“Frankenstein is still the most famous of all horror films, and deservedly so. Boris Karloff as the lumbering monster produces...a moving example of tragic mime, his awkward movements and inarticulate grunts inducing in the audience an almost instant sympathy. There is genuine feeling in sequences such as the monster's visit to the blind anchorite who hides him when he is pursued, unaware of his guest's monstrous shape, and a sort of maniac elation, assisted by some startling special effects, in the vivifying of the newly-constructed creature... There is no director of horror films in the history of cinema who so completely explored and mastered the medium as Englishman James Whale, Universal's ‘Ace' and the creator of... Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Old Dark House...” (Brian Baxter, “Hollywood in the Thirties”)
“Frankenstein is unique in Whale's work in that the horror is played absolutely straight; it has a weird fairytale beauty not matched until Cocteau made La Belle et la Bete... In the light of later films, there is little gruesomeness in Frankenstein... Its terror is cold, chilling the marrow but never arousing malaise.” (National Film Theater)