The Franchise of Frankenstein
The Franchise of Frankenstein
The Franchise of FrankensteinIt has often been said that the 1931 Frankenstein movie, with Boris Karloff, was the most important horror movie ever made. It might not have been the first ever horror movie, but it was so incredibly popular that it enabled Universal to continue with their series of monster movies, and it inspired other movie studios to jump on the bandwagon. What I would add to that, is that Frankenstein led the way not just for horror movies, but for the horror movie franchise too. The way the series of movies developed set the blueprint for future horror franchises like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Alien.
There were 4 Frankenstein movies (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and Ghost of Frankenstein) before the first crossover Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man. Then we had 3 more crossover movies featuring Dracula, the wolf man, the invisible man, and also Abbott and Costello! Pretty much everyone agrees that the first Frankenstein movie was great, and the Bride of Frankenstein was also excellent (some would say even better than the first). However, the creative force and the main stars left the series around episodes 3 4, and it was all downhill from there.
The original star, Boris Karloff, returned to the franchise in episode 6 after missing a few movies, while the series descended into a silly cash-in featuring team ups / face offs with characters from other horror franchises. Does that sound familiar?
Later on, the sequels often contradicted things from earlier episodes if they were inconvenient, hoping audiences would not notice. The worst offender was "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" which made no attempt at all to follow on from the previous one. I sometimes suspect there was another movie between them that was never released, where lots of things happened, and lots of things that had happened in earlier movies had been undone.
Another feature of the old Frankenstein series that reoccurs today is the way that the monster was killed at end of every episode, forcing the next movie to begin with an unconvincing resurrection scene. For example, Son of Frankenstein ended with the monster falling into a boiling sulphur pit which we were told had been there for thousands of years. At the beginning of Ghost of Frankenstein though, the sulphur pit has miraculously dried up, and the locals throw around explosives that bizarrely set the monster free. The Friday the 13th movies clearly took their lead from this at the end of "Jason Takes Manhattan" we watch as Jason's body is completely destroyed by acid - it seemed as though the director was taking a perverse pleasure in making it difficult for the person making the next film. So did it stop them from making the next film? Did it hell.
Finally, just like Halloween, Friday the 13, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc, the Frankenstein franchise was given a reboot a decade or so later.
I would like to leave you with one last thought do you think, if the technology had been around at the time, that episode 3 would have been "Frankenstein 3D"?
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