A little talky and with limited action, James Whale would outdo himself with Bride of Frankenstein, four years later. But from 1931 to 1935 we can assume that audiences cowered in fear before the best and most terrifying horror films ever made, this and Dracula, which arrived the same year. Now a classic part of scream culture, Boris Karloff (credited here as "?") literally stumbles his way through a role that would define his career, a perfect portrayal of literature and cinema's most misunderstood monster. (Hey, if you were made out of corpse parts, you'd be mad, too!)