James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)

For years and years, the image of Frankenstein as a square-headed, stiff-limbed, heavy-lidded, electrocuted monster has been the prevailing image for Halloween costumes and decorations. Almost solely because of the 1931 film Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff as the monster, the first image that tends to come to mind when someone mentions Frankenstein tends to be this goofy-looking creature, which is interesting because Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creation.

That’s the power Whale’s film has had over our impression of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, written in 1818. The book and the movie may share a name, but further than that, few similarities are to be found between them. Shelley’s version is a Romantic novel that raises questions about the meaning of life, how we can maintain our humanity after the groundbreaking discoveries of the Industrial Revolution, and our responsibilities for the world we create, while Whale’s film is an early horror movie that plays on our fears of the unknown, unchecked science, and human hubris with shock value and a brain-dead monster. In the novel, it is important that the monster has human, if not super-human, characteristics because Shelley sought to explore questions of Man’s place in the universe. In the movie, the (un)jolly green giant bears no similarity to a real man; it is a despicable monster, a sub-human, that needs to be destroyed.

The reason that the movie took such a different direction than the novel is that contemplation and discussion about whether or not scientific advancements will benefit mankind doesn’t sell. Horror movies with a clear villain (the mad scientist), a dumb assistant (the hunchback), and a disgusting monster does, especially in a time, the onset of the Depression, when film was growing as a source of entertainment. People simply found it more fun to see a movie, with exciting costumes and special effects, and no thinking involved.

Certainly, Shelley’s novel has, and probably would have without Whale’s film, stood the test of time. Since the original movie, Frankenstein has been both seriously remade and parodied over and over again, whether in films like Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 feature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Mel Brooks’ 1974 parody, Young Frankenstein, or Frank Henelotter’s 1990 black comedy, Frankenhooker, or Tim Burton’s 1984 short, Frankenweenie (the movie that got Burton fired from Disney, which we’re showing this evening), suggesting the staying power of Shelley’s vision.

But it is Whale’s movie that inaugurated the visual interpretations of Shelley’s book, and subsequent film versions, many closer to the novel’s intent and depictions, have not displaced Whale’s imagery from the popular consciousness. Little kids think the creature is named Frankenstein, has bolts in his neck, wears really big shoes, and that you could balance a stack of books easily on his head because it is flat. And every mad scientist who, upon viewing the result of his work, cried out to the heavens “IT’S ALIVE!” owes a debt to Whale’s lasting and iconic vision.

Sam Rock
Film Club