100 Years of Horror (TV Series) Frankenstein's Friends (1996) User Reviews

Frankenstein's Friends

[Leofwine_draca · 8/10 · 7 April 2017]

100 YEARS OF HORROR is a 26-episode TV series made in 1996 and featuring the delightful Christopher Lee as host, his sonorous narration exploring the history of horror cinema in the 20th century. Each themed episode contains plentiful clips from the films mentioned along with brief interview footage seemingly culled from other documentaries as well as TV shows and the like.

FRANKENSTEIN'S FRIENDS is the third episode of the series and looks at various sequels and interpretations of the Mary Shelley Frankenstein story. The Boris Karloff version is well explored, as are the Universal sequels and spin-offs, and the documentary goes right up to date with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and a Robert De Niro interview. Sara Karloff is featured here too and Christopher Lee adds some insight from his experience of playing the Creature.

Frankenstein's Friends

[Michael_Elliott · 19 September 2010]

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.