Frankenstein was a film that I was sure I had seen before. If you had asked, I would have said that I had seen it years before on some locale television station’s weekend Creature Feature show, most likely WFLD's
Son of Svengoolie in Chicago, but then isn’t that when we all saw
Frankenstein for the first time? Do they even have Creature Feature shows on local TV anymore? I moved to Saint Louis some time ago and I don’t seem to remember seeing a Creature Feature-like show when I moved to the area. I wonder if
Son of Svengoolie is even on the air anymore? Probably not. I feel old now. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Beth gets some popcorn ready. I pop the DVD we had gotten just a couple days earlier in the mail from Netflix into the Blu-ray player. The movie starts and I sit back to enjoy some childhood memories.
The credits appear first. One thing that older movie have over new movies is that you don’t have to sit through a 10 minute scroll of all the names of every single person that had even the tiniest bit of involvement in making the film. Is my life better that I know that the director’s bagel wrangler was named Boris? Not really. Anyhow, I got a big kick out of the fact that in the credits where it lists the actor that plays The Monster, we get to see a big question mark (The Monster ……….. ?) instead of Boris Karloff’s name. It is like –
Where they discover such a monstrous and hideous thing? Is it even human? Bwha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
It is these cheesy-little touches that make these classic horror movies so much fun. I wish I had been around for the days back when movie promoters would do dopey things like make you sign “waiver” before they would let you in the theater because the movie was just so scary that you may die of fright. Despite my love of such things, truth is, I am really a big wuss when it comes to horror movies. For example, I didn’t sleep for two days after seeing the original
A Nightmare on Elm Street. After getting mocked mercilessly by friends after seeing
Children of the Corn via peering through my fingers, I ended up having to develop a technique for watching horror movies without appearing like I was looking away from the screen or closing my eyes. I had to survive the high-school dating scene after all, and jumping from your seat and screaming like a little girl every time something happens on screen doesn’t do much to inspire the girl you are with to make-out with you. I may share this technique with you all sometime, but for now it will remain a little trade secret. I may have to use it with Beth sometime in the future, who knows. My point is that despite the fact that I usually get scared silly at horror movies; there was something about the cheesiness of those old-time promotions and low-budget television shows that made horror movies palatable to me. I was just born a little too late to fully enjoy them. Ah well.
The other thing I noticed from the short list of credits is that Doctor Frankenstein’s name is Henry in the movie. I seem to remember it being Victor like in the book. Oddly enough, Doctor Frankenstein’s best friend in the book is named Henry and in the movie his name is Victor. I wonder why the change? It seems so pointless. I already realized long ago that besides the title, the novel
Frankenstein and any number of Frankenstein movies don’t have very much in common. I had to read the book in college and I don’t remember ever seeing any movie version that actually ever told a story that even resembled the one in the book. Supposedly that version with Robert De Niro playing The Monster came close, but I haven’t seen that so I can’t comment. Anyway, I certainly don’t remember Frankenstein being called Henry. Nor do I remember the scene where Elizabeth is talking to Victor about her concerns about the good doctor. But then again, these scenes aren’t something that my 10 to 12-year old mind would have retained anyways. I would have been busy trying to will the movie to get to the good part with the monster.
So, then the scene shifts to the good doctor Frankenstein and his little hunchback buddy Fritz… Fritz? Isn’t his name supposed to be Igor? I mean everyone knows that, right? Isn’t that the basis of one of the jokes in
Young Frankenstein – the whole “eye-gor”, “e-gor” thing? Wow. Fritz. Really? I don’t remember that either. OK, so well, Henry and Fritz (?) rob some graves and then head off back to the tower… Tower? I seem to remember them being in a full-blown castle, not just a tower...
It finally dawns on me – I, in fact, have never seen this movie before! I had seen scenes from this movie. I have heard people talk and discuss this movie. I had read about the movie, and I had seen perhaps a dozen or so other Frankenstein movies – such as the later Universal and Hammer series films, but I had never actually seen the original film. Yet, I would have bet money just 25 minutes earlier that I had seen the movie a couple of times. I was suddenly going through a little internal crisis. I had just realized that a memory from my childhood was in fact a lie – a lie that my very own mind had constructed, which made me feel even worse. How many more lies about my life had my mind constructed on it own? Something had to be done about this. So I did the only thing I could do at that moment. I brought this trauma that had just descended upon me to Beth’s attention.
She, as
Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey may have already guessed, didn’t seem nearly as concerned about my newly discovered revelation as I was. She sort of grunted an acknowledgement that she had heard me say something; gave me a
only-you-would-be-concerned-about-this look and turned back to watch he movie. I was left to work through this crisis on my own as the movie, which I could have sworn I had seen, played on before me. As I watched the film, the idea that my entire life might be a big lie – just like Quaid in
Total Recall – was soon replaced with another thought. Sure, this is a fairly entertaining movie, but why was
Frankenstein on a list of greatest American movies?
I realize that it didn’t make the cut on the ’07 version of the list, but why pray tell was it on the 1997 version of the list in the first place? Was it that someone over at the
AFI decided that the list needed at least one of the Universal Classic Monster Movies (Frankenstein, Wolf-man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc.) to be complete, and this was the one that everyone could agree on? I think that has to be it. I really need to find someone over there that can answer these questions for me, but until then, I going to go with that as an answer.
Frankenstein, along with the other classic monster movies, were all very successful films. They are all films that we remember from childhood (instances, like mine, of your own subconscious deceiving you aside). They may have even ushered in an entire genre of popular film, but being important and historic isn’t the same thing as being “great”. While I was watching
Frankenstein, I didn’t see anything in that film that would make think “I am watching one of the greatest movies of all time”. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the film, but then I like
Team America: World Police as well and I wouldn’t put that on a list of 100 greatest films either. Hopefully, someone out there in the Inter-verse can give me some sort of explanation on why this movie would be considered one of the greatest of all time. I would very much like to hear it. I imagine that it is going to be fairly difficult to do without using the “for-its-time” caveat, however.
In the end, I liked
Frankenstein, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again. Ultimately, what we have here is the second occurrence of a film that was included in one of the AFI 100 greatest American movies list – the first being
A Place in the Sun – that probably shouldn’t have been. The reasons for their exclusion, however, are polar opposites. Despite the fact that I found
A Place in the Sun to be a
pretty crappy film, I could at least sort of see where at one time it may have been considered great, and some older members of the Institute just included it on the original list in some sort of knee-jerk, force-of-habit reaction.
Frankenstein, on the other hand, is still a pretty entertaining little film (I mean, who doesn’t get a kick out of watching the “It’s alive!” scene with the Tesla coils and all the other devices shooting electrical arcs everywhere?), but it didn’t strike me as anything more than a fairly good “popcorn movie”. I enjoyed watching the movie; I just don’t think it is in the same league as many other films on these lists and probably shouldn’t have been included.
Then again, the movie did bring back childhood memories of weekend nights spent watching a man in bad Halloween make-up and a top hat talk to a floating plastic skull with a green mustache. That has to be worth something. Of course that is assuming that the events I remember even occurred at all…
Damn you,
Frankenstein!
3 Stars.
John
