#EVERYONE CALLS HIM DR FRANKENSTEIN BUT THAT MAN WAS A DROPOUT

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OK BUT FRANKENSTEIN WASNT EVEN A DOCTOR. HE DIDNT GRADUATE HE LEFT BEFORE HE COULD GET HIS DEGREE

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Frankenstein 1931 Rant

Ok so this is my review of sorts for the 1931 Frankenstein movie. I had never seen it before, and decided that I should watch it so I could form my own opinions. I mainly compared it to Shelley’s book, attempting to remain as unbiased as possible. This proved difficult, and I was left at the end with a bundle of incomprehensible emotion that I later determined was mostly Rage. This is Long AF, so I'm going to put most of it under the cut.

This movie disrespected my girl Mary Shelley. In the opening credits they list her as “Mrs. Percy B. Shelley”. What the actual horror loving fuck?! Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. She was a feminist, daughter of one of the most prolific feminists of all time. She was so hardcore goth that she lost her virginity on her mother’s grave and carried around her husband’s CALCIFIED HEART. She deserves more respect than being referred to as her husband’s wife in her own goddamn movie adaptation.

The version I watched (rented from my local library) began with a quick content warning, which surprised me. All the things mentioned in the segment were true of Shelley’s book, and it led to a false sense of hope that maybe this movie wasn’t as off base as everyone claimed.

These hopes were quickly dashed with the presence of “Fritz”. While I don’t think he was ever referred to as such, he was recognizable enough as Igor, whom I only know through Pop Culture Osmosis--Frankenstein’s hunchbacked assistant. He only exists in the story to mess everything up in the name of plot development.

Case in point: the brain. This scene set up one of the greatest deviations from Shelley’s original text. Her book asks The question of nature vs nurture--if humans are inherently bad, or if our experiences shape us. This adaptation decides that the brain itself is inherently abnormal and therefore evil, and Dr. Waldman throughout the movie cements this detail.

Minor note here, but why is the college town Golstadt? Was Ingolstadt too hard? The extra two letters really put a strain on the movie’s budget? The extra seconds it took to say it padding the runtime too much?

Ok, was anyone going to tell me that they messed with the character’s names, or was I just supposed to figure that out by watching the scene multiple times myself? The man that enters is named Victor, and Elizabeth references her fiance Henry. This was very confusing, as in the book Victor and Elizabeth are love interests, and Victor’s best friend is named Henry Clerval. Additionally, this Victor’s last name is Mortiz, which you may notice is Justine’s last name. Justine Mortiz is not in this movie. Henry Clerval is not in this movie. This Victor character is either a bastardization of both Justine and Henry’s characters, or a complete fabrication, and I’m not sure which version makes me angrier. Justine and Henry were both integral characters in Shelley’s book, and to see them either way, edited down to nothing plot relevant makes my blood boil.

For the sake of my sanity and Clarity, I’ll be calling “Henry Frankenstein” Frankenstein, and “Victor Mortiz” the pretender Victor. Additionally I’ll be referring to the Movie creature as “The Monster '' and the book creature as “Adam”.

At least this movie recognized that Frankenstein was a college dropout, though his reasons for leaving were a bit different: Movie Frankenstein was becoming unstable, asking for more bodies and leaving when they wouldn’t supply him, where Book Victor didn’t even try to ask and just went graverobbing of his own volition and then created the Adam in his college dorm, dropping out afterwards.

In the scene where Waldman, Victor and Elizabeth go to visit Frankenstein, Frankenstein treats Elizabeth like shit (technically all of them but especially her), saying she’ll ruin everything. I have no commentary except for “dick move, who wrote this screenplay again?”

My mom was watching this with me, and asked why Frankenstein didn’t just keep his unwelcome guests locked out or make them stay downstairs. I replied with “Well the man just insinuated that he’s crazy, he has to prove himself now.”

I will admit, the “It’s alive!” scene was pretty cool. I recently saw a post about how if this version of Frankenstein was paired with Adam from the book there would have been a happier ending. This Frankenstein is so excited and happy that it work, that he did it, that he’d created life and cherish it. While completely out of character, it gave a look into Frankenstein’s inner workings in the movie.

I’ll be honest, I found it hard to care about Victor’s family. And by family I mean his Father, because Ernest and William were nowhere to be found (more on that later). The Baron is grumpy and unlikeable, and he doesn’t even die like he deserves like he did in the book.

Frankenstein has some raw dialogue in the scene with Waldman, “Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you 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.”

But then Waldman brings up the inherently evil bullshit that I mentioned earlier. Oh, the brain was abnormal, it was evil, and the monster is now evil no matter what.

Now Waldman has a line here that I find interesting--”You have created a monster and it will destroy you.” More on this later, just keep it in mind.

The scene with the monster establishes a few things--At least some comprehension, a yearning for light, a fear of fire, and the fact that Fritz is the worst and he deserves what’s coming. But I’d like to detail the Biggest derailment of the canon source material--The creature’s intelligence. Part of the Horror of Shelley’s work is that Adam is conscious, aware, and intelligent. He learns quickly and is abandoned by the person who should have cared for him, and he’s painfully aware of the horror of his existence. His humanity comes from his vast emotions and mental capacity, showing that it wasn’t his nature, but the (lack of) nurture that created the “monster” within him. Taking all of that away, stripping the character until he’s a groaning, barely conscious being, rips away layers and layers of Shelley’s commentary and storytelling.

Fuck Fritz. He hurts the monster when in reality it hasn’t done anything to anyone--yes it freaked out and they had to restrain him, but that was self defense and he didn’t seriously injure anyone. Meanwhile Frankenstein has a line later about how Fritz “always tormented him”. I’d probably kill him too, especially since Fritz kept pushing even after Frankenstein told him to leave him alone. I don’t feel anything over his death.

Next Waldman convinces Frankenstein to destroy the Monster. Showing a shocking change of character from both the “It’s Alive!” scene and his previous conversation with Waldman, Frankenstein barely puts up a fight, one “It’s murder” and then he gives in.

The monster goes down, Frankenstein’s family comes and sees him collapse, Waldman promises to “painlessly destroy” the monster, blah blah blah

Waldman’s death is interesting to me. I’ll talk about it a little more when I get to Maria, but so far all of the Monster’s violence and murders have come across as self defense. An innocent creature trying to defend itself. Yet it’s still painted in a negative light, even though Waldman was just as morally gray in his endeavors to end the Monster. Also, Waldman was going to Vivisect the Monster, not “painlessly destroy” him like he told Frankenstein. Who was really in the wrong here?

Wedding wedding, blah blah blah

Ok we’ve reached Maria, the moment I’ve been leading up to. Maria is a little girl from the village that takes up two important roles in the story--The old man that accepts Adam as a friend and then is accidentally killed by him, and William, Book Victor’s youngest brother and Adam’s first revenge murder. In the book, these two scenes are major turning points within Adam’s own recounting of his story--where he first found love and peace and then learned that the world was cruel and unfair when he lost it all, and when Adam makes a distinct choice to be cruel right back, killing William and pinning it on Justine. However in the movie the Monster isn’t intelligent enough to have those turning points. This scene shows the Monster’s humanity, his childlike wonder and Innocence. And unlike in the book, Maria isn’t afraid of the Monster. She seems more than content to play with the Monster. However, this version also shows that the monster is still inherently evil--that he’s capable of killing an innocent child, even by accident. But the biggest issue I have with this recasting is that it takes away all of the Consequences of Frankenstein’s actions. Shelley’s book was a cautionary tale, not necessarily about breaking the laws of nature or trying to be like God, but of not taking responsibility for your actions. Book Victor makes the wrong choice over and over and over again, and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I’ll revisit this a bit later when I talk about Elizabeth, but Book Victor never thinks about how his actions will affect the people around him. His brother is murdered and Justine is framed for it. Henry dies for the same reasons. Adam tears his way through his loved ones because he was hurt by his negligence. But this movie takes this all away, shifting the consequences away onto random characters while Frankenstein is vaguely guilty and not personally affected.

Ok, over to Elizabeth. She for some reason has been excluded from the wedding party, and makes her appearance now. She warns Frankenstein that she’s got a bad feeling, Star Wars style, but he doesn’t really pay her any attention. I feel like the treatment of Elizabeth in the book was pretty satirical, Shelley making subtle jabs at how women were treated at the time. The movie makes it feel more like “this is how women are”, in a very sexist way. Early Hollywood is not known for is progressiveness or women’s rights or anything like that. Now in a similarity to the book, Frankenstein locks Elizabeth in her room, and also like the book, the creature sneaks in. But where Adam was exacting revenge, specifically for his lost Bride (which is also nowhere to be found in this version), the Monster displays a very weird character shift. Up to now, The Monster’s violence and murder have been either self defense of accidental. However now he sneaks in specifically to attack Elizabeth. Why? It doesn’t make sense except for the “inherently evil” dialogue that has underscored the movie, and even then it feels like a stretch. But even worse, Elizabeth doesn’t die. For some reason the monster attacks her, but doesn’t kill her. This continues the line of no consequences for Frankenstein. Yes, his fiancee was hurt, but he didn’t lose anything in this movie. Nothing drives him to be a better person, to confront who he is and help him realize his responsibility.

Ok, home stretch people: The manhunt. Maria’s dad carries her tiny waterlogged corpse through the wedding celebration, causing a riot that the Baron fixes by creating an angry mob. Everyone searches, and The Monster is back to self defense pretty much--he’s getting attacked, so he attacks back.

The Monster faces down against Frankenstein, knocking him out and dragging him as he attempts to outrun the mob. They find a windmill, Frankenstein and the Monster fight, the monster throws Frankenstein off the roof (which he miraculously survives by the way). Why did the monster shift again, showing a personal vendetta against Frankenstein where none had previously been shown (except in the attack against Elizabeth)

The villagers burn the windmill, trapping and killing the Monster. In the book the Monster implies that it is going to commit suicide via burning (I believe on Victor’s funeral pyre, but it’s been a while since I reread the last part of the book), so there’s at least a little bit of a parallel? Something that confused me was how the movie managed to show his death in a sympathetic light, even while actively casting him as the villain.

Then Victor lives happily after. No, I'm serious. He’s fine, Elizabeth’s fine, his father is fine. No consequences. No lessons learned. Going back to Waldman’s line, “You have created a monster and it will destroy you.” Except it didn’t. The tragedy, so inherent in Shelley’s text, is completely destroyed and glossed over. In the book they chased each other to the ends of the world and died within a day of each other, mutually assuring their destruction. Here there’s no need: The monster is dead, along with all the consequences that should have followed Frankenstein.