Boris Karloff and his daughter Sara. Photograph: Handout View image in fullscreen Boris Karloff and his daughter Sara. Photograph: Handout Film Interview My dad was a monster! Sara Karloff on reviving Frankenstein, 95 years on Pamela Hutchinson Boris Karloff’s daughter and composer Michael Shapiro, whose musical score for the 1931 film is finally coming to London, talk about how it became a much-loved classic
Prefer the Guardian on Google O nce seen, never forgotten – the 1931 Frankenstein is 95 years old, but still one of the most instantly recognisable of classic horrors. Whether it’s the sight of lanky Boris Karloff lumbering into the frame with his squared-off head, neck bolts and oversized leaden shoes, or the sound of a thunderclap and Colin Clive exclaiming “It’s alive!” as the monster comes to life one stormy night in the laboratory – the film still raises hairs on the back of the neck.
However, this classic has arguably long been missing one element: a continuous musical soundtrack – the original movie had dialogue but no music. In 2001, the American composer Michael Shapiro wrote a full-length score, which he will be conducting alongside the film for the first time in London next month, at Cadogan Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “It becomes one artistic expression, one artistic experience,” he says. “The film and the music, together, and the audience forgets that I am there.” Shapiro says his music emphasises what is already up on the screen. “Suddenly the film jumps out in a way it never did before.”
Karloff’s daughter will also be in London to talk about her memories of her famous father. Sara Karloff, who was born in 1938, did not see Frankenstein herself until she was 19, because her strict girls’ school didn’t approve of scary movies. Eventually, she watched it alone, on TV. “It was a rather strange way for my father’s daughter to see his famous film for the first time. By that time I’d heard so much about it,” she says. “I watched it rather studiously and understood why it was so popular and so important a film. But I was not scared by it – I enjoyed it immensely.”
View image in fullscreen Michael Shapiro conducting Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s novel became the basis for James Whale’s film, in which ambitious scientist Henry Frankenstein and his hunchbacked assistant go grave-robbing to find the parts for a homemade human. But the creature is accidentally given the brain of a deviant criminal and when he escapes from the lab, he cannot control his impulses. Beautifully designed and photographed, the film is exciting and unexpectedly moving, if not quite as terrifying as it was in 1931.
In one famous scene, the monster meets a little girl by a lake, and although at first they seem to become friends, tragedy ensues. It’s a bold and still shocking moment. According to Karloff, her father always felt that children got on better with the film than adults, intuiting that the monster is an innocent victim himself. “Adults were kind of horrified by the film and horrified by that scene, but children seemed to understand it,” she says. She adds that seven-year-old Marilyn Harris, who played Little Maria, “really liked my father and wanted to go everywhere with him. She wanted to ride in the car with him, and she always wanted to hold hands with him. She was not the least bit frightened.”
View image in fullscreen Jacob Elordi, Guillermo del Toro and Sara Karloff at the premiere of Netflix’s Frankenstein last year.…