Famous Monsters of Filmland: Frankenstein (Dir James Whale, 1h 10m, 1931)

 Science-fiction and the gothic owe their very existence to Frankenstein; this distillation, this explosion of the early modern form of horror, at the hands of Mary Shelley and a writing competition in the infamous 1816 "Year Without a Summer", the Brothers Grimm, Polidori's The Vampyre (begun in the same competition), and countless other horror writers of the early 19th century, from Washington Irving to Victor Hugo to Robert Louis Stephenson and Edgar Allan Poe lays the groundwork for everything we love-and fear-about this genre. Inspired by then emerging discoveries in scientific thinking-Volta's field of Galvanism, where electrical signals caused the body to move after death, and the occult, ironically growing in power in the age of Enlightenment-Frankenstein is still a remarkably prophetic novel, warning of the dangers in dabbling with powers beyond human reckoning, and the unhappy, and often wretched existence of the monster brought into being by Frankenstein's experiments.

Frankenstein has gone on to influence practically every element of horror as a genre, from HP Lovecraft's merciless send-up, "Herbert West, Reanimator", to John Hughes' 80s classic, Weird Science, to battling against other giant monsters at the hands of Ishiro Honda, the creator of Godzilla. Needless to say, Frankenstein is all things to all men, from tragic figure to comedic, from villain to hero, and many of his modern appearances, as a bolt-necked, monosyllabic, hulking figure, is down to two men, Boris Karloff and James Whale, who, from the moment that the former steps blinking into the light before his creator, create what, even more than Dracula did the same year, may be the definitive version of the Monster, in a film that not only codifies so much about the horror movie, from mad scientists to terrifying monsters, but sees the beginning of the horror movie as much as artform as entertainment, with increasing visual imagination and a sizable debt to German Expressionism.

The year is 1931, and Dracula has undoubtedly saved Universal from a $2.2 million loss, making a colossal profit of $700,000-the monster business is good business-and for their next movie, Carl Laemmle Jr turns to another British theatrical adaption of a beloved horror novel; once again, John L Balderston is on hand, having already edited Peggy Webling's West End play for an (unrealised) Broadway run, and once again, the script is arguably more his work than hers. pairing her well-wrought monster with a pared-down story to match that cuts much of the toing and froing of the original novel-it will later lead to legal challenges after Balderston and Webling's relations sue for los of earnings. Crucially, and in hindsight, disasterous, the monster is also dubbed Frankenstein, to the detriment of decades of English teachers. The plan here is obvious-they will, in essence, get the Dracula team back together, and make another smash hit.

Here, (un)fortunately, things do not go as planned. Bela Lugosi once again lobbies for a role, but rather than the monster, it is Victor he aims to play-Laemmle, and his contract say otherwise, and it gets as far as posters of Lugosi as the monster-penned as a mindless killing machine in this version-before he and moonlighting avant-garde director Robert Florey are booted off the project and the duo have to make do with the still excellent Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). Into the breach steps James Whale and Boris Karloff. Even by 1930, Whale is a director of some renown-adapting R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End for stage (1928) and screen (1930), and co-directing the colossal (and in hindsight, completely insane) Hells Angels (1930), alongside Howard Hughes. With him comes another Englishman, Boris Karloff (real name William Henry Pratt), who had worked his way up from the stage to serials to supporting roles, often as Arabs or Indians, appearing in eighty films before appearing as the Monster, under heavy makeup and with bulky boots only adding to Karloff's already impressive height.

Between them, they effectively reinvent-barely six months after Dracula, the language of horror cinema. Watching the two films back-to-back is to understand how quickly cinema evolved as a medium in its infancy. Dracula is, at base, a filmed play, with little in the way of special effects, an impressive, if stagey series of sets, and is filmed, but for its most dramatic of moments, in a very flat, if occasionally original way-it is a throwback to this earlier decade of silent cinema. Frankenstein, in comparison, feels like a revelation. Much of this comes from Whale's shameless, if undoubtedly innovative lifting of techniques from the cinematic powerhouse of Weimar Germany, and German Expressionism. Films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, films dominated by jagged, often highly stylised sets, heavy uses of light and shade, and struggles between elementally good and elementally evil forces, are present in almost every single second of Frankenstein.

We are introduced to Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), and his accomplice, Fritz (Dwight Frye, one of two returning actors from Dracula), graverobbing, furtively appearing from behind iron railing to ghoulishly watch on as their next corpse is buried in front of his weeping family. The graves are in high-contrast, the horizon-line near the top of the shot as the camera pans, and they jut into the sky, crucifixes and grim reapers and railings nigh sillouttes against the darkening sky. It's a shot that practically sums up in the opening minutes what kind of horror movie Frankenstein will be, and how much of an advance it will be on its sister film, released but a few months prior. Henry and Fritz are graverobbers, working quickly under cover of darkness, the hunched and maevolent figure of Fritz, and his employer, Henry, who proclaims the corpse they've disinterred is merely "waiting for new life" are, as they subsequently cut down a hanged man to add to their stock of body parts, a decidedly gothic duo.

Henry Frankenstein himself is that great gothic archetype of the Byronic hero, driven by his desire to create life from death, and as we'll come on to explore, arguably cements the figure of the mad scientist in popular culture, as well as his labatory, full of spectacular machinery, including Tesla coils, bubbling chemical, elaborate equipment, and electrical devices that become deriguer for cinematic mad science. More of this once we get to Karloff's monster. Against the seemingly doomed figure of Frankenstein, Frye plays another superb counterpoint to our protagonist, this time as an even more outlandish, and outright creepy figure, and whilst the archetype that we know and love as Frankenstein's assistant Igor won't appear properly until the 1940s (called Daniel in 1944's otherwise unremarkable The House of Frankenstein), and won't recieve his name till Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974)

We soon learn, as the duo dig and cut down a hanged man, that their aim, through assembling together the parts of corpses of criminals and the recently deceased is to create new life. For this, however, as their search reaches a dead end-they require a brain. We see Fritz appear, furtive at the window of the lecture hall in which Frankenstein's former tutor, Waldman (a returning Edward Van Sloan, who also appears at the film's beginning to deliver his iconic warning to squeamish audiences), and steals in to steal the healthy brain, only to drop it, and be forced instead to steal the criminal brain also on the doctor's desk. Meanwhile, as the scientific part of Henry's life is fleshed out, we see his fiance, Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), and his friend, Victor (John Bowles) concerned for Henry's wellbeing, and, together with Waldman, set out to investigate exactly what has him holed up in a derelict watchtower.

It is here that the film's gothic atmosphere come, quite literally, to life as the trio arrive to find Henry preparing the final inspection of the lifeless figure atop an array of equipment, and it is here that we are introduced, via the power of lightning and the raging storm outside, to the colossal figure of the Monster, and to the true madness of Henry, a man who gleefully screams, in one of the most famous scenes that the creature is "Alive! It's Alive!", as the now animate, if still heavily bandaged figure, returns to the firmament. Moreover, it belies the darker side of its creator, who, when confronted, proclaims that "Now I know what it feels like to BE God!"-his drive to create, to cheat death and to become a creator driving him on into nigh insanity that the film takes much of its remaining running time to undo, the tragic gothic figure now confronted by his own hubris and flawed creation.

And what a creation it is; even more so that Dracula, Karloff is the Monster, the modern Prometheus, a colossal, hulking figure, the heavy makeup aiding, rather that stifling Karloff's performance, the heavy lidded eyes, the jutting brow, through which Karloff glares, eyes often lidded or half-open-moreover, Karloff perfectly brings the sense of a near-human figure. At various points we see a sense of cunning, of cruelty, the criminal mind ticking through its paces, but at others there is an almost childhood sense of curiosity. His physical performance is, if anything, even more impressive-the way that Karloff manages to work with, rather than against the encumberances of his costume, the corpse like movement and often twisted posture. Yet, there is something, in scant moments, that belies how little experience Henry's creation has of the world around him.

We see him grin, or become nigh-entranced by the mere light, stepping out of the darkness in which he has been kept into it, hand raised, trying to capture the world around him. The genius of the monster, in short, is to make him at once a threat, a frightening figure, and an innocent, unaware of his own strength and power. We see these sudden changes as they brutally punctuate the film; Fritz torments the hapless monster but is then turned on and murdered off screen. Henry and his former teacher proceed to drug the monster, but, moments from being vivisected, the monster once again turns on its would-be tormentor, and strangles him. It is here, as the monster escapes, and makes his way towards his master and creator, that the film pulls its most infamous moment, its death of the innocent, that inevitably dooms the monster, as he first befriends and then kills a small girl, his misunderstanding, and strength having tragic results.

The rest of the film quickly descends into a hunt for the monster, who appears to scare Elizabeth on her wedding day to Henry, and then, as the father of the unfortunate girl leads a manhunt to avenge his daughter, in perhaps the great origin of that cinematic trope of pitchfork and torch-armed townsfolk chasing after an unfortunate, attacks his creator, and grapples with him in a burning windmill-the creature's death is as brutal, and final, as its creation, and compared to many of its subsequent sequels, it is a remarkably sober, and shocking end to the monster. It perfectly compliments the sense that man's playing god can only end in tragedy-Henry is only saved from destruction by his love for Elizabeth, by his father's care for his son, and his own relinquishment of ambition-it is an ending that perfectly compliments how much the film is steeped in gothic horror.

Whilst Dracula is undeniably the moment that launches the Universal Monster Movie, it is with Frankenstein, a film that is not a revolution in makeup and special effects, but where horror cinema comes of age in America, in a complex and involving tale of man playing god and reaping the reward, of artificial life growing, and becoming a danger to its creator, of a primal force wreaking revenge against hapless people, steeped in the German Expressionist movement, a perfect example of early science fiction movies, and a perfect introduction to one of cinema's great creature actors, Boris Karloff. Horror cinema exists, horror cinema thrives because of Karloff and Whale.

Frankenstein may be the creation of a single monster, a bricolage of flesh and stitches and makeup and towering English actor, but as Henry, as Colin Clive flicks the switch, he births multitudes.
The T-800, Robocop, Edward Scissorhands (hell, Burton's entire career owes its existence to this film), the masterful Westworld, the gloriously campy Reanimator, Alien, and hundreds of other movies owe their existence, their spark of life to Frankenstein. It towers, on colossally booted feet above Western cinema, a perfectly realised slice of gothic cinema in its infancy, and remains, ninety years on, one of the greatest films of the entire horror and science-fiction genres.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

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