Dr. Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with his idea of creating life. He and his assistant, Fritz, collect parts from corpses and sew together a composite body. His obsession has estranged him from his father and his fiancée, Elizabeth. They go the Henry’s lab to try to convince him to come home. They arrive just as he begins his experiment and watch as he taps into the lightening and makes his creature come alive. It soon develops that things aren’t well — the brain Fritz procured as from a criminal. The monster has to be penned up. After it kills Fritz, the doctor determines to destroy it with the help of his old professor. Henry returns home for his wedding. The monster kills the professor and escapes. He finds a little girl who shows him how to make daisies float. She drowns when the monster throws her in the pond to make her float. He then goes into the village and attacks Elizabeth, but is scared off before he kills her. The villagers form a posse and chase the monster into the mountains. Henry gets separated from his men and is attacked by the monster. It carries him up into a windmill and throws him off. The townsfolk fire the windmill and destroy the monster. Henry is carried back to his home and reunited with Elizabeth.

• This movie came out when my father was 15 and my mother was 10. I don’t think either of them went to a lot of movies when they were young, but still … They’ve basically been around for the entire lifetime of theater.
• The opening credits state that the monster is played by “?” It’s only at the end that Boris Karloff’s name is listed. His real name was Henry Platt.
• The monster didn’t seem all than menacing to me. He moved slowly and lurched a lot. Any reasonably healthy person could have easily kept out of his reach. Whenever Henry and other tried to stop him, he just sorta lurched and whatever weapon they had was thrown aside.
• In the final scene in the windmill, the monster is out on the deck. Flames are bursting out through the door. The monster lurches inside, and suddenly the inside is flame-free and the flames are bursting in through the door.
• Henry was pretty durable. He was strangled repeatedly by the monster, knocked down several times, thrown off the top of a windmill and still managed to stay alive.
• Karloff played the monster for sympathy. He only killed Fritz because he was teased and drowned the little girl by mistake. His attack on Elizabeth was unexplained and made no sense, but it was one of the few parts of the movie that aligned with the book.

It was OK. It didn’t thrill me or terrify me in any way. My enjoyment came entirely from the knowledge that I was watching a bit of history.