Today’s scene comes from 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.  The villagers want to execute the Monster (Boris Karloff).  The Monster has other ideas.

This scene epitomizes what made the first two Karloff Frankenstein films so effective.  As scary and as destructive as the Monster may be, he’s nowhere near as bad or deliberately sadistic as the humans around him.  He’s a monster who is definitely more of a victim than a victimizer, someone who has been cruelly tossed into a world that he doesn’t understand and who has been persecuted nonstop since the moment he was created.  It’s hard not to feel sorry for Karloff’s Monster, no matter what he does.  And it’s hard not to cheer a little when he escapes, even though it does inevitably lead to more tragedy and heartbreak.