By Melissa Garza
One of the most honored and respected horror films of all time, Frankenstein is a timeless classic that delivers as well now as it did upon its release over seventy five years ago.
Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), a scientist suffering from a serious god complex, decides to create a living soul out of human body parts that he and his assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye) robbed from graves. As his creation, his “monster” (Boris Karloff) comes alive Frankenstein ecstatically announces “Now I know what it feels like to be God.”
Soon, after being taunted and tortured the monster escapes. Though not evil, he is often confused and doesn’t quite understand how things work. One of the best and most disturbing scenes in the film, is when he comes across a small child who is throwing daisies in the water and watching them float. She isn’t afraid and offers him a grin, inviting him to play with her. He himself even smiles for the first time, as he enjoys tossing the flowers and seeing them settle in the lake. When all the flowers are gone, he picks up the child and tosses her in the lake, thinking of course, she too would float. When instead she sinks and drowns he panics and runs away. The town is quick to want blood upon finding the young girl’s body, and with sticks of fire in hand and dogs to aide the mission they begin to hunt the monster down.
It is difficult to say who steals the show in this remarkable picture. Colin Clive is amazing as the driven and obsessed scientist who would do anything to create life, and then later as the regretful man who realizes his mistakes, only too late. Then of course, there is Boris Karloff, a name synonymous with horror. His haunting portrayal of a sad, angry and unloved creature steals every scene with ease. Frankenstein’s monster is both capable of invoking fear and sympathy at the same exact time and throughout the entire film, even as he throws a child to her death. The audience is forced to root for the monster though one has to wonder if it is best just to put the poor thing out of its misery.
Without question, this movie is perfect. The dialogue, spoken mostly by Dr. Frankenstein is brilliant. When confronted by Dr. Waldman who is sure that the monster is a mistake, Frankenstein responds by stating, “where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.” It is this intensity and intelligence that I would like films of today to capture. This isn’t just a horror film, but a warning of things to come if science is left without boundaries; and in a day and age when cloning isn’t just science fiction, Frankenstein is a movie worth revisiting.
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