In this version, it's not "Victor" but "Henry Frankenstein" (Colin Clive) who is convinced that medical science is obstructing his visionary plans to create the very essence of life itself! Frustrated, he retreats to an eerie tower where, with the help of his loyal servant "Fritz" (Dwight Frye) and a few Burke and Hare types, he manages to reconstruct a corpse - complete with the appropriated brain of a criminal (they have distinctly different frontal lobes, you know...!) and is awaiting a thunderstorm to provide him with the the bolt of lightning he needs to kickstart his creation. Meantime, his love "Elizabeth" (Mae Clarke) and her pals "Moritz" (John Boles) and "Dr. Waldman" (Edward van Sloan) are determined to thwart what they see as his obsessive madness. She is horrified by the whole concept, but the scientists are also fascinated - especially when, well.... There are a great many black fades here, which can slow the pace down, but for the most part James Whale uses light, pyrotechnics and the pretty much constant storm to build a story that elicits emotions of fear, sadness - even sympathy as it quite literally lumbers to a denouement that is actually rather sad. The acting and the dialogue are a bit on the basic side, especially from Clarke, but even now this looks great on a big screen and plays wonderfully to the attitudes and superstitions of the time - of writing and production. Well worth a watch - and I hadn't realised that author Mary Shelley was married to the poet Percy!
