Word: monster
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Branagh's film, for all its transgressions, succeeds in communicating Shelley's own horror at the monstrous birth. Frankenstein's monster is neither child of God, nor of woman. He is an assault on universal order, on the principles of science and religion. This is most effectively described in the film's birth scenes. In the first, Victor Frankenstein's mother dies in caesarean delivery performed by her husband. Though physically (and graphically) destroying the mother, the birth produces a joyful child who is a delight from his first moments. The monster's birth, however, is an awkward torment...
Shelley's novel explores not only the process of birth, but the effects of parenthood Frankenstein is littered with parentless children, like Shelley herself, whose mother died shortly after her birth. The monster's wrath stems from the refusal of the man he calls his father to acknowledge his offspring, or to provide for his spiritual comfort by creating a companion like him. The monster who grows under these circumstances has great capacities both for good and evil, presumably like all children at their birth. He is well-educated and seeks human companionship, but his rejection by the human race...
...older sister starts to play with children her age. Her father is removed and cold, listening stonily as Dr. Frankenstein describes his desperate hope to discover the meaning of beauty in the universe. He minds his beehives calmly, without a sting. Never properly nurtured, Ana begins to create a monster who will respond to her cries, giving him her father's clothing and gold watch when he materializes. Her fantasies are realized when the town must search to bring her back from the dream-world where she hides. The dark vastness of the countryside as they search mirrors the loneliness...
Strangely enough, it is only under the bizarre care of David Lynch that the monster is treated responsibly by its father. Henry allows the truly revolting creature to cry softly for days, taking care of it when it becomes sick, sitting up with it, before he finally loses control and attempts to kill the child. The result of this rejection is, suffice to say, horrific enough to become the climax of even a David Lynch film. The monster's relationship with the creator/father is one of competition and resentment for affection not bestowed...
...time, thus ruling out Shelley's tragic father-son relationship. The 'science' of phrenology, the study of the physical characteristics of the skull as an indicator of personality and behavior, is used as a horror technique, obscuring true possibilities of horror. The brain transplanted into Boris Karloff's monster is that of a psychopathic criminal, presumed to be preprogrammed for murder and mayhem. The revealing of this fact to 'Dr. Frankenstein extracts a reaction of dread at the inevitable terrors such a brain, reanimated, will produce. Yet Karloff is at his most terrifying when he appears to be gentle...