The Monster's Friend

I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young Frankenstein out of your head, OK?

In the movie, Frankenstein’s monster is played by Boris Karloff, and in one scene he is fleeing through the countryside and comes upon the cottage of a blind man. The monster bursts in the front door and the blind man who can’t see how horrible the monster looks says and tries to talk to him but the monster can’t talk and so the blind man says, “Oh, are you afflicted like me?

Are you too an afflicted person? We have something in common - maybe we can have friends.” And he prays, “I thank you O Lord that you have heard my endless prayers and you have sent me a friend to heal my terrible loneliness.” And there’s a few scenes where they are eating together and doing chores together and the blind man is playing the violin for the monster - doing things like friends - and the only time the monster played by Boris Karloff speaks in the movie is here - he learns to say “food” “good” “food good” - and he also learns to say, “friend.”

But then some hunters come to the cottage and they see the monster and they attack him and the monster fights back and there’s a terrible fight and the cottage burns down and everyone but the monster is killed, and the last bit of the scene shows the monster groping into the forest saying, “Friend!” “Friend!”