DVD/150: FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1931)

When DRACULA became a huge hit, Universal Pictures wanted another Gothic horror film so chose Mary Shelley's 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN, already filmed three times during the silent era.

Universal had the rights to a 1927 stage version which formed the film's basis, only Shelley's premise remains.

 

FRANKENSTEIN's huge success confirmed Universal as *the* horror studio.  It's sequel THE BRIDE OF... is a rare instance of a sequel being better than the original, but susequent films dwindled into tawdry retreads.  After Universal, Hammer had a seven film run which also repeated declining quality.

 

 

Actor Bela Lugosi and director Robert Florey were first choices but after some make-up tests they were ousted when Univeral offered it to British director James Whale for only his third film.

Despite creakiness and Colin Clive's over-wrought Victor Frankenstein, Whale's influential film still delivers. with unsettling imagery that continues to haunt us down the decades.

Shelf or charity shop? A re-animated keeper.  If ever a performance can be said to have been iconic it's Boris Karloff's Creature: thanks to Jack Pierce's extraordinary make-up Karloff gave us a timeless Creature. Despite the diluting of the image down the years, his actual performance is still fantastic. Scenes that have stayed with me down the years: the tilted perspective of the opening graveyard scene, Karloff's first appearance walking backwards towards us, the fizzes and crackles of the laboratory equipment during the re-animation, the towering film sets, the knife-edge tension of the Creature playing with Little Maria by the lake, Mae Clarke's Elizabeth draped across her bed echoing Fuseli's "The Nightmare" and the moment in the mill where Victor and the Creature's faces are seen together through the spinning machinary.