#56: FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

TW: Child death

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

When the monster from his slab began to rise. The windmill finale is also very exciting and impressive

BEST LINE

"It's alive...it's alive! IT'S ALIVE! Oh, in the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God!"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Still unnerving to this day, Frankenstein adroitly explores the fine line between genius and madness, and features Boris Karloff's legendary, frightening performance as the monster."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses."

DIRECTOR

James Whale

MAIN CAST

Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerr, Dwight Frye

THOUGHTS

• It may not be 100% necessary to compare Frankenstein to Dracula, but they're two of the earliest horror movies ever made, both released by Universal in 1931, so comparisons are going to be inevitable and I'm going to do it anyway. Frankenstein is better. Scarier, more exciting, better written, better acted, better directed. Dracula had its strong points, and Lugosi's charismatic performance as Dracula was excellent, but I agree with the AFI. Frankenstein is the better movie
• Boris Karloff is perfect as the Monster, with his sunken cheeks and heavy eyelids. He has a bluntly brutal physicality that indeed comes across as extremely dangerous; it's no stretch to believe that he's capable of killing at will, which he does several times. It's not a gory movie, and a fair amount of the violence happens offscreen, but for an older movie I was surprised by how unflinching it was; the Monster kills a little girl by drowning, and even if he did it unintentionally, the scene of the girl's father carrying her body through the streets of town was a true gut punch
• I also really liked Colin Clive as the good doctor, Henry Frankenstein (not Victor, the name from the book, which took me by surprise; apparently Victor sounded too severe and unfriendly to American audiences at the time). Clive has such a knack for playing a crazed scientist that I was a little disappointed that he became less crazed in the latter half of the movie. Speaking of crazed, I also liked Dwight Frye as Frankenstein's assistant, Fritz (not Igor, which, again, took me totally by surprise. Apparently there's no Igor in the book either, though, so that one I might have to blame on Young Frankenstein alone). Dwight Frye seemed to have found his niche in 1931, he also played Renfield in Dracula
• The sets are impressive, and the camerawork is innovative. The climax involves a windmill being set ablaze, which seemed to have been filmed by just setting a windmill ablaze - it feels legitimately dangerous, although it's then followed by a very unnecessary little lighthearted coda, I guess to give the audience a happier ending
• Finally, I haven't read the book Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, but I know there's a lot to admire there - written by Mary Shelley when she was in her late teens, and published in 1818 when she was 20, it's considered one of the very first definitive examples of science fiction, and it originated the trope of the mad scientist. For such a groundbreaking work, one would hope that the credit was given where it was due, right? Well, I regret to inform you that this is what we get in the opening credits: "From the novel by Mrs. Percy B. Shelley". That's right. She was credited under her husband's name

Up next: According to some, the sequel is even better than the original, so we'll be supplementing the list with Bride of Frankenstein from 1935

#57: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

3.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, once, a long time ago

BEST SEQUENCE

Any scene of Woodward meeting with Deep Throat

BEST LINE

"Follow the money"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"A taut, solidly acted paean to the benefits of a free press and the dangers of unchecked power, made all the more effective by its origins in real-life events."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon's resignation."

DIRECTOR

Alan J. Pakula

MAIN CAST

Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jane Alexander

THOUGHTS

• We're here to assess movies based on the thrills that they deliver, and I've grappled with this a few times - occasionally there's a difference between how effectively a movie tells its story compared to how thrilling it's even able to be. All the President's Men is an intriguing depiction of the journalistic investigation into one of the biggest presidential scandals of all time, but there's also a ceiling to how intense this sort of thing can get
• Most people have at least heard of Watergate, but just in case there are some people who don't really know what happened, here's a summary from a History.com article: "The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents." And, as revealed in the movie, the Watergate break-in may have kicked off the investigation, and it gave the scandal its name, but it was much further reaching than just that one event. There was a whole series of political sabotage and espionage, that Nixon was aware of and tried to cover up, leading to his resignation
• In showing the investigation and research done by Woodward and Bernstein, though, there are a LOT of names to keep track of, and it's not always obvious which names are the important ones to keep in mind. This may have been easier when the movie came out, shortly after the scandal actually occurred, but not so much 50 years later. It is interesting to see what this sort of journalism would have been like in the 70s, though, a lot of phone calls and in-person meetings, typewriters clacking and notes taken by hand
• I mentioned it briefly just now, I found it interesting to think about the movie being made so soon after the events it was based on. Nixon resigned in August of '74, and the movie came out in April of '76. I couldn't really think of many other movies that were made so soon after the real events they were based on, aside from Zero Dark Thirty which came out one year and seven months after Bin Laden's death
• Redford and Hoffman are both quite good, but my favourite performance is from Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee the executive editor of The Washington Post. Robards gets a lot of the best lines, all delivered in his distinctive low, rumbly voice. He also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, while Redford and Hoffman weren't even nominated
• However, speaking of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, we'll be seeing more of both of them soon. Redford will be in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, movie #54, and Hoffman will be in Marathon Man, movie #50. And, perhaps even more impressive, that's not even the only connection between these movies. The screenplay for All the President's Men was written by William Goldman, who also wrote not only the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and not only the screenplay for Marathon Man, but he even wrote the novel that Marathon Man was adapted from. This is without even mentioning all the other great movies he wrote, including two of my favourites, Misery and The Princess Bride (and also the novel The Princess Bride, while we're at it)
• Finally, as a depiction of journalistic investigation based on true events, I kept being reminded of some other more recent movies, especially Spotlight and The Post. The Post, in particular, has strong echoes of All the President's Men, which is pretty understandable considering they're both about investigations at the exact same newspaper, and even with Ben Bradlee as a primary character, played by Tom Hanks in the later movie

Up next: Just like when I watched Dracula, I'm excited to watch another classic monster movie from 1931 that I've never seen - it's time for Frankenstein