To The House of Frankenstein

I remember getting the chance to watch both “Frankenstein” (1931) and “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) in a double feature in a theater. There was a slight intermission in between. Not a lot of people there which I found rather surprising, but it was a Sunday evening, so I guess I shouldn’t have been as shocked. Still, despite maybe five or so dedicated horror fans (there wasn’t a lot of folks at the showing of “The Shining” (1980), either), the double feature was such a favorable experience in my movie-going life. To see both in the theater in the same evening, these two favorites of mine, holds a special place. In 2020, I wanted to conclude my thoughts for “Frankenstein” (1931) and leave it all here. Despite some minor irritants (how did the father know that Karloff’s Monster killed his daughter? No one was there when it happened. Where did Fritz come from and how did he wind up with Victor to begin with? Where did Victor get all the equipment and how would Fritz, of all people, know how to see to electrodes and set up all the elaborate machinery?) that I’ve always been able to brush aside, James Whale was indeed an artist. The upclose head shots and editing to get reactions of the characters in a scene or the burning mill with the torch-carrying villagers watching it lit up with Karloff’s Monster inside are examples of Whale’s superior talents. The eyepopping sets, such as the Castle Frankenstein, with its spacious laboratory or his father’s ancestral castle inside a festive village—just a few films later the name Frankenstein is met with snarls and distaste—the way Whale’s camera captures the villagers in spirited dance and music, celebrating the upcoming marriage of Victor and Elizabeth, and how that is interrupted, the idyll of happy faces in merriment of villagers soon disrupted by the horror of Maria’s father carrying her drowned little body in his arms to notify the Burgomaster (Lionel Belmore) of her murder…Whale gave you so much to invest in. The “prison” of the Monster, Karloff’s arms reaching for the light, Frye’s fiendish and off-the-wall hunchback, Fritz, with a teethy smile just disturbing the Monster with a lit torch, and the scientist creator of the Monster, Victor (Clive), gradually deteriorating in health the longer he stays in the castle lab…Whale has a wealth of visually arresting faces and characters to shoot and edit creatively. I think that is one of the reasons we return to “Frankenstein” over and over. It isn’t just about the macabre subject matter or how Victor “dared to be as God”, knowing what it was like to create life from the bodies of graves he and Fritz robbed—speaking of arresting images, Whale’s cemetery has a wealth of Catholic iconography (gravestones and statues) in titled angle, as Victor and Fritz went about digging up and stealing the buried dead so he could do stitchwork with the “good bits and pieces”, awaiting the atmosphere of a strong lightning storm to accomplish his “mad dream”.

Fritz, Dr. Waldman, Victor Moritz, Elizabeth, and Victor Frankenstein

Iconic moment in the film, as Karloff reaches out for the light...he was dead and now, against his will, brought to life

The sets and machinery in the lab when the Monster is brought to life, how Victor debates with his peers about committing to what Dr. Waldman (Van Sloan, again cast in a classic) considers essentially sacrilegious and foolhardy, the questions about what God keeps close to the vest Victor has, how Victor takes Mortiz to task for calling him crazy, and the obvious results of his dalliance with understanding that great mystery of life and death, associating with a devious Fritz (who is truly the reason behind the Monster’s violent reactions when a lit torch and sharp whip bring out the worst in it), and holing himself up in the lab castle high up on the hill. The ornery Baron wanting to know why his son was away from his fiancé, Elizabeth, Elizabeth tired of waiting for him and urging friend, Moritz (who makes it known he has affection for her, but that is sort of mentioned and dropped, with some obvious tension between him and Victor), to convince Victor’s former professor at the local university, Dr. Waldman, to help free the scientist from his current digs, and the eventual freedom of the Monster (when it strangles Waldman, planning to dissect the Monster and destroy it) detail the film’s story until creator and creation come face to face.