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The doctor's laboratory is amazingly macabre. It is situated in a cavernous windmill on top of a small mountain. Having infused life into his monster by hoisting him up to the ceiling on an operating table, causing electricity to crackle from all quarters, the doctor (Colin Clive) is stupid enough to leave him in the basement with an inadequate guard. The monster (played by Boris Karloff, who wears a square skull, tubes in his neck, scarred wrists, thick-eyelids and an immobile expression) throttles an assistant doctor who is trying to anesthetize him, stumbles angrily away from his operating table, escapes from the mill. After ravaging the country side, he assaults the doctor's fiancee (Mae Clarke) on the morning of her wedding day. Finally there is a monster-hunt by night, in which a whole township and several noisy dogs take part. The monster, squeaking and grunting, is burned to death in the mill.
Good shot: Karloff sitting down with a little girl, later shown as a corpse, to play with flowers.
At a preview in Chicago, 27-year-old Inventor Leonarde Keeler tried out on two members of the audience his "Lie-Detector" which police have found handy for questioning recalcitrant suspects. The '"Lie-Detector" is a device which, by means of arm and chest bands, records on a paper chart changes in blood pressure and pulse action, presumably resulting from emotion. At last week's test, it worked so well when attached to two De Paul University students that Inventor Keeler said: "The results are . . . even more pronounced than in many cases in which suspects are being questioned in connection with murders."
Likewise pleased was Universal's publicity department and Universal's General Sales Manager Phil Reisman, who saw in the "Lie-Detector" a mechanical means of forecasting the efficacy of mechanical entertainment. Said he: "Instead of the old hit or miss previews we can now know exactly the emotional effect of any film, can cut out the 'dead' spots, and generally improve the pictures distributed." A live spot in Frankenstein as revealed by the "Lie-Detector": one in which the ugly face of Frankenstein's dwarfish assistant pops up from behind a graveyard fence. Dead spots: the reappearance of the dwarf's face in subsequent scenes when familiarity has made it less frightening.