Frankenstein truly shows the shift of films towards escapism going into the 1930's. It is the quintessential monster film using highly grotesque and strange prosthetic makeup to hide its villain as something other than human. This film really defines the horror film genre for years to come in its use of makeup, sets, lighting to create horror out of common fears that humans hold of the unknown, the murderous tendencies of man, and our own failures but without showing us as the perpetrators of this violence, instead we blame it on a masked or costumed monster. The literal emphasis is on the bizarre and strange, part of an escapist trend. We’re seeing this shift as the demand for escapism builds in the 1930’s during the Great Depression for people to hide away from real human horrors in the confines of the movie theater. This is a great film in achieving all that. The story is very classic and captivating. It has a very clear morality tale about the danger of humans creating life with untested technology and how we have a tendency to misunderstand creatures that seem threatening but really are threatened by us and acting in self defense. The visuals are very well defined and are extremely interesting to watch but the film clearly sugar coats the real message inherent in the film about people and our own grueling inner horrors. This is 1930’s hollywood creating defined places/sets and spectacle to secretly allow us to explore the human condition.
On a commercial note, this film was highly revolutionary for effectively inventing the franchise. The sequels of Frankenstein and also mergers of Dracula and Frankenstein set the model for franchise filmmaking that Marvel Studios would run wild with today.