I Watch Films: Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

It’s the classic, black-and-white, James Whale-directed gothic horror melodrama, from the book by “Mrs Percy B Shelley”. So shocking that a man in a dinner jacket has to come out from a curtain at the start to warn us about it.

Mrs Percy B Shelley

Henry (sigh) Frankenstein and his hunch-backed assistant Fritz (??) are discovered by the camera robbing graves and gallows. Fritz goes to steal a brain from Frankenstein’s old professor. Not his brain, he keeps two on his desk for students to compare, one normal, one an abnormal one from a criminal. (Although the professor addresses the class as “gentlemen,” there are several women amongst those leaving the lecture theatre). Fritz breaks the jar with the normal one.

Frankenstein’s fiancée Elisabeth and his friend Victor convince the professor that something’s wrong, Frankenstein has been up in an old watchtower refusing to see anyone even though he’s to be married soon. They go up in the middle of a storm, which he’s using to resurrect the creature. This is the classic Frankenstein’s laboratory scene.

Eventually the creature goes on a rampage on Frankenstein’s wedding day, and a mob with torches goes after him. There’s a fight between Frankenstein and the creature where the torch falls to the floor and Frankenstein’s actor keeps trying to avoid it, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be nearly burning his leg that much. Eventually they trap the creature in an old windmill and burn it down. The film ends with, Elisabeth giving birth to a new Frankenstein heir and the old Baron Frankenstein (who has previously referred to his son Henry as “Young Frankenstein,” but that’s another film) drinking a toast with the grandmother’s wine.

Watch This: For the imagery and origin of much of what we think about when we think about Frankenstein
Don’t Watch This: You’ve seen all the good bits as pastiches and parody, and it’s based on a play based on the book which has stripped all but the most streamlined plot and themes away

Carl Laemmle Jr was involved