Monday, October 5, 2015

Frankenstein (1931)

One of the best horror movies ever starring the most famous monster of all time.

Frankenstein is a fantastic monster movie with lavish sets, a great cast, a spectacular story and a climax that is unforgettable. Even if you haven't seen the movie, you will recognize so many scenes from the film. The movie Frankenstein follows the Mary Shelley novel very well although not perfectly. Colin Clive plays the doctor who dared to be God and create a man. His performance is not the usual mad scientist who dreams of creating a monster, he is just a scientist who wants to push the boundaries of human knowledge and we can sympathize with him and even sort of understand why he is doing this. Dwight Frye is in this movie as yet another odd and memorable character, the doctor's hunchback assistant but his name is not Igor like you would expect, but Fritz. But the real star is Boris Karloff as the monster, and for good reason too. He is just perfect casting for the role and brings gruesome and yet empathetic qualities to the famous monster. What I have noticed about both of these Universal Monster movies is how short it takes the film to show the monster, in Dracula it took about 5 minutes to see Bela Lugosi and in this movie it takes about 15 minutes just to see the monster on the slab. And surprisingly this movie is even shorter than Dracula, just clocking in at an hour and ten minutes. Also what I noticed is, although the labaratory is just what you imagine it to be, it actually isn't that big, incorporating fascinating gizmos and electronics without taking too much space. So I love this monster movie, and to be honest I'm going to go on a little rant here but it is important. People have always called the monster Frankenstein even though that is the name of the doctor, and for almost 100 damn years there has been this confusion as to who Frankenstein really is. Well...Dr. Frankenstein actually calls his creation Frankenstein. So yes, the monster is indeed Frankenstein and the movie is named after him.

So tomorrow we look at the superb sequel that is 1000 times better than the original. Now how many times can you say that about a horror sequel?

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