Horror.com Forums - Talk about horror. - The All-Time HDC Tournament of Tournaments

Apocalypse Now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by neverending (Post 698823)

With all due respect, I belive you have completely misread the film. Karloff's monster is clearly shown as a tortured soul and a sympathetic character. We are not lead to root for the lumbering mob, but for the poor confused creature who has no idea how to function in the world.

I'm sorry, but I COMPLETELY disagree with your analysis and the legacy the film left us with. In fact I find it to be exactly OPPOSITE what you say. In later Universal Frankenstein films the creature was demoted to a mere thug, but in the first three, it's the monster we root for. The Dr. even says this- that he considers the creature to be a man.

In the book Frankenstein hates his creation and wants only to kill it. He never sees his creation as a man. This is, indeed a basic difference in the book, but I believe it results in exactly to opposite effect on the audience than you describe.

How are we supposed to relate Karloff's monster to a human being when it functions so blatantly as a monster? In the novel, the creature has a drive to be a free spirit, and goes about learning language and studying human function and family relation.

A perfect example is the scene in which the monster kills a child. In the book, it is out of frustration; he siezes the child and begs him to help him, but is only jabbed at with monster remarks and hideous screams of detestation. Out of panic and pure, spur-of-the-moment anger, the monster murders the child. Afterwards, he experiences sensations of power but also, later, guilt, a feeling of absolute humanity. In the movie, the victim is a little girl (of course, it's much more shocking!), and, as Mel Brooks pointed out years later in his comic spoof, throws the girl in the water because he can- they are out of flower petals, and he realizes he has the strength to drown the poor being. There is no call for the murder, and we, as an audience, are given no post-murder scenes of remorse or feeling at all. The creature simple bumbles onward.

In Shelley's novel, the monster can think for himself, and obviously adapts humanistic emotions; in the movie, there is NO transformation between the creation of the monster and the death of him. Think of the most iconic screen capture from the film; it is Karloff emerging from his dungeon with a horrifying look of murder in his eyes- this is right before he murder's the doctor's assistant. And this image, this iconic, monsterous Karloff look, is the image that every person knows when the word Frankenstein is mentioned. This image. Not the image from the book where the monster pours out his guilty sins to a ship captain while tears literally stream down his face, not the scene from the book where he watches a family for a year and a half, dreaming of one day joining that family and living in peace.

I guess I may have watched the film with different eyes, but when I see the ending I am left with a barbaric feeling of relief when the monster is destroyed and Dr. Frankenstein (thank God!) is returned to his rich household and beautiful, longing wife. There is no push for sympathy- instead, there is the idea that man created monster, man destroyed monster, man shouldn't play God- but if we do, we can handle it.

Note that I am not speaking of Bride of Frankenstein, only the first installment.