Boris Karloff had been subsisting on bit parts, playing generic gangsters and European heavies, when he got his big break—Frankenstein's Monster. So transformative was his performance of expressive grumbles and empathetic gestures, aided by the expert make-up of Jack Pierce, that Karloff was passed off as "?" in the cast list. The most austere and elemental of the Universal horror films, Frankenstein is a masterpiece of ominous graveyards and deceptively sunny lakeside idylls.