 |
 Boris Karloff is the "screen's most memorable monster." Dr. Frankenstein
experiments with life and death and creates a monster out of body parts.
Problems ensue when his monster expresses "its violent rage." This movie
"mixes gothic decay and chilling lyricism." Karloff "offers a compassionate
portrayal of a creature groping with identity." 1931, 71 minutes, VHS
Way back in 1931 Universal hit pay dirt, releasing both Frankenstein and Dracula. Those two films are linked, not just by their release year, but also by
their stars, the twins of terror (ugh, go ahead and shoot me), Boris
Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It's well known that Lugosi rejected the role of the
Monster in Frankenstein since it wasn't a speaking part, thus allowing Karloff to essay the role that
he would be fondly remembered for. One can only imagine how the ham-fisted
acting of Lugosi would have tainted the Monster, like it did in the very nearly
unwatchable Dracula (Dracula's about the only monster who relies on making faces at you when he's
tormenting you) . It also allows you to appreciate the emotions that Karloff
was able to convey despite the gallons of make up that Jack Pierce applied to
him. Watching this movie again, I'm still amazed that it seems to hold up
after all these years, unlike its sucky cousin, Dracula. Whereas Dracula played out like a real boring stage play, Frankenstein was
pure action, emotion, and heartache! In fact I remember the plot like I just
watched it this morning... Henry Frankenstein is some type of doctor who
specializes in trying to re-animate the dead. Even though he's busy tampering
with the laws of nature, at one time he must have taken a respite from his
black and unspeakable experiments to romance the fairly bland (and very
understanding) Elizabeth. Somehow, he's even convinced her to marry his
mad-scientist behind. Of course, like most mad scientists, he doesn't really
have time for chicks (especially with that new Star Trek series premiering on UPN this fall!) and he rents out a little fixer-up on the
outskirts of town that houses the old watch tower or windmill (no one in the
movie could ever decide what to call it). Oh sure, he writes to his woman, but
she never gets to see him. I wonder if he told her that he was rooming with a
dude named Fritz? Did I mention that Henry has a "buddy" named Victor who's
chief role in life is to hang around other people's fiancees and get in their
drawers? Once Victor is rebuffed by Elizabeth (good girl!), they all decide
that they should check out this hip new place that Henry is staying out. Man,
they heard that crib was tight!  First they check out the local university where Henry had been going to school.
There they speak with a Dr. Waldman, who is something like Henry's guidance
counselor. Waldman tells them that Henry's been cutting class and hanging out
at this trendy coffee shop a lot, working on his slam poetry. He further tells
them that Henry was way too advanced to stay in school and wanted the school to
provide him with a steady stream of corpses so that he could continue playing
God (he's just doing it for his thesis!). The school balked at that, saying
that they preferred to suck people dry over the course of a lifetime through
their student loan program instead, so Henry put a flyer up at the student
union looking for a hunchback to join his band. Everyone decides that they
should pay a visit to his hangout over at the old windmill (convenient parking
for angry mobs in rear). But what has that drop-out Henry been up to while
everyone is minding his business? He and his new best friend Fritz (where's
Ygor? This is kind of like expecting Curly and getting Shemp or *shudder*
Curly Joe.) are down at the local cemetery making a withdrawal. What I liked
about Colin Clive's Henry Frankenstein is that he wasn't afraid to roll his
sleeves up and get his hands dirty. He's right down in there with Fritz (and
Henry also employs the handicapped!) getting the corpses out of the ground,
busting up coffins, and generally being a graverobbing fool. The neck on their
body is all broken and Henry decides that they need another brain, so he sends
Fritz off to the university where they keep brains on standby. You know,
college was the best seven years of my life and I don't recall ever seeing any
brains just laying around classrooms. I did see a guy in the laundry room steal
some girl's panties and I also saw a guy set a trash can on fire, but grey
matter was obviously in short supply. Well, Fritz may have a hump, but he's no
dummy, so when he's confronted by two cannisters marked respectively "Good
Brain - Take This One!" and "Brain of Psycho -Not To Be Transplanted to
Monsters"
he takes the good one. Mission accomplished. Then he drops it and the thing
splatters on the floor, so he takes the brain of a psycho (he'll probably be
referring to that one from now on as "The Back Up Brain."). What could possibly
go wrong?  Once Fritz gets back home with the brain, Henry immediately sets about getting
this part installed into the monster. There's a raging thunder storm outside,
which is just perfect to provide all the electricity needed to jump start the
creature to life. Now I was looking at all this electrical equipment old Hank
had somehow trucked up to the windmill and I was wondering where in the heck he
ordered it all from. I wasn't even sure what year this supposedly took place
in. There's a bunch of villagers in lederhosen jumping around later (I think
they were celebrating Henry and Elizabeth's pending nuptials, either that or
there was a beer tent in the town square). I never really saw anything that
indicated it took place in the twentieth century, but maybe the 1800s had
stores like the Sharper Image that sold all these cool devices with levers, and
bulbs and coils. Well, just when he's about to hook the jumper cables up to
the car battery in the Monster's neck, there's a bunch of knocking at the door!
Who could that be, wonders Henry. I've killed all the Avon ladies, Jehovah's
Witnesses, and meter readers that have come by, for parts. He sends Fritz out
to tell whoever it is to get lost, but it turns out to be the doctor, Victor,
and
Elizabeth. Henry ends up yelling out the second story window at his bride to
be that she can't come in and that she must leave! You know how women are when
you're in the middle of an important project - they let you know that nothing
is a bigger project than they are, so even the mad-scientist supreme, Henry Von
Frankenstein, has to bow to the little lady's wishes and he lets them all in.
Henry figures that since they're all there and his "buddy" is calling him crazy
in front of his woman ("Crazy? We'll see who's crazy!"), that they can watch
him play God (it really isn't much fun if no one is around to marvel at your
hubris). They all go to the secret lab where the monster is strapped the
operating table and Henry has to slap away Waldman who is trying to peek under
the sheet (I bet he snuck a look at his presents on Christmas Eve, too!).
Henry cranks the wheel and sends up the creature through the roof so that it
can get hit by lightning, and it does. They bring it back down, the hand of
the creature moves and Henry is able to finally deliver his catch-phrase, "It's
alive! It's alive!" Once you've created life what do you do with it? You let
your hunchback assistant tease and torment it! (That's why you built it all
along, right?)  Like a sibling, jealous of a newborn, Fritz figures out that the monster
doesn't like it when you try to give it a hotfoot with a flaming torch. He
forces the creature to cower as he continuously jabs at him with the fire. He
also whips it with Indiana Jone's bullwhip, just in case the monster is
fire-retardant. Henry sees this and tells Fritz to cut it out, and they leave
the monster alone in his cell. Later while Henry is filling his doctor buddy
in on what dad-gummed genius he is for creating life, he hears Fritz squealing
like a pig and they go running up to the monster's cell. They peek in the door
and notice that Fritz is dangling from a rope (maybe a bullwhip?). Now that
ain't right, they thinks to themselves and hurriedly slam the door before a very
agitated monster runs out (having a hunchback hanging in your bedroom will make
any of us agitated, I'd guess). Waldman and Henry quickly formulate a
hairbrained scheme where Henry will lure the monster out of his cage and
Waldman will hit him with a syringe full of liquid Nytol. This works to
perfection in that they get all this accomplished without Henry getting
completely strangled. Henry goes off to get married and the doctor hangs
around to dissect the monster and presumably let him escape. Well, the monster
wakes up once the doctor tries to stab him a few times in the name of mad
science and chokes him out, then rumbles off into the great outdoors on a
journey of self-discovery. The creature is child-like in his curiosity and his
enthusiasm which means that he drowns a little girl by chucking her into a lake
(I think most of us tried drowning little girls when we were young and
inquisitive, but those records are sealed, right?). Now, to be fair to the
monster, he had run out of flowers to toss into the water (what kind monster
spends a good deal of his rampage playing with flowers and little girls, is
this thing going to be having tea parties for his teddy bears next?). Well,
once the girl flops around and sinks like the Edmund Fitzgerald, the monster
gets all scared that his probation is going to be revoked and he runs away.
Back in town, there is a par-tay in progress to celebrate the marriage of the
local mad scientist when all of a sudden the little girl's dad comes walking
into town carrying the lifeless body of his daughter. Apparently he thought
this shindig was BYODK (Bring Your Own Dead Kid). An angry mob is quickly assembled after the monster peeks the bride of
Frankenstein (hold on big fella, we'll fix up with a bind date in the sequel!).
Henry leads one of the three groups deployed to find the creature. Somehow,
Henry gets separated from the rest of the group and finds the creature. The
monster pushes him around and Henry falls and smacks his head on a rock. The
creature picks him up and hauls him back to the windmill. Once there, the mob
gathers and watches as the creature drop kicks Henry off the top of the
building. A stuffed dummy that looks nothing like Henry falls and lands on one
of the blades of the windmill and slides off onto the ground. The villagers
burn the windmill and the monster (riiiight!). Henry recovers in bed as his
father drinks expensive liquor. The movie is short which leads it to both feel
fast paced and somewhat abbreviated. Everything seems to wrap up quickly, the
monster doesn't do a lot considering how heinous he's supposed to be (drowns
kid, kills doctor, peeps woman, assaults creator/godhead, etc.). Karloff of
course is the stand-out here. His monster is probably the most "human" of the
Universal monsters (a case can be made for the Wolf Man, but he's a bit of a
whiner). Even though this thing is supposed to be a big, scary monster, he
spends most of his life being scared himself. He's frightened by the things
that Fritz does to him, he's frightened when the girl drowns, he's scared when
the villagers are attacking him. I like the angle of the monster being just a
bewildered thing in a world he doesn't understand and that doesn't want him. I
think that's a much more effective and moving aspect of the film than the tired
old, "don't play god, technology is going to destroy us" bit that lots of these
movies seem fond of selling. We all know that technology has its good and bad
points, we all know that we play god every day in places like hospitals and
it's usually in an effort to do good, so that argument just doesn't hold up as
a blanket indictment of progress. The fact though that this monster is
struggling, despite his mammoth mental limitations, to make sense of his
existence is something that everyone goes through (and probably goes through
their entire lives). That Boris Karloff can communicate with his eyes and the
skittish motions of the lumbering beast these emotions so that the viewer
readily identifies with the monster just shows us what a good piece of work did
in this role. In the end, you come to believe that the real monster isn't
necessarily the tall geek with the bolts sticking out of his neck, but the
society that would create and abandon him like he was yesterday's trash. Don't
feel too bad for the monster though, he would go on to headline a
Godzilla-sized number of sequels, each (after the classic Bride Of Frankenstein) worse than the next.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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