Thanks to everyone again who supported me at the WV Book Festival. Now that we’ve gotten past that on my calendar, and we are approaching Halloween, I feel the need to be provocative. Therefore, I shall say what needs to be said: the Universal version of Frankenstein (the 1931 version, i.e., the one you think of when you hear the word “Frankenstein”) sucked.

I can see the looks of skepticism (because I can see through your screen). I understand. Everyone says this movie is a classic. Allow me to make my case. You know how they tell you to show, don’t tell? I’ve had my own problems with this trite advice, but James Whale rejects it, root and branch in a way that would make Kyle Broslowski blush. The movie begins with a man walking onto the stage and “warning” the audience about the movie. In the midst of this “warning,” Whale tells you want the movie is about, namely, that Frankenstein sought to create life, but forgot to reckon upon God.

You got that. That’s the moral. Don’t play God by creating life. I mean, you can do that the normal way by having children, but don’t create some entirely new form of life from pure technology. Why wouldn’t you just have children, as it’s infinitely easier? Who knows. There are two problems with this moral.

Problem No. 1: the movie doesn’t teach you that moral. The doctor’s experiment goes wrong because his hunchback assistant, Fritz, tries to steal a brain from a local university and he has to take the brain of a criminal after dropping the jar with the normal brain. Darn. It looks like the Doctor’s plan would have worked out if they had just gotten that small technical detail right. That’s the moral the movie really teaches: use better quality materials.

Problem No. 2: That’s not the moral of the book, which is a lot more complex. In the book, we have no reason to think the doctor’s handiwork is defective. Unlike Boris Karloff’s mumbling, bumbling sociopath, Shelley’s monster is actually intelligent. He can speak and read. He learns multiple languages. He befriends a blind man before the man’s family comes back and chases him away. The monster saves a little girl from drowning, but then the girl’s father shoots the monster upon seeing what he looks like. Contrast that with the movie monster who drowns a girl in the lake. When the monster finally catches up to the Doctor, he doesn’t hate the Doctor, but instead rationally asks that if he’s going to play God to not do it halfway. If you’re going to make Adam, you’ve got to make Eve. The Doctor agrees, but then destroys his own work when he sees what the bride looks like.

The monster, who actually seems like a pretty decent guy up until this point, murders the Doctor’s bride for revenge. The Doctor chases the creature to the Arctic, leading the Doctor to end up on his death bed, where the creature finds him and weeps over his body. The monster then pledges to destroy himself at the north pole so no one can find his body and repeat the experiment. Compare this to the movie where neither the doctor nor his bride dies and the monster is burned alive by an angry mob. James Whale’s doctor doesn’t seem to pay much of a price for playing God.

So the movie teaches us that when making a monster, avoid using the brain of a criminal. That’s a very helpful technical note if you ever plan to create a man from dead body parts, though not a very useful moral for the rest of us. The book raises a much deeper question, however: what did the doctor do wrong? The standard answer is that he did wrong by creating the monster (i.e., playing God). That’s what Frankenstein thinks as he abandons his creation and then destroys the Bride before giving it life. The monster, pledging to destroy himself, appears to come to the same conclusion in the end, namely that his own existence is a sin. This horror story Hamlet has decided it is better to not be. Yes, if we think the doctor and his creation are right in the end, the doctor’s crime was creating the monster.

I don’t think so. After all, why take the word of two criminals? When I read the story, I pick up on a different theme and get a different message than “We belong dead” the famous line spoke in the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, which is a better film. To find out what that message is, tune in next week, as I finish my thoughts on that classic tale.