Spurred on by the success
of "Dracula", Universal pictures sought to replicate their success by adapting other stories from horror
folklore. The first of which being this classic tale by Mary Shelley.
The film starts off with Dr Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) doing a spot of late night grave robbery. Seems the good doctor believes he can a create a life from other body parts, and has been busy plundering the graves of the recently dead for spare parts.
Trying to steal a brain from the local medical school proves problematic when Fritz ends up swiping an abnormal brain. So when Doctor Frankenstein goes to bring his oversized creation to life with a bolt of lightning, instead of an intelligent, articulate being, he is faced with a hulking great bumbling psychopath, that promptly breaks out of the castle and goes on the rampage throughout the countryside, terrorising the local farmers.
With Doctor Frankenstein trying to put his failures behind him and marry his betrothed Elizabeth (Mae Clark), trouble brews as the monster kills the young daughter of one of the locals, then breaks into his father-in-law's house and attacks his bride to be, resulting in the now familiar scene of angry villagers carrying burning torches chasing the monster across the countryside...
Directed by James Whale (The Invisible Man) this adaptation of the old Mary Shelley novel (actually based on the stage adaptation) may look very dated now, as is the case with a lot of these old B&W films, but is still a very entertaining watch and, as is the case with "Dracula", is one I would recommend to all fans of classic horrors.
