Frankenstein is a 1931 American horror film based on the 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. It is the first film in the Universal Frankenstein franchise.
Directed by James Whale and written by Garrett Fort, Francis Edward Faragoh, Robert Florey, and John Russell. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, and Boris Karloff.
Plot[]
In a village of the Bavarian Alps, Henry Frankenstein and his assistant Fritz, a hunchback, piece together a human body. Some of the parts are from freshly buried bodies, and some from the bodies of recently hanged criminals. In a laboratory he's built inside a watchtower, Henry desires to create a human, giving this body life through electrical devices. He still needs a brain for his creation. At a nearby school, Henry's former teacher Dr. Waldman shows his class the brain of an average human being and the corrupted brain of a criminal for comparison. Henry sends Fritz to steal the healthy brain from Waldman's class. Fritz accidentally damages it, and so brings Henry the corrupt brain.
Henry's fiancée Elizabeth speaks with their friend Victor about the scientist's peculiar actions and his seclusion. Elizabeth and Victor ask Waldman for help understanding Henry's behavior, and Waldman reveals he is aware Henry wishes to create life. Concerned for Henry, they arrive at the lab just as he makes his final preparations, the lifeless body on an operating table. As a storm rages, Henry invites Elizabeth and the others to watch. Henry and Fritz raise the operating table toward an opening at the top of the tower. The creature and Henry's equipment are exposed to the lightning storm and empowered, bringing the creature to life.
Frankenstein's Monster, despite its grotesque form, seems to be an innocent, childlike creation. Henry welcomes it into his laboratory and asks it to sit, which it does. He opens up the roof, causing the Monster to reach out towards the sunlight. Fritz enters with a flaming torch, which frightens the Monster. Its fright is mistaken by Henry and Waldman for an attempt to attack them, and it is chained in the dungeon, where Fritz antagonizes it with a torch. Hearing Fritz screaming in the dungeon, Henry and Waldman run down, finding that the Monster has forcefully hanged Fritz. The Monster lunges at the two but they lock the Monster inside. Realizing the Monster must be destroyed, Henry prepares an injection of a powerful drug and the two conspire to release the Monster and inject it as it attacks. When the door is unlocked the Monster lunges at Henry as Waldman injects the drug into the Monster's back. The Monster falls to the floor unconscious.
Henry collapses from exhaustion, and Elizabeth and Henry's father take him home. Henry is worried about the Monster, but Waldman reassures him that he will destroy it. While Henry is at home, recovered and preparing for his wedding, Waldman examines the Monster. As he prepares to vivisect it, the Monster strangles him. It escapes from the tower and wanders through the landscape, encountering a farmer's young daughter, Maria. She asks him to play a game with her in which they toss flowers onto a lake. The Monster enjoys the game, but when the monster runs out of stock, thinking that Maria is one of the flowers to count, he throws her into the lake, where she drowns beneath the surface. The Monster runs away.
With preparations for the wedding completed, Henry is happy with Elizabeth. They are to marry as soon as Waldman arrives. Victor rushes in, saying that Waldman has been found strangled. Henry suspects the Monster. The Monster enters Elizabeth's room, causing her to scream. When the searchers arrive, they find Elizabeth in shock, then unconscious. The Monster has escaped.
Maria's father arrives, carrying his drowned daughter's body. He says she was murdered, and the villagers form a lynch mob to capture the Monster. During the search, Henry is attacked by the Monster. The Monster knocks Henry unconscious and carries him to an old windmill. The peasants hear the creature carrying Henry and find it climbing to the top, dragging Henry with it. The Monster hurls the scientist to the ground. His fall is broken by the wooden blades of the windmill, saving his life. Some of the villagers bring him home while the rest of the mob set the windmill ablaze, with the Monster trapped inside with nowhere to escape.
At Castle Frankenstein, Henry's father celebrates the wedding of his recovered son with a toast to a future grandchild.
Cast[]
- Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein.
- Mae Clarke as Elizabeth Lavenza
- John Boles as Victor Moritz
- Boris Karloff as The Monster
- Edward Van Sloan as Dr. Waldman
- Frederick Kerr as Baron Frankenstein
- Dwight Frye as Fritz
- Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel
- Marilyn Harris as Maria
- Michael Mark as Ludwig
Production[]
Development[]
In 1930, Universal Studios had lost $2.2 million in revenues. Within 48 hours of its opening at New York's Roxy Theatre on February 12, 1931, Dracula starring Bela Lugosi had sold 50,000 tickets, building a momentum that culminated in a $700,000 profit, the largest of Universal's 1931 releases. As a result, the head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., announced immediate plans for more horror films. It purchased the film rights to John L. Balderston's planned stage adaptation of Peggy Webling's British stage adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's original novel.
Casting[]
Immediately following his success in Dracula, Lugosi had hoped to play Henry Frankenstein in Universal's original film concept. However, the actor was expected by producer Carl Laemmle Jr. to play the Monster (a common move for a contract player in a film studio at the time) to keep his famous name on the bill. Although this is often regarded as one of the worst decisions in any actor's career, in actuality, the part that Lugosi was offered was not the same character that Karloff eventually played. The initial director was Robert Florey, who had re-characterized the Monster as a simple killing machine, without a touch of human interest or pathos, unlike in the original Shelley novel. This reportedly caused Lugosi to complain, "I was a star in my country and I will not be a scarecrow over here!" Florey later wrote that "the Hungarian actor didn't show himself very enthusiastic for the role and didn't want to play it". However, the decision may not have been Lugosi's in any case, since recent evidence suggests that he was kicked off the project, along with director Robert Florey, when the newly arrived James Whale asked for the property and later cast Karloff, who resembled Whale.
Actors who worked on the project either were, or shortly became familiar to the fans of the Universal horror films. These included Frederick Kerr as the old Baron Frankenstein, Henry's father; Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel, the Bürgermeister; Marilyn Harris as Little Maria, the girl the Monster accidentally kills; Dwight Frye as Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant, Fritz; and Michael Mark as Ludwig, Maria's father.
Filming[]
Special Effects[]
Kenneth Strickfaden designed the electrical effects that were used in the "creation scene". They were so successful that such effects came to be considered an essential part of every subsequent Universal film involving Frankenstein's Monster. Accordingly, the equipment used to produce them has come to be referred to in fan circles as "Strickfadens". It appears that Strickfaden managed to secure the use of at least one Tesla Coil built by the inventor Nikola Tesla himself
Release[]
The film was released on November 21, 1931 by Universal Pictures.
Pre-Code era scenes and censorship history[]
The scene in which the Monster throws Maria, the little girl into the lake and accidentally drowns her has long been controversial. Upon its original 1931 release, the second part of this scene was cut by state censorship boards in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. Those states also objected to a line they considered blasphemous that occurred during Frankenstein's exuberance when he first learns that his creature is alive. The original relevant passage was:
VICTOR: "Henry, in the name of God!" HENRY: "In the name of God? Now I know what it feels like to BE God!"
Kansas requested the cutting of 32 scenes, which, if they had been removed, would have cut a literal half of the film.Jason Joy of the Studio Relations Committee sent censor representative Joseph Breen to urge them to reconsider. Eventually, an edited version was released in Kansas.
As with many Pre-Code films that were reissued after strict enforcement of the Production Code in 1934, Universal made cuts from the original camera negative, and thus most of the excised footage is often lost. However, the scene of the girl being thrown into the lake was rediscovered during the early 1980s in the collection of the British National Film Archive, and it has been restored to modern prints of the film.
In the Irish Free State, the film was banned on February 5, 1932, for being demoralizing and unsuitable for children or "nervous people" – age-restricted certificates were not introduced in the country until 1965. The decision was overturned by the Appeal Board on March 8, and the film was passed uncut on March 9. The film was successfully banned in Northern Ireland, Quebec, Sweden, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. The film was also banned in China due to falling under the category of "superstitious films" as a result of its "strangeness" and unscientific elements.
Reception[]
Box Office[]
The film opened in New York City at the Mayfair Theatre on December 4, 1931, and grossed $53,000 in one week. The film was a commercial success. In June 1932, the film had earned reported rentals of $1.4 million. In 1943, Universal reported it had earned a profit of $708,871. By 1953, all the Frankenstein re-releases earned an estimated profit of $12 million.
Critical Response[]
The New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall gave Frankenstein a very positive review. He said that the film "aroused so much excitement at the Mayfair yesterday that many in the audience laughed to cover their true feelings. [T]here is no denying that it is far and away the most effective thing of its kind. Beside it Dracula is tame and, incidentally, Dracula was produced by the same firm". Film Daily also lauded the picture, calling it a "gruesome, chill-producing and exciting drama" that was "produced intelligently and lavishly and with a grade of photography that is superb". Variety reported that it "looks like a Dracula plus, touching a new peak in horror plays", and described Karloff's performance as "a fascinating acting bit of mesmerism". Its review also singled out the look of the film as uniquely praiseworthy, calling the photography "splendid" and the lighting "the last word in ingenuity, since much of the footage calls for dim or night effect and the manipulation of shadows to intensify the ghostly atmosphere". John Mosher of The New Yorker was less enthused, calling the film only a "moderate success" and writing that "the makeup department has a triumph to its credit in the monster and there lie the thrills of the picture, but the general fantasy lacks the vitality which that little Mrs. P.B. Shelley was able to give her book".
Later Years[]
Frankenstein has continued to receive acclaim from critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1931, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 94 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Still unnerving to this day, Frankenstein adroitly explores the fine line between genius and madness, and features Boris Karloff's legendary, frightening performance as the monster." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
In 1991, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2004, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Everlist.
Frankenstein also received recognition from the American Film Institute. It was named the 87th greatest movie of all time on 100 Years... 100 Movies. The line "It's alive! It's alive!" was ranked as the 49th greatest movie quote in American cinema. The film was on the ballot for several of AFI's 100 serieslists, including AFI's 10 Top 10 for the sci-fi category, 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), and twice on 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains for both Henry Frankenstein and the Monster in the villains category.
The film was ranked number 56 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, a list of America's most heart-pounding movies. It was also ranked number 27 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Additionally, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 14th scariest film ever made.
Trivia[]
- While it was not the first time the novel was filmed (there had been a few silent short films of Frankenstein in the 1910s and '20s), the 1931 version is certainly the most famous version, and remains an influential horror film in its own right.