Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has fantastic ideals of the benefits of being able to regenerate life into dead cells. Taking his experiments a step further, he decides that he, like God, would like to make a man in his own image. He creates the monster (Boris Karloff) using body parts of freshly buried corpses. After he brings the monster to life, he realizes that he has failed to make a person he can teach and with whom he can reason. He is saddened by the idea of having to lock the monster up, but he doesn't want to destroy him. However, the monster escapes and visits people in the nearby village. In these encounters, the monster shows that he is both human and yet unpredictable. Because of his lack of understanding about how to relate to people, the people of the village chase the monster and want to destroy him. Dr. Frankenstein must decide if it is worth the risks to his relationship to his fiance and the lives of those around him to try to protect the monster and keep him from harm.