Halloween Classics VI, It's Alive!

Happy Halloween everyone. Let's celebrate this most wonderful of holidays with a classic "Halloween Classics," what do you say? What makes this one such a redundant classic you ask? Well it's back to my basics, this one's a good old fashioned monster movie, not just any monster movie either, this is a Universal joint. Raising from my lab table to tell you what I think in grunts and groans, here's 1931's "Frankenstein" starring the brilliant Boris Karloff.

I think we all know the plot of "Frankenstein" by now. Frankenstein is kicked out of school for his dangerous beliefs and experiments, but he wont cease, he wont stop until he creates life. So he bombs around graveyards collecting parts from dead bodies so he can build himself a person. He zaps the body with lightning, which is the key to life you know, the monster's arm moves and Franky screams "It's Alive! It's ALIIIVE!" and then throws in a few "They thought I was mad! Who's mad now?" Then a few unforeseen things happen, like I don't know, turns out this guy is dangerous:

Um yeah, no shit. Especially when your sadistic freak of an assistant tortures the poor guy for no reason. In retaliation the monster kills the hunchbacked asshole, leading Frankenstein and his associate to agree that it's time to put the poor abomination down. From which he escapes of course, and bombs around terrorizing the countryside, and accidentally killing a child in the process. The dead child causes a shit storm in town and one of the most famous angry mobs in film history goes after the monster during the climax.

What I find fascinating is what Karloff and Jack Pierce (and let's not forget James Whale, the director, either shall we), created in this movie. Before the Universal Classics we all knew what werewolves looked like, or vampires, or mummies. These had been in our collective imaginations for a long long time. Maybe not the mummies (At least in western society), but you can trace vampires and werewolves back quite far, if you remember from last year I mentioned that the earliest version of "Little Red Riding Hood" in print actually had a werewolf in it, versus just a wolf. But Frankenstein's monster? Sure the book had been out a long time (about 100 years), and there had even been a couple of film versions of it, but Pierce's makeup and Karloff's performance cemented this monster in our modern imaginations, and perhaps permanently. Now when we hear the word "Frankenstein" we think of this:

Aww cute.

Frankenstein is now a monster grouped into the pantheon of fun things that go bump in the night, and even more importantly, a main representative of this fine holiday. You may even be visited by a couple of them tonight, along with the skeletons, ghosts, demons, vampires, and werewolves. That is what I find so cool, not just that the design of this monster is so cool, but that it's the one that stuck for good, and I'm so glad it did. The bolts in the neck are probably my favorite part, but I'm not sure why he ended up green, that doesn't make much sense, but then there was tons of stuff that didn't make sense in the original novel, so whatever.

So what of the movie? Is it any good? The short answer is: "Of course," the cinematography and set design are sublime (as usual in Universal Classics), the lab scene is pretty damn famous. Speaking of famous, the makeup is just brilliant, just look at it, Jack Pierce was a genius and this may not be his best work (I might actually say that's "The Mummy" or "Wolfman" from what I've seen), but I might go as far as to say it's his most original though, maybe, I just feel that way from what I said earlier. Also Karloff creates a very sympathetic monster even though he isn't given much screen time, and often he's barely in the shot as he escapes a scene (Which isn't a complaint, it's very unnerving to see that). In other words Karloff and Pierce do what they do best in this film, and it's great to see. Also Colin Clive chews the scenery just swimmingly as Frankenstein, his "It's Alive!" scream is well known for a reason.

But there are some problems though. I might catch some flak for this but here goes. The scene where Frankenstein's assistant grabs the abnormal brain, you know the one that is parodied so damn well in "Young Frankenstein?" This scene I think is a big mistake. It makes everything easy to explain away, "Oh the monster was made by a criminal's brain, a murderer's brain, so of course he's killing everyone he sees." This would be fine if Karloff's monster was a maniacal remorseless killing machine, but he's not. He's far from it actually, I mentioned earlier that Karloff's performance is sympathetic, and I feel it is, you do feel sorry for the poor guy. He didn't ask to be created, or tortured, or chased after, he has no idea what the fuck is going on, and it's sad. Also, he kills three people that I can remember, one: that fucking shit of an assistant that spends his time torturing the monster for no reason. Two: the other doctor, that was dissecting the monster while he was still alive. Three: the little girl, which was a mistake, a really horrible mistake which reminded me more of "Of Mice and Men" than some psychopath unflinchingly claiming another victim. The stupid "abnormal" brain thing wouldn't be so bad if they didn't also tag on the "mass murdering psychopath" part on, it kind of changes it from a poignant creature that isn't smart enough to know his own strength, to just some evil wraith that needs to be killed horribly.

Maybe it's not so bad if that's my only complaint, and maybe that's an element that needed to be added in back then. Hell, in 1931 I'm shocked that a lot of this movie was made, and I know some of it was censored at the time. Luckily we get to see it in it's uncensored form today. We have here a movie with grave robbing, blatant blasphemy, scientific necromancy, a terrifying monster that kills people in self defense and a child on accident, and an extended scene with a man carrying his dead daughter through town (A great fucking scene by the way). So maybe putting the "criminal mind" on it made it a little easier to stomach, especially when Karloff's monster is so sympathetic. Don't cry grandma, he had an evil brain remember? He had to be killed. We see this behavior even now you know? It's easy to turn your head on abuse when the abused are prisoners, but yeah that's a topic for another day.

"Hello father."

So, in short I liked it, it has fucking Boris Karloff dressed up as a frankenstein. What more could you want from a movie? Check it out. Happy Halloween.