Frankenstein (1931) Review - Dylan McCully

Written by Dylan McCully, 10/23/22

Dylan McCully's Cinema: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls521125877/

The legendary introduction speech for this film paves way to a noticeably more stylized and competantly made horror film than Browning's Dracula could ever be. Frankenstein is a story as synonymous with horror as McDonald's is to fast food. It's a story that everyone knows by now: Dr. Frankenstein brings a monster, pieced together by the limbs of corpses, to life in a grand fashion. The monster is childlike, but eventually gets locked up for being seemingly aggressive. The monster escapes and befriends a little girl who he throws into a water with good intent. The townspeople find the corpse of the little girl and form together to hunt down the monster. Frankenstein was universally acclaimed on release and still is to this day. Boris Karloff went down in history for his legendary portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, and reprised the role many times. Thematically it is much more rich than Dracula and many other of the Universal monster movies, and the sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, goes even deeper into the concepts of what makes something human. The makeup, sets, acting and special effects all hold up extremely well to this day. I still wouldn't consider this to be truely scary by any modern requirements, but it's more interesting than most modern horror movies, which is what truely counts in any genre. This was one of my shorter reviews because there isn't much left to say about possibly the most popular horror movie of all time, and the legacy that this film left on cinema, and on popular culture, speaks for itself. 7.5/10

Tod Browning Ranking:

1. Frankenstein (1931) - 7.5/10