It is the small moments of empathy that stand out here. That is where James Whale shines and as a queer director, he is a master of his craft.

| Oct 31, 2023

[James Whale] is to be complimented upon his handling of the incidents chosen from the book, and the artistry with which he has built up the picture.

| Jan 18, 2023

It is all hooey, to be sure, hooey of the simplest sort, but it has been so expertly assembled and so smartly dressed that it becomes a fine example of the school of the cinema that seeks to shiver and not convince.

| Jan 18, 2023

A blood-curdling drama which so out-Draculas Dracula that the latter might as well be a Sunday afternoon parlor game.

| Jan 18, 2023

It might have degenerated into mere stuff and nonsense. Instead, it sets you quivering on more than one occasion, and leaves you a bit shaken after it's all over.

| Jan 18, 2023

[Boris Karloff's performance] is a skillful but unsavory bit of imaginative and grotesque portraiture that the delicately constituted will dream about through many haunted nights.

| Jan 18, 2023

No matter how much you may dislike this sort of entertainment, you can't resist the desire to take a look at it and you'll be thrilled and spellbound.

| Jan 18, 2023

It's a study of a chemical experiment -- one which clutches at you icily and holds you until the romantic ending guarantees satisfaction after an hour's worth of gripping, intriguing horrors.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 18, 2023

It is so artistically produced that the story does not seem fantastic. It is thrilling most of the time and several situations hold on breathless.

| Jan 18, 2023

Frankenstein is unadulterated horror, but it is horror cleverly done... Next to Mr. Whale's deft direction, one is impressed by the performance of Boris Karloff as the monster.

| Jan 18, 2023

To the person who finds stimulus in the contemplation of abstract ideas presented through the medium of the supernatural, Frankenstein becomes a thrilling experience.

| Jan 18, 2023

It is nothing to shout about esthetically, but thrill stuff does the trick. Whoever thought up the makeup for Boris Karloff is the real star of the film. One look from those leaden-lidded eyes and the audience is ready to believe anything that happens.

| Jan 18, 2023

As a production is certainly is an adequate screen version of a famous story... Director James Whale has missed no opportunities to make it precisely what it purports to be.

| Jan 18, 2023

One of those movie attempts to turn out a weird mystery meller which never quite clicks with an audience which doesn't believe in Santa Clause.

| Jan 18, 2023

It will hold the spectator spellbound, most of the time, in his seat, and afterward come to him in nightmares.

| Jan 17, 2023

If you want to see something "skeery" -- see Frankenstein -- but for pity's sake leave the children at home.

| Jan 17, 2023

Karloff makes this horrible creature of fiction truly live, in all its sinister and gruesome horror. The make-up of Karloff, as the monster, rivals anything the late Lon Chaney might have devised.

| Jan 17, 2023

Everything in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel that lifted it above the level of a penny-dreadful has been omitted.

| Jan 17, 2023

Emphatically a film not for children, it should do no normal person any more harm than an agreeable but definite raising of the hair, and, although film genius might have made even more of it, the picture is packed with melodramatic interest.

| Jan 17, 2023

Probably the most famous of all horror films, and one of the best.

| Jan 17, 2023