Screening as part of “It’s Alive!!!” season – notes by Jay Hildreth:
Premiering just nine months after Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi’s iconic and influential take on Dracula, audiences had no idea what they were in for as the film opens with Dr Waldman performer Edward Van Sloan stepping out from behind a curtain with a message to share with the audience on behalf of the founder of Universal Pictures himself, Mr Carl Laemmle, to warn them that the content of the film may thrill, shock and even horrify anybody who dares watch.
And of course by today’s standards Frankenstein is a relatively tame film but audiences in 1931 had never experienced anything like it; the terror wrecked upon the unsuspecting villagers, a monster unlike anything they’d ever seen, and enough of a blasphemous theme and accompanying dialogue to cause controversy within itself.