USA 71m Dir: James Whale Key Cast: Boris Karloff
Mae Clarke's Elizabeth only really has her self to blame. When her fiancée Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) keeps going AWOL she confronts him and he explains he has become obsessed with his experiment and has been busy robbing graves for body parts. This would ring alarm bells with most people but neither Elizabeth or anyone else present seems particularly disturbed by this revelation. It seems to grounds to break off the engagement to me and a lack of action would inevitably lead to disastor, as indeed it does here.
Universal Studios was struggling financially in 1930 but Dracula turned their fortunes around and the studio quickly decided to focus on producing more horror films. Like Dracula, this film was based on a stage play of a gothic novel and the plan was to once again cast Bela Lugosi as a monster. Lugosi had some disastrous make-up tests and eventually turned the part down as it was non-speaking, though the incarnation of the character was quite different from the one that made it through to the final script.
This is how Boris Karloff became Frankenstein's Monster. To be honest, I don't think there's anything particularly special about his performance- it's non-speaking and he doesn't actually have to do a great deal- but Karloff in this make-up is one of the most icon images in film history. If you think of Frankenstein's Monster you think of Boris Karloff.
The rest of the cast are great with Colin Clive being the stand-out as Doctor Frankenstein, especially in the first act when he's become so caught up in his work that he's gone full-on mad scientist. After the creation of the creature he calms down a bit and becomes one of the leaders in a mob to kill the creature, meaning that we see proper character development.
It's not an especially faithful adaption of the novel and it's tone differs somewhat. Shelley's novel is really about how the monster is misunderstood and the world makes him a monster by judging him as such. There's certainly elements of that in the film, most notably in a genuinely unsettling scene where the monster inadvertently kills a small girl, but the film is on the whole less complicated and closer to s straight-up horror.
The production is much stronger than that of Dracula. As well as the fantastic make-up for the monster there are some excellent sets and some great electrical effects in the creation scene which even used a Tesla coil built by Nikolai Tesla himself. The direction is also great with some really interesting shots including the monster and Frankenstein staring at each other through the machinery of a windmill.
Dracula worked because it converted a fantastic story into a strong script and gave it to some talented actors. Frankenstein does this too but it every other part of the production matches the quality of the actors meaning the film comes together as something really great.
Comments
Post a Comment