (to watch him scramble up and down the spiral staircase in the laboratory is painful at best) and hatred (his brutal teasing and torturing of the Monster with fire) from the audience, much as he did as Renfield in Dracula. Similarly, Colin Clive brings unexpected humanity to the mad scientist, and though the audience never fully understands his obsession, we hope he’s able to get out of it long enough to marry Elizabeth (though, we don’t really understand why she’s so interested in such an obviously conflicted man).

On the downside: I didn’t believe for a second that the film took place in Germany. Midway through, the sudden use of “herr” and “fraulein” and the entrance of a character named “The Burgomaster” just confused me. The actors mostly used modified British accents, or spoke in obviously American English. I’m not implying that a) the film should have been entirely subtitled, or b) the actors should have used German accents, but it did cause some moderate confusion at times. The best thing, I think, is just to accept these inconsistencies as what they are, and to enjoy the film despite them.

Also, I found the whole marriage side-plot to be cumbersome, unbelievable, and ultimately pointless, as the threads never come together in the end.

On the whole, though, the film is another example of a much more complex entry in the Universal Horror catalog than I would have expected.

*Poster borrowed from wikipedia.org. Trailer borrowed from YouTube.com member sciencemonster. Fritz photo borrowed from Frankensteinia. Frankenstein photo borrowed from inhaps.com.

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Tags: movies, universal monsters, boris karloff, horror movies, classic movies, frankenstein