Movie Night at the Virtual Cinema: Son of Frankenstein

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been using SKYBOX VR on Oculus Quest to watch movies in a virtual cinema that I didn’t get to see when they were theatrically released. The illusion of sitting in a movie theater is a convincing one, minus any reaction from the (non-existent) audience. It doesn’t change my perception of the films I’ve been watching — I’m just doing this for fun: to whet my appetite for going to the movies, and for a little VR escapism.

Warning: Spoilers ahead. 

For the past few years, I've been watching the old Universal Monster movies in the weekends leading up to Halloween. These are the first times I'm seeing these, as they were all released well before I was born, and I never happened to catch any of them before. It's become part of my yearly tradition to try to get into the spirit of Halloween. So, watching this film in SKYBOX VR was the first time I'd ever seen the film.

The Universal Monster films, like any series of films, are hit-or-miss (IMHO). I find that I prefer the (usually somewhat cheesy) sequels the originals. I wasn't a huge fan of the original Frankenstein (blasphemy, I know), but thought The Bride of Frankenstein was quite good. Given my preference for the sequels, I was looking forward to this one.

And boy, was I disappointed. This movie goes nowhere, and takes forever getting there (not getting there?). The plot involves the son of the original Dr. Frankenstein (who Wikipedia reminds me was named Henry but who I think this film refers to as Heinrich), inheriting his father's castle, and moving his family there. The son barely knew the father, and wants the town to know he's not going to produce a murderous, rampaging monster like Dad did. And he doesn't...instead, he heals the original monster. It's a long story, and I don't care to relive it. 

Most of the Universal Monster movies hover between the 60 and 75 minute marks, but this one ran 1 hour and 39 minutes. 1 hour and 39 minutes of mostly talking, with very little action and little character development or anything I found interesting. It was only in the film's final 5 minutes that I found any of it compelling.

This one wasn't shot in a widescreen aspect ratio, so there was a limit to the benefit of watching it in the virtual theater. My most vivid memory of it will be the multiple times during the films final 30 minutes where a few of my cats wanted to leave the room, or come back into the room, or leave the room again, requiring me to get up, walk to the door, open it, and sit back down. Which was kind of a neat experience in SKYBOX VR as I walked around in the virtual theater that I normally just sit in. I'd be at the door, then turning to look up at the screen, all very realistically. Though normally, when I'm at the movies, I'm not letting cats in and out.

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