100 Years of Horror: Frankenstein's Friends (1996)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
This episode of the fantastic documentary series begins with some history on the actual Frankenstein novel before briefly mentioning the 1910 Edison picture. We then skip to 1931 as Universal and James Whale puts FRANKENSTEIN on screen to big crowds and making Boris Karloff a star. From here we take a look at the two films Karloff would return as the monster before handing the role off to Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi and then Glenn Strange for the final three films in the Universal series. From here we go to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN where Christopher Lee shares some thoughts before finally jumping to Robert DeNiro who attempted to do something different with the part.
Once again, it's doubtful die-hard fans are going to learn much in this 23-minute documentary but that's really not the point. If you're unfamiliar with the horror genre then there's no question you're going to learn a lot of stuff here. You're going to get some very knowledgeable expects talking about the films and you going to get countless recommendations. If you've seen all the movies and know them by heart then you're going to have fun simply hearing from the likes of DeNiro, Sara Karloff, Glenn Strange, Jack Hill, Lee, Michael Blake, David J. Skal, Ralph Bellamy, Hugh Hefner and we even get a pretty good audio interview with Karloff. These interviews are certainly going to be the biggest draw to horror fans and the comments by Bellamy are priceless.