Dave and I visited The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin to catch a movie and a beer. The Alamo Drafthouse is a restaurant/movie theater. More theater than restaurant, they’ve devised simple ways for film lovers to eat a meal, have a beer, and watch a film without those three experiences interrupting eachother.

Playing that night was Frankenstein (1931), part of a week long build up of Monster movies before Halloween. Dave and I ordered a pitcher of Dos Equis without ever having to speak to a waiter, and sat back to enjoy this classic. Last time I saw Frankenstein was probably on a Saturday afternoon when I was a kid. I recently read the book and found it far more insightful than my memories of the movie, but it sounded like fun to watch 70 minutes of a big dead guy chasing people.

Not at all.

In fact, I believe if one scene were removed, Frankenstein would probably never be shown as a horror film. The scene begins with Victor Frankenstein conspicuously locking his fiance in the parlor (where the Monster scares her with a painfully tongue-in-cheek “rarr”) then ends in a cut to a peasant carrying his drowned daughter through the village. Those few minutes are the only whiff of a genre Boris Karloff would be typecast in for the rest of his life: The B-movie Horror.

IMDb lists Karloff as an actor in 172 movies. Among the titles several jump out as ridiculous. The winner for me is The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1960). In 1931, the year Frankenstein was made, he appeared in 17 movies alone.

Karloff as The Monster in Frankenstein is so nuanced, and the direction is so deliberate that within minutes of The Monster’s creation, the screen was blurring from tears welling in my eyes. In a strange strand, I connected Frankenstein (1931) with Steve James’ documentary Stevie (2002). Both Stevie and the Monster are unwanted creations. Stevie grows up in foster care, the Monster in a dungeon. Victor Frankenstein made his creation out of obsession, not love. The Monster is a fresh newborn who’s first need is affection. Then confusion swells as his needs are met with a torch in his face and a locked door. Ultimately, bitter disillusionment is forged and the Monster realizes that he will never be loved. Much like in Stevie, despair breeds futility and futility breeds a criminal. The closing scene reveals the true horror in Frankenstein is the people of the village.

I am by no means the first to be moved by the film. It is a critically acclaimed classic. What bothers me is how I came to sit in a theater expecting to watch a “monster movie,” in the corny, Saturday afternoon programming sense. It makes me think of the conflict between commercialization and art. Frankenstein, in my opinion, is art commercialized with the stigma of corny horror flick. I would love to remove some of the tarnish promoters looking to turn a buck have put on great films like Frankenstein. Hopefully I’m doing that a little bit with this post.