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Post by foolfool08 on Jul 10, 2008 18:28:03 GMT -5
What does everyone think about this Universal classic?
I love it and think it is one of the few horrors that are perfect, though out of superstition I cant give it a 10/10, but a high 9/10 and the position of #2 on my Top 10.
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Post by The Question on Jul 20, 2008 5:14:57 GMT -5
I think it's one of those movies that will remain timeless for a few reasons:
The source material is just indestructible, even in the worst of the plethora of interpretations of Shelley's work, the themes and ideas at its heart are as old as the hills and always relevant and evocative;
Whale's direction is superb and fluid, bridging that gap between the talkies and the German silents full of their expressionist imagery perfectly (if you look at Tod Browning's direction on Dracula in that same year, it shows just how far ahead of the game Whale was at that time). Also, there's a lightness of touch in the balancing of the black humour/pathos/tragedy/and comedy that could easily have been done badly (which is why I'm not as fond of Bride of Frankenstein, where I think the mix is off and more inclined to tweeness);
Boris Karloff as the monster is outstanding, intelligent acting that is at the heart of the piece and offsets Colin Clive's more OTT Frankenstein (though that in itself works great here) and some of the more plummy character acting. His creature can be heartbreaking without every becoming mawkish or overly sentimental, which is no mean feat.
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Post by Non-Believer Yet Damned on Jul 20, 2008 9:22:57 GMT -5
Well here is my review of it.
The film opens with the title and credits, and the monster credited as “?” rather than Boris Karloff. Following the opening credits, the film starts with Dr. Frankenstein and his faithful hunchback servant Fritz, staking out a funeral and once the casket is buried, they dig up the corpse and take it away. Fritz breaks into a local medical school and unknowingly steals the abnormal brain of a criminal and returns to the good doctor.
We find out that Dr. Frankenstein has left his fiancée and his father and has holed up in an old watch tower to embark on ungodly experiments. Soon the doctor animates the collection of sewn together corpses, he realizes the evil of his creation and Fritz gets killed at the hands of the monster. Dr. Frankenstein along with his mentor, decide to kill the monster, but to their horror, the monster escapes into the hills and murders a young innocent girl.
Perhaps even more so than Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Karloff as the monster is the all time definitive horror creature, and even with all the high tech latex and CGI monsters of the 20th Century no one has yet to surpass it. There’s seemingly nothing new to be said about the film or the monster—between countless books and documentaries on the film, and even more on Karloff himself, its best just to sit down and watch this fantastic early adaptation of Mary Shelly’s novel about man, God, and the life in between.
Bottomline:
The movie itself is fantastic and the special features are top notch. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find better features on other disks—three hours of documentaries plus two informative commentary tracks. It’s too bad the film and presentation is so magnificent that I have to poo poo the packaging, but that’s life. Disk two was so scratched up many of its features became unwatchable and after a single day, the tray that holds disk one separated from the casing. It seems that my problems are far from out of the ordinary for this and a few other Universal releases from this time period. Even with packaging problems, I can’t recommend this release enough—it looks amazing.
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