Horror Is Universal: FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
This article was originally published on WordPress in October 2019. Revisions have been made to provide additional context and information on the subject.
Our last installment of this series was a big one: we covered Universal’s first proper horror film and met the first member of our Canonical Six, as well as the first of the great actors made famous by Universal Horror. Now it’s time to meet both another great actor and another member of the Six. Possibly its most famous and beloved member of all.
Frankenstein was the second of the two horror films released by Universal in 1931. Building on the momentum started by Dracula in February of that year, it was an instant critical and commercial hit. Personally, I think it’s an even greater film than Dracula is. Their origins as movies are quite similar, but where I feel they differ is in their executions. Dracula, as I detailed in the previous article, is a grim and quiet movie. Frankenstein, on the other hand, chooses to lean into its most outlandish moments and embrace the idea of a heightened, over-the-top reality. The result is a truly classic film: engaging characters, great performances, a foreboding atmosphere, shocking twists and enduring emotional gut punches.
The Plot: Disgraced medical student Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) doesn’t care that the world thinks he’s crazy. He’s too obsessed with his secret experiments and his dream to uncover the ultimate scientific mystery: the origin of life and how to create life himself. Together with his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), he’s holed up in his remote laboratory, assembling pieces of dead bodies into an entirely new being. His fiancee Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) and his former teacher Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) implore him to abandon his experiments and come home, but he won’t listen. When they show up to confront Henry in person, he decides to let them witness the culmination of his research. One thunderstorm later, and his grotesque creation is brought to life. But the creature (Boris Karloff) soon turns unstable and violent, thanks to the addition of an abnormal brain procured by Fritz. It doesn’t take long for Henry to realize he’s created a monster, and he resolves to destroy it with Dr. Waldman’s help. But the consequences of playing God can’t be undone so easily, and the creature may end up destroying its creator first…
Like Dracula before it, Universal’s Frankenstein is technically based on a stage adaptation rather than its literary source material. Hamilton Deane, wanting another spooky success after Dracula, asked English playwright Peggy Webling to adapt Mary Shelley’s novel for the stage. The new play premiered in December 1927 and toured England for a few years. When it ended up in London in February 1930, it only lasted for 72 performances. Though not well remembered today, Webling’s Frankenstein did make an important contribution to the story’s mythos by being the first adaptation to use the name “Frankenstein” for the Creature as well as the scientist. Critics were not kind to the play: The Times said it was “as flimsy as a bird cage,” while John L. Balderston called Webling’s writing “illiterate” and “inconceivably crude.” How awkward it must have been when he was then asked to revise the play for American audiences, just as he’d done with Dracula. He did so, but his version of the play was never produced. Nevertheless, Universal bought the film rights for the play, and Balderston’s revised script became the basis for the studio’s adaptation.
Initially, French director Robert Florey was put in charge of the project, while Bela Lugosi was cast as the Monster. Lugosi was none too happy with this, as Florey’s Monster was a far cry from the eloquent, tortured soul from Shelley’s novel. Instead, this Monster was to be a snarling, violent beast with no emotions other than bloodlust. Lugosi refused to play “a scarecrow,” as he put it, and he either dropped out or was removed from the project. Florey was removed as director soon after. He and Lugosi would then work on another horror film for Universal, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Though Florey is not credited in the final film, some film scholars have argued that he should have been: while the dialogue was mostly revised in subsequent drafts, the overall outline of the film matches the original script he wrote with Garrett Fort (Weaver et al. 40).
Carl Laemmle Jr. then gave the project to an up-and-coming British director, James Whale. Whale’s own story is just as fascinating and compelling as his legendary filmography. Born in 1889 to a working-class family in Dudley, England, he did what little he could to use and nurture his talent as an artist. During World War I, he became a commissioned officer in the British Army. He spent the last year of the war as a prisoner in an officers’ camp: while there, he became involved with amateur theatrical productions as an actor, writer and set designer. Whale’s love for the theater remained when he reentered civilian life, and he continued to work as both an actor and crew member. His big break as a director was Journey’s End, a play about World War I that became a smash hit when it premiered in early 1929. Whale would go on to direct the 1930 film adaptation of the play, as well as dialogue sequences for the Howard Hughes movie Hell’s Angels. In 1931, he signed a contract with Universal. His first film for the studio, Waterloo Bridge, impressed the Laemmles so much that Whale was allowed to pick from any of the studio’s in-development projects for his next feature. Not wanting to be known as just a guy who made war films, he picked Frankenstein. And thus his fate was sealed. James Whale may not have been the first Universal Horror director, but he was undoubtedly the most influential. His horror films came with over-the-top sensibilities and splashes of dark humor, both of which would become defining features of the Universal Horror canon in the Classic Era. Many of the films we will look at in this series were trying (and usually failing) to follow in Whale’s footsteps. Whale was also a notable Hollywood figure in another unusual way: he was openly gay throughout his theater and film career. Or at least as openly gay as one could be in the 1930s, i.e. you don’t say it but you make no effort to hide it either. Around the time he started working in Hollywood, he met film producer David Lewis, who would become his partner for over twenty years.
According to some sources, Lewis may have helped provide the most essential piece of the Frankenstein puzzle. The story (or at least one version of it) goes that when Whale was trying to cast the role of the Monster, Lewis suggested an experienced but unknown actor he had recently seen in a Howard Hawks film titled The Criminal Code. That actor’s given name was William Henry Pratt. But today we call him Boris Karloff.
Karloff was born in 1887 in London. He came from a large Anglo-Indian family with a history of diplomatic service. Though he was expected to follow the family tradition, he harbored an interest in the theater from a young age, sneaking out of school to watch plays (Karloff 66). In 1909, he left England for Canada to pursue an acting career, coming up with his stage name en route. In regards to his birth name, Karloff once joked that “one can’t be an actor and be called ‘Pratt’” (Mallory 82). After three Jurassic World movies, some critics say he was right all along (insert rimshot here).
From there, Karloff began a decades-long grind to keep himself afloat. He worked in Canada and later Los Angeles taking whatever acting jobs he could find, which meant dozens of uncredited bit parts. His pre-stardom filmography included almost ninety projects! When he couldn’t find any acting work, he drove trucks and dug ditches to supplement his income (Karloff 66). But as the 1930s rolled around, his years of work were about to pay off in a big way. There are at least two different (but not necessarily conflicting) accounts of how Karloff got noticed by James Whale. Either he was discovered by David Lewis first, as I described earlier, or Whale himself met him by chance in the Universal Studios commissary (Karloff 67). Either way, Karloff got the role on the basis of his talent but also because he was willing to do what his competitors had refused to: endure the grueling makeup process that playing the Monster would require. The fact that he was an unknown also made him attractive to the studio, since that would help enhance the effect of the Monster’s shocking appearance. In the opening credits of the final film, Karloff isn’t even listed by name: in the spot where his credit would go, there is only a question mark.
For the rest of the principal cast, Whale assembled a combination of familiar faces and his own people. Colin Clive was a British actor who had previously starred in Whale’s production of Journey’s End. Mae Clarke had starred in Whale’s previous film Waterloo Bridge, and she was already famous for being on the receiving end of James Cagney’s grapefruit attack in The Public Enemy. Casting Edward Van Sloan and Dwight Frye was an easy choice: not only had they already acted in Robert Florey’s screen-test footage, but it only made sense to have the two Dracula actors play similar roles in Universal’s next big horror project.
One other name which will be in heavy rotation from now on is Janus Piccoulas, AKA Jack Pierce. An immigrant from Greece, Pierce began working for Universal in 1914 and soon found his calling as a makeup designer. He was put in charge of the studio’s makeup department in 1927 and promptly made history by creating Conrad Veidt’s ghastly grin for The Man Who Laughs, one of the most influential horror makeup jobs ever. For Frankenstein, Pierce would work with Whale to design the iconic look of the Monster.
Frankenstein is a film which is not only aware of its theatrical roots but is willing to fully embrace them. In fact, you can see this willingness as early as the film’s very first shot. We open on a stage and a closed curtain, which Edward Van Sloan steps out from behind — as himself, not as his character — and delivers a message to the audience.
This famous speech does so much to establish the tone of Frankenstein in just a few quick seconds. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, playing up the film’s potential for horror with sly hints rather than a straightforward portent of doom. Carl Laemmle did genuinely want a warning in front of the film, worrying that it may shock viewers a little too much. While this opening gets the job done, it feels less like it’s cautioning you away and more like it’s daring you to come along for the ride. But the most important thing this opening does is establish the unreality of the rest of the film. By having the movie admit right off the bat that it’s a movie, it frees itself from the constraints of realism. Now it’s allowed to be as strange and dramatic as it likes. Which is good, because Frankenstein‘s strangeness and drama is at the center of its charm.
From the writing to the acting to the technical aspects, there is rarely a moment of subtlety in this film. On the acting front, nearly the whole cast is playing up their physical/facial tics and wringing all the emotion they can out of the script. Colin Clive gives a scene-chewing performance as Henry, giving us the mad scientist by which all others are still judged. When we meet this version of Frankenstein, he’s already an egomaniac who’s dropped all pretense of working in secret or caring how other people judge his actions. There’s an air of menace to Henry in the early scenes of the film: watch for the angry glint in his eyes when he says “Crazy, am I? We’ll see whether I’m crazy or not.” After he creates the Monster, however, he begins a journey back into humanity as he realizes the error of his ways. There’s a tenderness to him as he recovers, particularly in the scenes where he’s reconnecting with Elizabeth and his father, the gruff Baron Frankenstein.
Clarke and Van Sloan are great as the straight men to Henry’s crazy. Dwight Frye, meanwhile, is doing crazy like no one else can as the original hunchbacked henchman (not an Igor just yet, that will come later). Fritz doesn’t have a very substantial role, especially compared to Renfield. But Frye does give an entertaining performance with what little he has. His big scene comes early in the film, when Fritz sneaks into a medical college to get a brain for Frankenstein’s creation, and there’s a lot of physicality and exaggerated reactions involved. It’s pretty fun. One actor and performance I wasn’t expecting to like was Frederick Kerr as Baron Frankenstein. He’s definitely the comic relief character, whipping out sardonic insults wherever he goes. In a more serious horror film, he would have felt out of place. But here, his self-awareness and biting commentary fit right in. He was probably my second-favorite character by the end of the film.
Of course, the script is what’s enabling this over-the-top atmosphere in the first place. Unspoken ideas and context clues are, for the most part, not really this movie’s thing. When it wants you to understand something, it wastes no time getting right down to business. Case in point, what does Henry say when his creature first comes to life? “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” It’s that kind of movie, where each motivation and theme is larger than life and laid out in the open. Interesting aside: that line of Henry’s there was so controversial when the movie first came out that it was censored until the late 90s. Yes, the 90s. We’ll talk more about censorship later, because this film was subject to more of it than modern audiences might suspect.
Even the sound design plays into the over-the-top nature of the movie. Remember when I explained how there were long sections of Dracula with little to no sound and how the silence really contributed to the creepy tone of that film? Frankenstein goes the opposite way and uses sound to create a world that very much feels bustling and alive. Like Dracula, there’s no traditional soundtrack outside of the opening and closing credits. But unlike Dracula, there’s almost no empty space from an auditory perspective. When you’re not focusing on dialogue, you’re hearing the chatter of crowds, the rumble of machinery and thunderstorms, the lively music of an outdoor party, even just the sounds of nature. It’s a film that’s hardly ever quiet — but when it does get quiet and serious, that’s when it really commands your attention. And that brings us to the Monster.
I decided to save talking about the Monster for its own section. There’s so much about him to discuss that you can’t really squeeze it into a discussion of the other plot and technical elements: he towers over the rest of the film that much. After almost a century’s worth of great movie monsters, few are as simultaneously frightening and tragic as he is. There are several different factors that come together to pull this off: the brilliant makeup design by Jack Pierce and James Whale, Boris Karloff’s incredible performance and the rich, complex adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original character.
First, the design of the Creature itself. We all recognize it: the hulking square frame, the broad forehead, the patchwork body. The unusual head shape was achieved by fitting an artificial skull over Karloff’s head and blending it in with gray-green greasepaint. On black-and-white film, those colors would show up as a deathly pale white fit for a walking corpse. Purple makeup, which would show up much darker, was used to heighten the shadows on the Monster’s face. The fake skull was made with cotton soaked in collodion, a syrupy liquid often used as surgical dressing. The same materials were used to make the prominent veins on the Monster’s hands (Weaver et al. 42). Karloff himself even contributed to the Monster’s look: he requested a layer of wax on his eyelids to give him a dead-eyed expression, and he removed his dental bridge to create the Monster’s sunken right cheek (Mallory 67). The whole makeup job took somewhere between three and eight hours to apply (Weaver 41). Carl Laemmle Jr. considered the final result so horrifying that he had Karloff cover his face while he was outside the set “so as not to cause any pregnant secretaries to miscarry” (Mallory 69).
The design by Pierce and Whale is remarkable not only in how creepy it looks but how it actually makes sense within the narrative. You can see, for example, how the top of the head was cut off and sealed back on so the brain could be fitted into the skull. And those little bolts on the Creature’s neck are actually electrodes, meant to conduct the critical zap that brings him to life. It’s a grotesque, imposing design that instantly sears itself into your head. The reveal of the Creature within the movie is a great scene. In a moment of complete silence, he emerges backwards from a doorway and slowly turns to show the camera his face, highlighted by a staggered zoom effect. There’s no dramatic scare chord or thunderclap: the image speaks for itself, and it’s still a bit of a shock if you aren’t prepared for it. I can only imagine how audiences in 1931 would have felt.
Next, the performance. Boris Karloff doesn’t say a word throughout the film, but he doesn’t need to. With nothing but his face and his body language, his Monster is a sympathetic and tragic figure like no other. Rather than an evil, mindless killing machine, we get a character that often comes off as gentle, curious and innocent. Right from the start, the Monster longs for a chance to understand the world and connect with others. One of his standout moments happens in his very first scene, where Frankenstein sits him in a chair and then opens a skylight above him. Wordless, with an expression of yearning, the Monster stands and stretches out his arms as though trying to grasp the sunlight. Even when Frankenstein closes the hatch and sits him back down, he’s still holding his hands out, wanting what he can’t have. It’s an unbearably poignant scene.
And then, of course, there’s the infamous scene where after escaping the laboratory, the Monster accidentally drowns a young girl. It begins rather sweetly, as we see the Monster finally meet someone who is not instantly frightened and wary towards him. The girl plays with him, offering the socialization that he needs and craves. The true horror of the scene is that the killing itself isn’t a malicious act on the Monster’s part. It’s an act caused by misunderstanding, and the Monster doesn’t know the consequences of what he’s doing until it’s too late. And when he does realize that he’s hurt someone, he’s horrified. The girl’s death is what leads directly to the Creature’s downfall, but it also shows you why the Creature was doomed in the first place: the world isn’t ready for him, nor is he ready for the world, and he has no one to help prepare him.
On that note, I want to talk about the quality of the story and script here. Frankenstein is not an accurate adaptation of Mary Shelley’s book if we’re just judging by adherence to the plot and characters. The sprawling, epic narrative of the original is cut down to a handful of locations and a series of events that unfold over a few quick days. The Monster’s tale of self-discovery and learned hatred of humanity is almost completely removed, along with his ability to speak. Looking at themes and ideas of the film, however, I would argue it’s actually a quite good adaptation of the material. It takes the book’s provocative ideas of man vs. God, science vs. religion and nature vs. nurture and expands on them while giving more humanity and shades of gray to the characters involved.
Everything would have worked out fine if that dumbass Fritz hadn’t gone and stolen a dead criminal’s brain for Henry’s experiment — that’s what the characters believe, anyway. More than once they cite the abnormal brain as the reason for the Monster’s behavior. But here’s the thing: what the characters tell themselves doesn’t match up with what the film shows us. The Monster isn’t born violent, as he demonstrates during his first interactions with Henry. When he does become violent, it’s only in reaction to abuse (i.e. Fritz threatening him with a lit torch), and prolonged abuse at that. He learns by imitating what he experiences, and what he experiences is mostly violence. By the climax of the film, when he fights Henry inside a burning windmill, he’s reacting with violence first because it’s what he has come to expect. This version of the Monster doesn’t have a grand plan to systematically destroy his creator like his literary counterpart does. Nor does he finally choose to be evil and turn his back on the world: the decision is made for him by those who judge him preemptively.
The adaptation gives an additional element of tragedy to Henry as well. Shelley’s book doesn’t cast Victor Frankenstein in a very sympathetic light: his own desire for glory and a master race to rule over is what drives him to create the Monster, and he rejects it on its hideous appearance alone. Even when the Monster begins killing his family and friends, he never tries to protect anyone or take responsibility for his actions. Henry, on the other hand, is much more well-meaning. He creates the Creature not because he wants a living creature to rule over, but to prove to himself and others that it’s possible to make such a creature. Furthermore, he is initially willing to treat the Monster with respect. It’s when people who believe in its inherent evil start getting involved that he decides to disown his creation. But by bringing it into the world, he’s already accepted responsibility for him. His own downfall is set in motion when he decides to do what’s expected of him and forget about what he’s done.
In a way, Henry and the Monster both end up in the same predicament by the end of the film: the world isn’t ready to accept either of them. On the surface level, the Monster’s looks and behavior are more than enough for the human world to shun it outright. But I think there’s a deeper message to its existence, even more so than the idea that man can play God. It’s the idea that a creature with the brain of a murderous criminal can be gentle to a child and play with flowers, the idea that it’s our experiences and not just the circumstances of our birth that define who we are. And Henry, who brought that idea to life, is told by everyone that he must abandon his creation and the potential it holds. That’s why Frankenstein is a tragedy and not just a horror film. It’s not just the pain caused by the events of the story, but the rejection and the loss of what might have been.
That’s why there’s really just one aspect of the script that I don’t like, which is the studio-mandated happy ending. In the original cut, Henry is thrown from the top of a windmill and dies while the Monster is trapped inside the windmill as an angry mob burns it down. This was too dark for Universal, and a hastily added epilogue has Henry survive and marry Elizabeth. You can tell it wasn’t meant as the real ending, but its presence doesn’t detract from the film in any real way. Which, I think, is a testament to how powerful the climax is. In a movie that has been mostly tame up to that point, it stands out as a grim, tense action sequence with several harrowing moments: Henry and the Monster staring each other down, the two of them locked in combat, Henry getting thrown from the windmill. But what sticks with you most of all are the terrified shrieks of the Monster as the flames from below close in. He ends up back where he started — helpless and frightened, not understanding the cruelty of man — as he dies. At least for now.
You have to see Frankenstein to believe it. An incredible feat of storytelling and technology, it’s still a near-flawless movie all these years later. The Creature more than earns his spot in the pantheon of movie monsters, thanks to the genius of the artists and the performer who brought him to life. Surrounding him is an equally talented supporting cast and a thoughtful, nuanced screenplay that honors and explores the central themes of its source material. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?
Final Rating: 5 Stars
With Dracula, Universal had a hunch that it was on to the next big thing in movies. With Frankenstein, they were proven right. The film was a smash hit when it was released in November 1931, and it became the subject of intense controversy just as quickly. Its detractors saw it as “a grisly, blood-soaked example of exploitative filmmaking” (Weaver et al. 44) and treated it accordingly. The film was censored on multiple occasions, and only in the 80s and 90s did the uncut version become widely available. I previously mentioned Henry’s “now I know what it feels like to be God!” getting muffled. The scene of the young girl’s death was also censored, though in a counterproductive way. Censored prints of the film would end the scene right as the Monster was reaching for the girl, which creates the implication that the girl’s fate is actually worse than what we see in the original scene. In Kansas City, an astonishing 32 cuts were made to the film, shortening its runtime by half and making it wholly incomprehensible to viewers (Weaver et al. 44).
But the controversies did nothing to halt the upward momentum of the studio and its newly minted star. Boris Karloff would never go unnoticed by Hollywood again, and he was instantly in demand for more horror roles. The studio, meanwhile, wanted to continue capitalizing on its winning formula. They now had two unquestionable triumphs of horror cinema under their belt, adapted from two unquestionable triumphs of horror literature. And what’s more, other Hollywood studios were beginning to take notice of the Laemmles’ success…
In the original version of this series, my next installment after Frankenstein was 1932’s The Mummy. But this time around, I’m going to break my own rules in a big way. We’re not going to jump into 1932 just yet. Instead, we’re going to leave the Universal City behind and go on a little trip across Hollywood. All the way over to Paramount Pictures, where the third classic horror film of 1931 is being brought to life.
UP NEXT: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)
Works Cited & Further Reading
Mallory, Michael. Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror. Universe Publishing, 2021.
Landis, John. Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares. Reprint, DK Publishing, 2016.
Weaver, Tom, Brunas, Michael, & Brunas, John. Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931–1946 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Company, Inc. 2007.
Karloff, Sara. “My Father, The Monster.” Monsters: A Celebration of the Classics from Universal Studios, edited by Jennifer Osborne, Del Rey Books, 2006, pp. 66-69.