September 23, 2024 • 16 mins
today i will be talking about the best frankenstein movie ever made , starring boris karlof as the monster , frankenstein 1931
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In nineteen thirty one, Universal Pictures released the first of
what we now know as a Universal monster movies, and
that movie was Dracula, starring Bella Lagosi as Dracula himself.
The movie was a massive success and also resulted in
the world's most iconic image of Count Dracula. And let's
face it, when you think of Count Dracula, this is
the image you have in your mind. Also that year,
(00:22):
Universal released another movie featuring a monster that would become
just as iconic as Count Dracula, and that movie was Frankenstein. Now,
before we go on any further, I'm sure you're all
the word that Frankenstein is actually the mad scientist who
(00:44):
created the monster, and not the monster himself.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
But I'm sure you have all at.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Some point referred to the monster as Frankenstein. I myself
am guilty of this, especially as a child, but even
now as an adult, although I know the monster is
not named Frankenstein, I still find it hard to not
call him Frankenstein. So if I make a mistake somewhere
in this episode, you'll have to please excuse me. The
novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus was released in eighteen
(01:11):
eighteen by author Murray Shelley, who started writing the novel
when she was eighteen and she published it when she
was twenty. It was over one hundred years later that
Ouren movie was released.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's not to say that there was not other versions
of Frankenstein out though, but.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They were very few and far between, and they mostly
had been live plays. Now, at this particular time in history,
America was going through the Great Depression and Universal were
having money problems, but the release of Dracula was a
huge financial success, so of course Universal were quick to
produce more horror movies and the next movie would be Frankenstein,
and the studio wanted Bella of the Golf, so you
(01:46):
who played Dracula, to take the role of Frankenstein's monster,
And although Laghulsi did do some costume tests for this movie,
which apparently made him look more like the Goldlum rather
than Frankenstein, he ultimately decided that he didn't want the
role as his face would be covered by heavy makeup
and he was a little bit vain in that respect,
and he did not want to hide away his good looks.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And so another.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Actor was needed to fill the very large boots of
Frankenstein's Monster. The movie was originally planned to be directed
by Robert Florey, who for some reason wanted a futuristic
look in Frankenstein's Monster, who was simply a killing machine,
which was very far from the source material. It wasn't
long before Robert Floury was shown the door and a
new director took his place. That director was James Whale.
(02:31):
It was James Whale who cast a relatively unknown actor
named Boris Karloff, who caught the director's eye because of
his impressive bone structure in his face, which apparently slightly
offended Karloff, but not enough to turn down the role.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And Whale was right.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Boris Karloff had the perfect bone structures to build upon
and make him into Frankenstein's Monster. He was literally perfect
for the role. But it was not just the look of.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The monster that Karloff had down.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Karloff was a relatively unknown actor at this time, but
he was simply an amazing actor and he did a
fantastic job at portraying the monster and bringing the truly
tragic side of the creature to life. And considering the
amount of makeup Curloff was under, that was no easy
feat but he made it work beautifully. In the movie,
(03:18):
the mad scientist character is named Henry Frankenstein instead of
Victor Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
As it was in the book.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
The movie opens with Henry played by Colin Clive and
his hunchback companion Fritz played by Dwight Frye, hanging around
a graveyard in hopes of stealing away a corpse or
two so that Henry can perform his experiment to breathe
life into a creature he has pieced together using stolen
body parts, but he also needs a brain, so he
sends his hunchback to assistant to a quiet or steal
(03:45):
a brain from his old teacher, Dr Waldman played by
Edward Van Sloane. Fritz breaks into the school where Dr
Walden works and upon finding the brain, he drops it,
so he decides to bring back a brain labeled abnormal
back in the lab. The brain has been inserted into
the monster skull and preparations are underway when there is
a knock at the door by free concerned friends of
(04:06):
Henry Frankenstein, his old teacher Dr. Walden, Henry's fiance Elizabeth
played by May Clark, and their friend Victor played by
John Bowles. When it becomes clear that they are not
going to leave, Henry invites him in to witness his experiment.
Henry and Fritz and the operating table hauling the creature
up through an opening in the top of the tower
as Henry's scientific equipment in the lab spark and buzz
(04:29):
around him on a set piece that would inspire many
more movies over the years, especially mad scientist movies, because
this seemed to be the stereotypical set piece for a
movie featuring a mad scientist even to this very day.
In fact, that actual movie set was used over and
over again in many other movies up until the nineteen seventies.
(04:49):
After finding out that the experiment was a success, Henry
Frankenstein goes a little bit crazy as he claims that
he now knows what it is like to be God.
Let me play that scene for you right now.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
When Henry claims that he now knows what it's like
to be God, that original line was cut out of
the movie, or should I say it was covered up
by another sound effect for so many years until a
full cut of the movie was found in the nineteen eighties,
I believed, and it was reintroduced into the movie. That
line seemed too much for the audiences of nineteen thirty one. Now,
(05:36):
at this point in the movie, the creature is alive,
but strangely, we don't actually.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
See the creature right away. We just see his arm
move from under the sheet.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
His reveal comes a little later, and his entrance is
somewhat brilliant as Karlov comes through the door backwards and
he slowly turns towards the camera and then we get
a jump cut and a zoom. Didn't look at the
creature's face, and it is very horrifying and somewhat sad.
Karlov wanted to actually make his character look dead, and
he had a few suggestions. First of all, Karloff decided
(06:06):
that Martsian's wax was needed to be applied to his eyelids,
as Karloff believed that his own eyes made the creature
look too much alive, and the application of the wax
on Karloff's eyelids gave the creature a very different kind
of look, with eyelids that were constantly half shut.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Or half open.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Karlov also had dentures to the side of his face,
which he removed to cave in his cheek a little,
making the character look a little more gaunt, and the
makeup was indeed extensive, with a heavy brow and a
flat head with big bolts on each side of his neck.
And believed or not, the monster was not portrayed as
such in the actual novel. This was all created for
(06:45):
the universal movie, and even though Karlov was buried under
all of the makeup, his performance did not suffer. There
was still enough of the man left to shine through
the makeup and showed the many expressions of the creature's face.
And Karloff played the creature as a victim with a
childlike nature and curiosity, and I believe that this is
the reason the movie works so well and is still
(07:05):
to this day the ultimate version of Frankenstein. Karlov played
the creature as a victim because that's exactly what the
monster was.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The creature is afraid all the way through this movie.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I mean, yet he does get angry, but that anger
is out of fear, and his motivations are driven by fear,
and you really do feel a certain amount of sorrow
for him.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And that is all down to Karlov's performance.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
There is a scene in the movie where Henry Frankenstein
opens a skylight to let the sun in, and we
see the creature reaching up to try and touch the sunlight.
And there's something very touching about this scene, as I
believe the sun represents life maybe and the creature is
reaching out for it. And when Henry Frankenstein shuts the
skylight and the sun vanishes, we see a sadness come
over the creature as he reaches out for Henry Frankenstein
(07:53):
instead reaching out for something. I thought, maybe some kind
of comfort or just something. Maybe the monster does not
even know what he wants, but he yearns for something,
But instead he is told to sit, which he does
like a loyal puppy, still with his hands open wide
gesturing for some kind of help.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It really is quite sad.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
There's also a scene where the hunchback character Fritz, is
tormenting the monster with a whip and then with fire,
and you truly believe that the monster is afraid in
this scene and you feel for him, and Karloff does
a spectacular job at portraying that fear through all that makeup.
As Fritz continues to torment the monster, the scene cuts
to Dr Walden and Henry Frankenstein in the lab and
(08:35):
they hear Fritz let out a scream, and when they
arrive where the monster has been restrained, they see that
Fritz has been killed and his hanging from his neck,
and with that Dr Walden and Henry Frankenstein decide that
the monster must be sedated and killed. After this, Henry
Frankenstein tries to resume his life with his fiancee. As
Dr Walden attempts to kill the sedated monster, he isn't
(08:57):
as sedated as he originally thought and kills the doctor
and flees the lab.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
In the next scene, we see.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The monster meet a little girl named Maria by a lake,
and she is not afraid of him, and she takes
his hand, and this is probably the only time in
the movie that we see the monster happy to have
a friend, someone who treats him with kindness. The little
girl shows him how to throw flowers into the lake
and to watch them float, and when they run out
of flowers, the monster innocently reaches out for the little
(09:25):
girl and tosses her into the lake, expecting for her
to float as well, just like the flowers did, but
she sinks and drowns, and the monster looks distressed and
confused and flees the area quickly. A little later in
the movie, we see the girl's father walking through the
village holding Maria's lifeless body, claiming that she had been murdered.
This was a very dark scene for a movie shot
(09:46):
in nineteen thirty one, so as you can imagine, it
didn't make it past the senses intact. But in my opinion,
the cut that was made in nineteen thirty one actually
made the girl's death seem worse. You see, in the
original cut, it's clear to see that the monster did
not understand that the girl would not float, and he
was upset about it afterwards, But in nineteen thirty one,
(10:07):
the edit made to the scene actually looks worse. With
the scene cut short just as the monster reaches out
for the girl and that's it. We don't actually see
franken Stein pick up the girl and throw her into
the water. We don't see that franken Stein is confused
by the act and that he didn't actually mean to
hurt the girl. We just see that Frankenstein reaches out
to grab the girl, and then the scene cuts, and
(10:27):
then a little later we see the father carrying a
dead body, claiming that she was murdered, and this suggests
the audience that was watching the film in nineteen thirty
one that the monster killed her in cold blood. Ultimately,
that cut made it more violent, strangely, and in my opinion,
it would have been better to actually leave it intact.
Now here's a fun fact for you. Just like Maria
(10:48):
in the movie wasn't afraid of the monster, the actress
who played Maria, Marilyn Harris, was not afraid of Carloff
in full makeup, and it is said that she would
insist on riding with Karloff dress as a monster on
the way to set.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And it was also said that she drove a very
hard bargain.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You see, during the late scene when Karloff threw her
into the water, she didn't sink as intended, so James Whale,
the director, had to bribe her to do the scene again,
but this time sink under the water.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
She requested that.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
She have twelve hard boiled eggs. James Whale agreed and
she redid the take perfectly and she received not twelve eggs,
but twenty four hard boiled eggs. What a negotiator. Now,
a little bit later, there's a scene where the monster
enters the bedroom of Henry's fiance Elizabeth played by May Clark,
and he attacks her, but off screen, leaving a lot
(11:39):
to the imagination. But apparently May Clark was a little
nervous about this scene as the image of Karloff as
a monster actually screed her to death. But Carloff, being
a gentleman, instructed May to look at his little finger
during the scene and when he wiggled it, she would
know that it was himself Boris Karloff wiggling his finger
and not the monster. The monster once again flees the area,
(12:02):
but this time he's hunted in the hills by a
mob and Henry Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The monster surprises.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Frankenstein and they have a fight, with Henry coming off worse,
and as the mob closes in, the monster grabs Henry
and carries him up a hill towards a windmill. Now
Boris Karloff apparently suffered back problems in later life due
to this scene due to carrying Colin Clive up and
down this hill. Apparently, Karloff wanted to use a dummy,
but James Wilder, director insisted it be done his way.
(12:29):
As Frankenstein's monster reaches the top of the windmill with
Henry Frankenstein. The mob surround the bottom and another struggle
breaks out between Henry and the monster, which ends in
Henry being tossed over the side and he hits one
of the windmill arms on his way down. Now, before
we're going forver, I just want to say that this scene,
considering the year it was shot as well, is fantastic.
(12:50):
I think the way they did it is they built
the bottom of the windmill and then the top of
the windmill must have been some kind of model, but
they blended it perfectly. You can see where it's blended
obviously nineteen thirty one. You can see worthy model and
the actual bottom of the windmill connect. They've kind of
overlapped them both after filming, but it was done flawlessly
(13:13):
and it is a perfect scene and a really fitting
ending for this movie. Now, the mob sets the windmill
a light, and the monster eventually perishes in the flames,
and he screams in terror as he dies. Well, we
know that in the second movie he doesn't actually die,
but in this movie it was played out that he
died at the end of this film and he was
(13:34):
burned to death, and it is a very very sad ending,
a tragic ending, a perfect ending. But of course Universal
was not happy. They believe that the movie needed a
happy ending, not a bleak one, and crudely stitched on
an extra scene at the end of the movie showing
that Henry Frankensteiner survived the fall from the windmill and
he and Elizabeth lived happily ever after. This ending was
(13:58):
just wrong in my opinion. The movie should have ended
with Frankenstein dying and Frankenstein's monster dying together. And like
I said before, the monster was not exactly a villain.
He was a victim. The monster was afraid constantly all
through this movie, and he was brought into this world.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And then it was decided that he would be killed.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Because he killed Fritz, who was trying to torment him
in a way.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
He killed Fritz in self defense.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
He also killed Dr Walden, but Dr Walden was trying
to kill him also, so once again you can excuse this.
So far, the monster has acted in self defense. He
hasn't killed out of evil. But then we have the
little girl who he did kill, but not on purpose.
He just didn't understand that she wouldn't float and that
she would drown. He didn't mean to kill her, he
(14:47):
didn't want to kill her, and then he was hunted
by a mob who then set the windmill alight and
burned the creature to death as he screamed into the night.
So you see all through the movie the creature was
running scared. He was afraid, and he was confused, and
he was hunted. And like I said before, I think
the burning of the windmill was a perfect ending, and
the happy ending that was pinned on to the end
(15:08):
of this movie seems so out of place as we
see the survival of the man responsible for the monster's
misery moments after we listened to the monster's screams as
he perished in the flames.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Of course, like I said, after the success of this.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Movie, it sparked a whole new line of the universal
monster flicks, The Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon,
the Mummy, and of course more Frankenstein movies. Karloff played
the monster three more times in the Bride of Frankenstein
and the Son of Frankenstein, and then he hung up
the Boots and the Bulls. But Frankenstein movies didn't end
the as other actors took up the role, but none
(15:46):
of the performances were ever as good as Carloff's, and
to this day, in my opinion, he is and always
will be the ultimate version of Frankenstein, I mean of
Frankenstein's monster, happy Yellow een
In nineteen thirty one, Universal Pictures released the first of
what we now know as a Universal monster movies, and
that movie was Dracula, starring Bella Lagosi as Dracula himself.
The movie was a massive success and also resulted in
the world's most iconic image of Count Dracula. And let's
face it, when you think of Count Dracula, this is
the image you have in your mind. Also that year,
(00:22):
Universal released another movie featuring a monster that would become
just as iconic as Count Dracula, and that movie was Frankenstein. Now,
before we go on any further, I'm sure you're all
the word that Frankenstein is actually the mad scientist who
(00:44):
created the monster, and not the monster himself.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
But I'm sure you have all at.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Some point referred to the monster as Frankenstein. I myself
am guilty of this, especially as a child, but even
now as an adult, although I know the monster is
not named Frankenstein, I still find it hard to not
call him Frankenstein. So if I make a mistake somewhere
in this episode, you'll have to please excuse me. The
novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus was released in eighteen
(01:11):
eighteen by author Murray Shelley, who started writing the novel
when she was eighteen and she published it when she
was twenty. It was over one hundred years later that
Ouren movie was released.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's not to say that there was not other versions
of Frankenstein out though, but.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They were very few and far between, and they mostly
had been live plays. Now, at this particular time in history,
America was going through the Great Depression and Universal were
having money problems, but the release of Dracula was a
huge financial success, so of course Universal were quick to
produce more horror movies and the next movie would be Frankenstein,
and the studio wanted Bella of the Golf, so you
(01:46):
who played Dracula, to take the role of Frankenstein's monster,
And although Laghulsi did do some costume tests for this movie,
which apparently made him look more like the Goldlum rather
than Frankenstein, he ultimately decided that he didn't want the
role as his face would be covered by heavy makeup
and he was a little bit vain in that respect,
and he did not want to hide away his good looks.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And so another.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Actor was needed to fill the very large boots of
Frankenstein's Monster. The movie was originally planned to be directed
by Robert Florey, who for some reason wanted a futuristic
look in Frankenstein's Monster, who was simply a killing machine,
which was very far from the source material. It wasn't
long before Robert Floury was shown the door and a
new director took his place. That director was James Whale.
(02:31):
It was James Whale who cast a relatively unknown actor
named Boris Karloff, who caught the director's eye because of
his impressive bone structure in his face, which apparently slightly
offended Karloff, but not enough to turn down the role.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And Whale was right.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Boris Karloff had the perfect bone structures to build upon
and make him into Frankenstein's Monster. He was literally perfect
for the role. But it was not just the look of.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The monster that Karloff had down.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Karloff was a relatively unknown actor at this time, but
he was simply an amazing actor and he did a
fantastic job at portraying the monster and bringing the truly
tragic side of the creature to life. And considering the
amount of makeup Curloff was under, that was no easy
feat but he made it work beautifully. In the movie,
(03:18):
the mad scientist character is named Henry Frankenstein instead of
Victor Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
As it was in the book.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
The movie opens with Henry played by Colin Clive and
his hunchback companion Fritz played by Dwight Frye, hanging around
a graveyard in hopes of stealing away a corpse or
two so that Henry can perform his experiment to breathe
life into a creature he has pieced together using stolen
body parts, but he also needs a brain, so he
sends his hunchback to assistant to a quiet or steal
(03:45):
a brain from his old teacher, Dr Waldman played by
Edward Van Sloane. Fritz breaks into the school where Dr
Walden works and upon finding the brain, he drops it,
so he decides to bring back a brain labeled abnormal
back in the lab. The brain has been inserted into
the monster skull and preparations are underway when there is
a knock at the door by free concerned friends of
(04:06):
Henry Frankenstein, his old teacher Dr. Walden, Henry's fiance Elizabeth
played by May Clark, and their friend Victor played by
John Bowles. When it becomes clear that they are not
going to leave, Henry invites him in to witness his experiment.
Henry and Fritz and the operating table hauling the creature
up through an opening in the top of the tower
as Henry's scientific equipment in the lab spark and buzz
(04:29):
around him on a set piece that would inspire many
more movies over the years, especially mad scientist movies, because
this seemed to be the stereotypical set piece for a
movie featuring a mad scientist even to this very day.
In fact, that actual movie set was used over and
over again in many other movies up until the nineteen seventies.
(04:49):
After finding out that the experiment was a success, Henry
Frankenstein goes a little bit crazy as he claims that
he now knows what it is like to be God.
Let me play that scene for you right now.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
When Henry claims that he now knows what it's like
to be God, that original line was cut out of
the movie, or should I say it was covered up
by another sound effect for so many years until a
full cut of the movie was found in the nineteen eighties,
I believed, and it was reintroduced into the movie. That
line seemed too much for the audiences of nineteen thirty one. Now,
(05:36):
at this point in the movie, the creature is alive,
but strangely, we don't actually.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
See the creature right away. We just see his arm
move from under the sheet.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
His reveal comes a little later, and his entrance is
somewhat brilliant as Karlov comes through the door backwards and
he slowly turns towards the camera and then we get
a jump cut and a zoom. Didn't look at the
creature's face, and it is very horrifying and somewhat sad.
Karlov wanted to actually make his character look dead, and
he had a few suggestions. First of all, Karloff decided
(06:06):
that Martsian's wax was needed to be applied to his eyelids,
as Karloff believed that his own eyes made the creature
look too much alive, and the application of the wax
on Karloff's eyelids gave the creature a very different kind
of look, with eyelids that were constantly half shut.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Or half open.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Karlov also had dentures to the side of his face,
which he removed to cave in his cheek a little,
making the character look a little more gaunt, and the
makeup was indeed extensive, with a heavy brow and a
flat head with big bolts on each side of his neck.
And believed or not, the monster was not portrayed as
such in the actual novel. This was all created for
(06:45):
the universal movie, and even though Karlov was buried under
all of the makeup, his performance did not suffer. There
was still enough of the man left to shine through
the makeup and showed the many expressions of the creature's face.
And Karloff played the creature as a victim with a
childlike nature and curiosity, and I believe that this is
the reason the movie works so well and is still
(07:05):
to this day the ultimate version of Frankenstein. Karlov played
the creature as a victim because that's exactly what the
monster was.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The creature is afraid all the way through this movie.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I mean, yet he does get angry, but that anger
is out of fear, and his motivations are driven by fear,
and you really do feel a certain amount of sorrow
for him.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And that is all down to Karlov's performance.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
There is a scene in the movie where Henry Frankenstein
opens a skylight to let the sun in, and we
see the creature reaching up to try and touch the sunlight.
And there's something very touching about this scene, as I
believe the sun represents life maybe and the creature is
reaching out for it. And when Henry Frankenstein shuts the
skylight and the sun vanishes, we see a sadness come
over the creature as he reaches out for Henry Frankenstein
(07:53):
instead reaching out for something. I thought, maybe some kind
of comfort or just something. Maybe the monster does not
even know what he wants, but he yearns for something,
But instead he is told to sit, which he does
like a loyal puppy, still with his hands open wide
gesturing for some kind of help.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It really is quite sad.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
There's also a scene where the hunchback character Fritz, is
tormenting the monster with a whip and then with fire,
and you truly believe that the monster is afraid in
this scene and you feel for him, and Karloff does
a spectacular job at portraying that fear through all that makeup.
As Fritz continues to torment the monster, the scene cuts
to Dr Walden and Henry Frankenstein in the lab and
(08:35):
they hear Fritz let out a scream, and when they
arrive where the monster has been restrained, they see that
Fritz has been killed and his hanging from his neck,
and with that Dr Walden and Henry Frankenstein decide that
the monster must be sedated and killed. After this, Henry
Frankenstein tries to resume his life with his fiancee. As
Dr Walden attempts to kill the sedated monster, he isn't
(08:57):
as sedated as he originally thought and kills the doctor
and flees the lab.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
In the next scene, we see.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The monster meet a little girl named Maria by a lake,
and she is not afraid of him, and she takes
his hand, and this is probably the only time in
the movie that we see the monster happy to have
a friend, someone who treats him with kindness. The little
girl shows him how to throw flowers into the lake
and to watch them float, and when they run out
of flowers, the monster innocently reaches out for the little
(09:25):
girl and tosses her into the lake, expecting for her
to float as well, just like the flowers did, but
she sinks and drowns, and the monster looks distressed and
confused and flees the area quickly. A little later in
the movie, we see the girl's father walking through the
village holding Maria's lifeless body, claiming that she had been murdered.
This was a very dark scene for a movie shot
(09:46):
in nineteen thirty one, so as you can imagine, it
didn't make it past the senses intact. But in my opinion,
the cut that was made in nineteen thirty one actually
made the girl's death seem worse. You see, in the
original cut, it's clear to see that the monster did
not understand that the girl would not float, and he
was upset about it afterwards, But in nineteen thirty one,
(10:07):
the edit made to the scene actually looks worse. With
the scene cut short just as the monster reaches out
for the girl and that's it. We don't actually see
franken Stein pick up the girl and throw her into
the water. We don't see that franken Stein is confused
by the act and that he didn't actually mean to
hurt the girl. We just see that Frankenstein reaches out
to grab the girl, and then the scene cuts, and
(10:27):
then a little later we see the father carrying a
dead body, claiming that she was murdered, and this suggests
the audience that was watching the film in nineteen thirty
one that the monster killed her in cold blood. Ultimately,
that cut made it more violent, strangely, and in my opinion,
it would have been better to actually leave it intact.
Now here's a fun fact for you. Just like Maria
(10:48):
in the movie wasn't afraid of the monster, the actress
who played Maria, Marilyn Harris, was not afraid of Carloff
in full makeup, and it is said that she would
insist on riding with Karloff dress as a monster on
the way to set.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And it was also said that she drove a very
hard bargain.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You see, during the late scene when Karloff threw her
into the water, she didn't sink as intended, so James Whale,
the director, had to bribe her to do the scene again,
but this time sink under the water.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
She requested that.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
She have twelve hard boiled eggs. James Whale agreed and
she redid the take perfectly and she received not twelve eggs,
but twenty four hard boiled eggs. What a negotiator. Now,
a little bit later, there's a scene where the monster
enters the bedroom of Henry's fiance Elizabeth played by May Clark,
and he attacks her, but off screen, leaving a lot
(11:39):
to the imagination. But apparently May Clark was a little
nervous about this scene as the image of Karloff as
a monster actually screed her to death. But Carloff, being
a gentleman, instructed May to look at his little finger
during the scene and when he wiggled it, she would
know that it was himself Boris Karloff wiggling his finger
and not the monster. The monster once again flees the area,
(12:02):
but this time he's hunted in the hills by a
mob and Henry Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The monster surprises.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Frankenstein and they have a fight, with Henry coming off worse,
and as the mob closes in, the monster grabs Henry
and carries him up a hill towards a windmill. Now
Boris Karloff apparently suffered back problems in later life due
to this scene due to carrying Colin Clive up and
down this hill. Apparently, Karloff wanted to use a dummy,
but James Wilder, director insisted it be done his way.
(12:29):
As Frankenstein's monster reaches the top of the windmill with
Henry Frankenstein. The mob surround the bottom and another struggle
breaks out between Henry and the monster, which ends in
Henry being tossed over the side and he hits one
of the windmill arms on his way down. Now, before
we're going forver, I just want to say that this scene,
considering the year it was shot as well, is fantastic.
(12:50):
I think the way they did it is they built
the bottom of the windmill and then the top of
the windmill must have been some kind of model, but
they blended it perfectly. You can see where it's blended
obviously nineteen thirty one. You can see worthy model and
the actual bottom of the windmill connect. They've kind of
overlapped them both after filming, but it was done flawlessly
(13:13):
and it is a perfect scene and a really fitting
ending for this movie. Now, the mob sets the windmill
a light, and the monster eventually perishes in the flames,
and he screams in terror as he dies. Well, we
know that in the second movie he doesn't actually die,
but in this movie it was played out that he
died at the end of this film and he was
(13:34):
burned to death, and it is a very very sad ending,
a tragic ending, a perfect ending. But of course Universal
was not happy. They believe that the movie needed a
happy ending, not a bleak one, and crudely stitched on
an extra scene at the end of the movie showing
that Henry Frankensteiner survived the fall from the windmill and
he and Elizabeth lived happily ever after. This ending was
(13:58):
just wrong in my opinion. The movie should have ended
with Frankenstein dying and Frankenstein's monster dying together. And like
I said before, the monster was not exactly a villain.
He was a victim. The monster was afraid constantly all
through this movie, and he was brought into this world.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And then it was decided that he would be killed.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Because he killed Fritz, who was trying to torment him
in a way.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
He killed Fritz in self defense.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
He also killed Dr Walden, but Dr Walden was trying
to kill him also, so once again you can excuse this.
So far, the monster has acted in self defense. He
hasn't killed out of evil. But then we have the
little girl who he did kill, but not on purpose.
He just didn't understand that she wouldn't float and that
she would drown. He didn't mean to kill her, he
(14:47):
didn't want to kill her, and then he was hunted
by a mob who then set the windmill alight and
burned the creature to death as he screamed into the night.
So you see all through the movie the creature was
running scared. He was afraid, and he was confused, and
he was hunted. And like I said before, I think
the burning of the windmill was a perfect ending, and
the happy ending that was pinned on to the end
(15:08):
of this movie seems so out of place as we
see the survival of the man responsible for the monster's
misery moments after we listened to the monster's screams as
he perished in the flames.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Of course, like I said, after the success of this.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Movie, it sparked a whole new line of the universal
monster flicks, The Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon,
the Mummy, and of course more Frankenstein movies. Karloff played
the monster three more times in the Bride of Frankenstein
and the Son of Frankenstein, and then he hung up
the Boots and the Bulls. But Frankenstein movies didn't end
the as other actors took up the role, but none
(15:46):
of the performances were ever as good as Carloff's, and
to this day, in my opinion, he is and always
will be the ultimate version of Frankenstein, I mean of
Frankenstein's monster, happy Yellow een
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