- The camera opens on the skeleton's box.
- A man with a mustache holds it as a pompous scientist is talking about the human brain.
- The man sits down among the students at the back of the room.
- At the front of the class, the professor lectures and writes on the chalkboard. He asks if there are any questions.
- One smarmy student –there's one in every class—gets up and says, "I have a question, Dr. Frankenstein."
- The doctor turns around and corrects his pronunciation. "It's pronounced 'Fronkensteen.'"
- The student pushes the issue a bit: isn't he the grandson of the famous Dr. Victor Frankenstein who dug up corpses and reanimated them?
- The professor pushes back. Yes, but his grandfather was a lunatic. Dead is dead.
- The student gets back to his question: he doesn't understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary impulses.
- So it's time for a demonstration. A scrawny old man named Mr. Hilltop is wheeled in on a table.
- He stands up, and Frankenstein tells him to raise his left knee. He does. That's a voluntary impulse.
- Now he demonstrates a reflex movement by acting like he's going to attack him, and the man cringes away.
- Then the doctor puts a clamp on Hilltop's head, which is supposed to suppress the reflexive impulses.
- The doctor is able to knee the man in the groin without him reacting.
- The assistants take off the clamp and Hilltop is wheeled off the stage moaning in agony.
- The smarmy student asks Dr. Frankenstein again about his grandfather's work on "the reanimation of dead tissue."
- Dr. Frankenstein dismisses it as the ravings of a crazy person. "My grandfather's work was doo-doo!" He pounds his fist on his knee...without dropping the scalpel first. Class is dismissed.
- The students file out, and the old man with the box approaches him.
- His name is Gerhardt Falkstein. He's brought Frankenstein's great-grandfather's will.
- Cue dramatic music.