Frankenstein

James Whale, USA, 1931, 71 minutes

One of the most famous of all horror films, and if it's sometimes primitive and dated, it still contains some remarkably resonant moments, and remains fascinating and very watchable.

The story is well known: Baron Frankenstein dreams of creating life, and finally gets his chance when his grave-robbing hunchback (Dwight Frye, excellent) steals a murderer's brain to go wfth all the other human pieces assembled together. When the creature is made it inevftably runs amok, causing great despair to its paternal master.

Unusually for Whale's work the horror is played totally straight, unlike the later black comedy of this film's sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Frankenstein also revels in a weird fairy-tale type of beauty, unlike any other horror film until Cocteau made La Belle et la Béte (1946).

Karloff's performance is superb, conveying all the monster's raw emotions just through his eyes, and eliciting sympathy from the audience despite his brutal actions. It comes from an early enough period in Universal's history of horror filmmaking to still be unique and original, and Whale firmly demonstrates that he was the greatest horror director of his time. Brilliantly moody, definitively seminal, this is one of the most important films ever made.

Review by Mark Radice
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95