The film embodies the story of Dr. Frankenstein, who deals with his monster who turned out to be living and not killed as previously thought. Currently, Dr. Frank remains forced to create a suitable companion for his monster after a crazy scientist, Dr. Pretorius, kidnapped his wife, and he may fight a new battle with reality.
Whale added an element of playful sexuality to this version, casting the proceedings in a bizarre visual framework that makes this film a good deal more surreal than the original.
Whale's erudite genius brings it all together. He sculpts every nuance of self-parody, social satire, horror, humour, wit and whimsy into a dazzling whole, keeping every one of his fantastical plates spinning until the tragic, inevitable finale.
A must for anyone with even a passing interest in horror, this not only confirms Karloff as a master of the genre, but also shows, more than any of Whale's subsequent films, the influence of his vision.
A riveting, funny, and suspenseful horror classic.
TIME Magazine
October 07, 2008
Screenwriters Hurlbut & Balderston and Director James Whale have given it the macabre intensity proper to all good horror pieces, but have substituted a queer kind of mechanistic pathos for the sheer evil that was Frankenstein.