In a stunning invention by a doctor who is trying to break the rules of humanity. The doctor named Henry Frankenstein performs a dangerous task by trying to create a new human being by assembling the parts of a deceased person. The doctor will succeed in that task but to no avail will create a monster that deals with life and people dramatically in a story that carries the meaning of hope and perhaps excitement.
Shocking in its day and still a genuinely creepy experience, director James Whale's primitive yet enthralling interpretation of Mary Shelley's classic tale of man playing God is the most influential genre movie ever made.
James Whale has done a great job in his direction. This is not an easy thing to direct -- just how far to go in playing upon an audience's credulity, it's sympathy, it's nerves. Whale seems to have gone far enough, but not too far.
The film is unique in Whale's work in that the horror is played absolutely straight, and it has a weird fairytale beauty not matched until Cocteau made La Belle et la Bête.
Maximum of stimulating shock is there, but the thing is handled with subtle change of pace and shift of tempo that keeps attention absorbed to a high voltage climax.
