It's a joy to see Boris Karloff lurch around the stage as Frankenstein's monster. He brings a range you wouldn't expect into the role and manages to fill this invention with a sense of humanity. The rest of the acting, however, is pretty bad.[1] Clearly the cast is made up primarily of Shakespearian-trained stage actors who seem to think they're in some odd production of Hamlet. Then again, at this point in time, film acting hadn't been really taught anywhere as an different discipline than stage acting. So the campiness of it, while laughable, is understandable, I guess.
Eh, but who cares about bad acting and moral lessons anyway? We're here to see Karloff's Monster lurch and grunt and beat people up, and that's what we get. And as an added bonus, he cries. What more can you ask for from a monster?
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[1] The exception being the second monster, played by Elsa Lanchester in a dual role. She's great as the Monster's Mate. Supposedly, she based the character on ill-tempered swans she saw in a London park.
Details:
starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, and Elsa Lanchester
written by: William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston, based on the novel by Mary Shelley
directed by: James Whale
NR, 75 min, 1935, USA
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Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
good review--I especially appreciated the on-target tidbit about Elsa Lanchester's inspiration.
2 - Mat Brewster
That ending scene towards the end when the bride screams in horror is absolutely classic.
I can no longer think of the blind man without thinking of Gene Hackman's hilarious spoof in Young Frankenstein, I mean Frankensteen