“It’s Alive!” The Original FRANKENSTEIN Screens Sunday Night October 11th at the Sky View Drive-in in Litchfield, Illinois

“The brain you stole, Fritz. Think of it. The brain of a dead man waiting to live again in a body I made with my own hands!”

The Original FRANKENSTEIN (1931) screens Sunday Night October 11th at the Sky View Drive-in in Lichtfield, Il. (1500 Historic Old Route 66) This is part of the Sky View’s ‘Throwback Sundays’. The second Sunday of the month, they screen a classic movie. Admission is only $7 (free for kids under 5). The movie starts at 7pm. The Sky View’s site can be found HERE.

The classic and definitive monster/horror film of all time, director James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931) is the screen version of Mary Shelley’s Gothic 1818 nightmarish novel of the same name (Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus). The film was produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal Pictures, the same year that DRACULA, another classic horror film, was produced within the same studio – both films helped to save the beleaguered Universal. The film’s name was derived from the mad, obsessed scientist, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who experimentally creates an artificial life – an Unnamed Monster (Boris Karloff), that ultimately terrorizes the Bavarian countryside after being mistreated by his maker’s assistant Fritz and society as a whole.

Seventy-two  years after its release, FRANKENSTEIN still leaves an impact. Ahead of its time both cinematically and thematically, the horror it’s not only relevant, but remains topical. Considered shocking and daring when it was first released, the film went through some major revisions before reaching American’s theaters. References to Dr. Frankenstein comparing himself to God and a scene where the monster drowns a little girl never saw the light of day, and when the film finally made its way to television, those scenes were gone forever. Fortunately, they didn’t disappear in a black hole. They were locked away, and lucky for us, those scenes have been reinstated on the “restored version” that’s been available on DVD now for a while and of course they’re on the Blu-ray that Universal issued in October of 2012.

Filled with memorable characters and performances, not to mention director James Whale’s rather unique European look he brought to the film, FRANKENSTEIN remains a classic. Boris Karloff is simply brilliant as the mute monster who goes in search of himself, only to upset the local villagers. Mae Clark is radiant as Elizabeth, Frankenstein’s fiancée, a woman remains faithful to the mad doctor. Colin Clive delivers the crazed goods as Dr. Frankenstein, whose slow descent into madness provides the actor with several powerful scenes.