Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

It's alive! It's alive!

I had to do an English Lit II journal on the Frankenstein movie we watched. And I figured I might as well post it here, as my review of the movie. And, of course, I'll elaborate as necessary and throw in one or two things I found while I was looking around, satsifying my idle curiosity.

The 1931 version of Frankenstein opens with an earnest warning to the audience that the movie will be frightening. So, we are told, we shouldn't watch if we are easily terrified. Unfortunately, I am part of a captive audience and have very little choice in the matter.

The story itself opens with a scene by an open grave as the priest reads the funeral service and the relatives of the deceased mourn his passing. As the grave is filled in, two wild-eyed and mysterious characters watch from nearby. One of these is Dr. Frankenstein himself; the other is his misshapen, not-very-bright assistant, Fritz. Once the gravedigger departs, the two move in on the freshly buried corpse. It’s all part of their search for body parts to use in the construction of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments with electricity and life, but he still needs a brain (two would do better, one for the monster and one for himself). Fritz, being a handy little devil, is able to procure one from a college classroom. Unfortunately, he is startled in the midst of the theft and he drops the normal brain on the floor. So he is forced to make do with the criminal brain which was sitting next to the other. D'oh!

Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s fiancé and best friend are worried about him, and track him down with the help of his former mentor from the college. Bla bla bla. Lots of boringness. They are shocked and disturbed by news of what sorts of things he has been working on and so forth.

It is a dark and stormy night, and Frankenstein is about to reach the point in his experiments that he has been working towards for many months: He will bring life to the creature that he has constructed out of spare body parts. Unfortunately, he is interrupted by the arrival of the three who are in search of him. He agrees to let them in to watch his experiment (because he's just very crafty like that). The experiment is successful (consisting of raising the construct up through the ceiling so that it is exposed to the lightning). The creature is brought to life, and all tremble in horror before it.

Now that he has created a monster, I’m not entirely certain what he has been planning to do with it. But that clearly has nothing to do with the movie. Before long, the monster is driven to kill Fritz, who has teased it constantly. And there is much rejoicing. Frankenstein and his mentor kill the monster with a syringe full of . . . killing juice, and Frankenstein goes off to be married, determined to forget all about the horrible experiment. The doctor decides he wants to do an autopsy on the monster, but unfortunately, the monster isn’t actually dead. And he objects to the idea of a biopsy in the strongest possible terms. Frankenstein’s mentor is throttled. I call it self-defense. That scalpel was out and it was coming at the monster's head. No jury in the world would convict.

The monster proceeds to wander out into the peaceful countryside around the quiet little German town, and accidentally kills a little girl (you see, he thought she was a boat). It was totally an accident. He is 100% justified in pleading insanity. No jury in the world would convict. He then proceeds directly to Frankenstein’s house . . . in broad daylight . . . in the middle of town (intuitively knowing where it is, and completely escaping detection), scares the living bejesus out of the fiancé (who Frankenstein has very craftily locked into her room while he searches the rest of the house for the monster), and leaves.

Suddenly, everyone in town knows that there is a monster, and that the monster is responsible for the death of the little girl (there were no witnesses, but . . .?). They split up (and by split up, I mean stay together) and go out in search of it. It's a classic monster-hunting mob, complete with torches and pitchforks. w00t!

Frankenstein commits the classic horror-movie blunder, and goes one way while everyone else goes the other way. He then proceeds to walk around with his head turned only to the left, and walks to the edge of a cliff to look over. Naturally, he is knocked unconscious while he is struggling with the monster. The monster drags him back to the windmill where it was created, with the townspeople in hot pursuit, and much excitement ensues. Dr. Frankenstein is thrown off the top of the windmill, but he isn't quite dead.

This turns out to be the monster’s undoing, as the others are now free to burn the windmill down. He didn't quite have a grasp on that whole "hostage negotiation" thing. The monster dies amidst flames, alone, trapped under a beam. Frankenstein is married and recovers (I’m not to sure about the order here). And his father the Baron gets to drink some very fine wine, surrounded by half a dozen very pretty, young maids with bobbed hair. It is a very happy ending. Totally random, but happy.

I liked the classic, campy way in which this film was carried out. As a fan of classic movies from all decades, I really enjoyed the style, and was reminded of some of the horror and suspense movies that I used to watch all the time. (Perhaps I will speak of The Tingler one of these days. Funniest movie I've ever seen, and I'm not exaggerating.) That said, this obviously was not really related to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in any but the vaguest possible sense.

We discussed in class the significance of the subtitle, “The Modern Prometheus,” and the one thing about the movie that I especially noticed was the almost complete absence of consequences. Fritz and Frankenstein’s mentor are murdered. A little girl died. Some random person got wounded. An abandoned windmill burned down. Frankenstein gets hurt, but he’ll be better soon. I don’t think anyone was sad to see Fritz go. The mentor is all but forgotten by the end of the movie (I only just remembered as I was going over the body count in my head). The little girl’s death is rather unfortunate, but it doesn’t affect Frankenstein.

He, as the Prometheus character, is not punished in any way for all of his meddling with things he shouldn’t be meddling with. He gets to live happily ever after, and none of the characters that died in the book (of those that actually appeared in the movie) are killed. That pretty much takes the soul out of the story. Oh, it’s still a cautionary tale, I suppose, but almost all of the impact is gone. All that is left is a very cheap popcorn flick which has pervaded pop culture for the past sixty-plus years and completely supplanted the original novel. That’s too bad.

At the end of the movie, I was really only left with one burning question: If it was Fritz all this time, then who in the world is Igor?

I did a bit of research on that. My first search only told me that the first use of the character name "Igor" was in this 1966 movie. A further search revealed this, which I'm sure some of you already knew.

I end this in the classic style of MST3K, with a quote. There are a number of highly amusing and extremely memorable quotes in this movie, but I finally settled on this one from Dr. Frankenstein himself:

Dangerous? Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have your never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.

Good night, everyone.

Posted by Jared at February 18, 2004 02:30 AM | TrackBack