James Whale's gothic pre-Code Frankenstein influenced uncountable horror films, and introduced one of the most iconic monsters in cinema. In an isolated laboratory deep in the Bavarian alps, the highly-strung Dr Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is determined to cheat death and secure his place in history. Frankenstein's former tutor, along with his beautiful fiancee Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), grow increasingly concerned about his secretive experiments— and with good cause, because he's stealing body parts from the graveyard. The doctor's assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) accidentally procures a "criminal" brain from a medical school instead of a "normal" one as the final piece of the puzzle, setting off a chain of events than can only end in tears and an angry mob.

Gorgeous, inventive and filled with still-thrilling set pieces, Frankenstein has a lot to offer a contemporary audience. Whale's 1931 film adaptation of Mary Shelley's seminal speculative-fiction novel was not the first, but his atmospheric vision of science run amok brought together the lavish visuals of gothic silent cinema with a modern twist (influenced by Fritz Lang's Metropolis) that caught the public imagination and has held it for nearly a century. Frankenstein represented a new, complex parable: a misunderstood creature and a tormented creator. Frankenstein himself is the archetype of an anti-heroic protagonist, intelligent, morally complex and conflicted, and Karloff somehow through the masses of prosthetics manages to convey a deep sense of pathos.