I watched the original Frankenstein movie for the first time. I’ve always enjoyed the few old monster movies I’ve watched but I never sought them out. The other day I watched a video from Cinamassacre. There James Rolfe lists out a bunch of Sci-fi movies. A lot of the movies on this list are movie I’ve always wanted to just sit down and watch. More than 10 years ago I remember learning about this film called Plan 9 from Outer Space. It was a low budget “B” film made by someone named Ed Wood. A delusional mind that always thought he was on to something amazing, kind of reminds me of grind culture today. If Ed Wood was alive today I can definitely imagine him promoting his low effort films on LinkedIn along with inspirational text on photos of self-proclaimed self-help authors. But this is not about bad old B-films, although I’d like to get into that. This is about an old A-film. One of the king of monsters, Frankenstein.
Thanks to this video I have a list of films to watch
Before I watched the film I kind of knew what I was getting into. I mean this monster is at the pinnacle of popular culture. I know the famous line “It’s Alive!” and I knew there was a moment where this monster showed its human side. But even then I watch this film on my iPad Pro with its dual layered OLED screen in a dark setting (not exactly sure what the screen tech is actually called). This meant that the scene where the monster comes alive was really pronounced. For those of you that don’t know OLED blacks are black. The individual pixels are completely shut off and the whites are pixels that are tuned on, and the iPads screen can get pretty bright. So the flashing lights, the sound of storms, the crackling electricity as well as the well acted anticipation from Dr. Frankenstein made an “overplayed” scene a perfect moment of sensory manipulation. I was able to imagine myself in a 1931 theatre. If I was a normie in that time, I would most definitely have sensory overload. I would not be able to rationally hold myself together. I’d think I had witness actual life created in front of me.
Then theres the scene with the little girl. I’ve heard this time and time again. This movie is about life. What makes us human. Why is it dangerous? This monster was created a short time ago so his mind is child like. He wasn’t created with bad intentions he was given bad intentions. From the moment this monster was created he seemed to have good intentions. Since he was a danger by design he was treated as a monster therefore became the monster. Now when he threw the little girl I was shocked because that was not a part I remember hearing about but it made sense. Here was another moment this monster had a good intention go wrong. He has a child like mind but an adult body. This mismatch is a creation spawned by the man made nature of him.
Something I found interesting was the brain scene. I know that scene is from early beliefs that evil brains differ from normal brains. Or that you can calculate who a person is by how different their brain is. While there are studies about regularly exercising the brain develops more wrinkles in it. I don’t think anything expands past that. I guess you could argue about the neuron’s synapses’s unique connections, but lets be real once the original body is dead and the brain is in a jar floating in a liquid, those cells are dead tissue soaking up whatever substance it is in, then again this is Frankenstein We’re talking about. I guess what I’m saying is this can be viewed as an example of eugenics, but I believe that in this movie they used a brain from a criminal and still the monster acted as a blank slate. I kept asking myself why did they include this scene if the monster was not a criminal by nature? Was this an example of the fallacies of eugenics?
Yes even though this was likely a big production back than it was still obvious the exterior shots were shot in a studio. I think aspect like that feels comforting to me. It feels human that many modern day films fail to do. It feels like anything with CGI is essentially a cartoon with live actors. This feels like a group of people coming together to tell a story with the things around them. They are speaking to a man representing a proposed monster, not to the air where a cartoon monster will be projected after the fact.
I enjoyed this film. I thought it was going to be boring. I understand why it’s a classic. My mind has been changed, no amount of parody will take away the characteristics of this film.
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