Obligatory Halloween Post: Frankenstein

Happy Halloween folks. To get into the Halloween spirit (which admittedly I completely avoided this year)  I decided to do a bit of film comparison. Frankenstein (1931 Universal) and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1994 Tristar). To keep this as brief as possible the classic Universal take on Frankenstein completely shits all over the source material. I honestly doubt if the producers and director (James Whale) even read Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein. Nothing is right! Not to say that its a bad film, it is just a bad adaptation of the novel and its a rather shallow film. Well at least it got Karloff's film career off the ground, because if it wasn't for his performance as this lumbering doofus monster he wouldn't have been in such films like "The Man They Could Not Hang" or "The Body Snatcher". The 1994 Frankenstein film adaptation on the other hand mostly follows the source material, but falls flat in other areas. In the case of the 1931 version I didn't complain too much of the acting because it hasn't aged too well, and that would be like smacking a cripple in the face (and yes that was a reference to Romero's "Monkey Shines"), but this one has no excuse. While the acting wasn't bad in Branagh's 1994 film adaptation, the characters weren't to memorable or were just formulaic characters. Kenneth Branagh is probably the only memorable character because he is probably the best portrayal of Victor Frankenstein to ever grace the silver-screen. The man is ignorant to advice, completely self absorbed, and hypocritical much like the Victor Frankenstein from the novel. Robert De Niro as the monster was alright too, but nothing to write home about. He was goofy like the Karloff's interpretation, but was a lot more skillful in his killing, and practically omnipotent (just watch the film for yourself, its actually somewhat creepy). De Niro also brought some of his wise-guy charm to the role of the monster which was really cool. I'd like to see Al Pacino as Dracula and Joe Pesci as the Wolfman though, now wouldn't that be awesome? All of the other characters were completely underutilized, and type-casted. Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth was the typical love interest, Tom Hulce was the quirky friend, and John Cleese was the broken-down mentor.  I've seen these characters before, show me something new! In short the 1931 Universal film Frankenstein was stupid but forgivable (and a classic), and Branagh's 1994 adaptation could have been great but a few forgettable performances held it back from greatness.