Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein, a movie primarily about how Doctor Henry Frankenstein deals with the fallout of his monster actually coming to life, holds up very well almost ninety years from its release. Starting with the monster itself, we find a fantastic character. Without any lines of dialogue, the filmmakers and Boris Karloff had to use actions and emotions to display the motivations of the monster, and they did a fantastic job of it. The fear, confusion, and longing that the novel describes are evident in the monster's actions, to the point of pushing the audience to root for him. The rest of the…

John Chard

9.0

Oct 26, 2019

Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God! We will always see debates about which of the original wave of Universal Monster movies is the most important. With Dracula being released just under a year before Frankenstein, that tends to give the vampire crowd a sense of justifiable cause for a trumpet fanfare. Perhaps the more pertinent question is which is the better movie? Surely the most hardened of Dracula fans have to bow their heads in acknowledgement that Frankenstein quite simply is superior on every level - even if it itself is not as good as its sequel... N…

Gimly

5.0

Dec 22, 2019

Not a totally faithful adaptation of the Mary Shelley book, still extremely important for not just horror movies, but movies as a whole. I thought about coming at this review from the perspective of what 1931's _Frankenstein_ meant for the future of cinema, and how it was still essentially in its infancy and doing anything even close to what _Frankenstein_ did, changing the culture forever and remaining in the zeitgeist even now, almost a hundred years later, is a monumental achievement and should be viewed as such. But that's never really been my jam. _Frankenstein_ might have been great for…