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more positive and romantic than Shelley's, echoing contemporary opti-
mism about science: the Monster finally fades away, leaving only his re-
flection in a mirror. And even this is subsequently dissolved into Frank-
enstein's own image by the power of Elizabeth's love. Frankenstein has
been restored to mental health and hence the Monster can no longer
exist.
Carlos Clerens, the historian of horror films, rates the 1931 Universal
film classic,
Frankenstein
, which introduced Boris Karloff as the Mon-
ster, as “the most famous horror movie of all time” (Clerens 1967, p. 64).
Yet by comparison with the novel the film is hardly horrific at all. The
heavily underlined moral, stated at the beginning, that “it is the story of
Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own
image without reckoning upon God”, restores an element of supernatural
order and justice to Shelley's entirely secular and unredeemed situation.
In this version, Henry Frankenstein (who, following Peggy Webling's
1930 play on which the film is based, has exchanged given names with
Clerval) is presented as the innocent victim of a mistake whereby his
careless assistant has brought him the brain of a murderer instead of a
noble person, for inserting into his creature. The evil character of the
Monster is therefore merely an experimental error, rather than the inevi-
table result of Frankenstein's
hubris
, and the implication is that the crea-
tion of the Monster
per se
posed no abiding procedural problem; with
due precautions a better result could be obtained next time. Such an atti-
tude, including the otherwise anomalous introductory moral, was consis-
tent with the adulation of scientists, and particularly of inventors, in the
United States during the 1930s (Haynes 1994, pp. 163-5). Although the
film ended with the Monster being burnt to death and the celebration of
Frankenstein's wedding to the (spared) Elizabeth, the box-office success
indicated a sequel. The final scenes of the 1931 film were cut from all
prints in circulation and
Bride of Frankenstein
(1935) opened with a
scene in which Mary Shelley relates to Shelley and Byron the sequel to
her novel. In this film Frankenstein becomes the pawn of another scien-
tist, the mad, evil Dr Pretorius who, having constructed various homun-
culi, now wishes to produce something larger. He forces Frankenstein to
create the mate for which the Monster of the novel had begged. The fe-
male Monster (in an extension of the
Doppelgänger
effect in the novel
