Review Detail

I had no immediate plans to watch this but Ray left me no choice - NO CHOICE ;)

In all seriousness though, audio editing is excellent. Didn’t detect a single transition in that respect and all flowed very naturally. It’s really just some visual and narrative nitpicks that bring this down from the other two edits I’ve seen in Ray’s Frankenstein series. Notes below.

VISUAL

- Quality is very good. Given the size of the file though, and having watched it shortly after the blu-ray, I do think it looks a bit softer thatn it should. The smoke footage used for the titles also has visible compression, though nothing extreme.
- 4:43 - you can tell dialogue doesn’t match frankenstein's movement.
- 6:45 - fade is a bit quick
- 9:58 - there’s a visual hiccup where frankenstein turns to face the butler twice, like a few frames were accidentally looped
- the light switch fade out in the lab felt a bit abrupt to me. Nice idea though
- 16:27 - cut feels a bit awkward
- 1:17:00 - the wife screams but her mouth isn’t open. Very brief as we cut away straight after, but it stood out to me
- 1:18:41 - this slow down shot looks very bad to me. I highly recommend revisiting it. Very unnatural given the period of the film and there is some AI frame-blending weirdness going on.

NARRATIVE
- i would have cut more of the opening courtroom scene, as there’s needless exposition, clearly there in case you haven’t seen the previous films for context. I think it would work fine if we went straight from the villagers fearing ygor to frankenstein arriving on the train. It would also make the inspector's intentions more ambiguous, since he expresses as much distaste as anyone else during the meeting, but expresses himself as noble and there to aid frankenstein for most of the film.
- Frankenstein saying “sulfur” isn’t needed IMO. Another bit of obvious exposition for the audience. It’s clearly hot bubbly liquid, which is all we need to know, and the inspector mentions that it’s sulfur again at 40:16 anyway
- 29:50 - do we need this? Personally, I don’t think we need any of these scenes until we have the interrogation of ygor. We've already met the village elders since they 'greet' Frankenstein and his family as he gets off the train
- I’m not sure if there’s some context you cut, but Frankenstein’s motives for wanting to revive the monster in order to vindicate his father’s name seem much more vague and unclear than when i watched the theatrical cut
- glad you cut the talk of cosmic rays.
- Not sure why the talk around the prosphetic arm was cut. I felt this showed some respect between Frankestein and the Inspector, in spite of their suspicions of each other
- 1:01:25 - the child says “hello general”, but the context for why he thinks he’s a general has been cut
- Again, when Frankenstein says “what news from the front?” it’s a clear mocking of the inspector, in contrast to his respect towards him earlier in the film. But the context is gone.
- Cutting the historical context of the romans building where the lab is based robs ‘…like the romans threw christians to the lions” of some of its bite.
- The ending is much better than the original ending. Still abrupt, but it doesn’t force us to swallow the fact that everyone now loves Frankenstein in spite of his crimes. It’s unfortunate though that it currently relies on a slowed down shot that is quite jarring.
- After credits scene - a touch confusing. I guess just implying Ygor is alive to allow for continuity with Young Frankenstein? I’m not sure how he’s alive after being shot.

A massive improvement in terms of pacing. Loads of great changes here. Due to some of the notes above, this is not a firm replacement for the theatrical cut for me, but that could easily change with a version 2. The new pacing alone makes this a great alternative. Very glad I watched it.

And Ray, please let me know if you do subtitles for these, as I would love to share these versions with my brother (he has problems with his ears, so won’t watch anything without subtitles).