The following introduction and annotated list of eight notable film adaptations or versions of Frankenstein represented in the Frankenstein Meme database from the beginning of film to the present (although the most recent is 1994) represents the successive film iterations of the novel in historical order. Scroll down to find the bolded text to read about the entry you looked up in its place on this list.

 

On Key Film Adaptations of Frankenstein, 1910-2018

The Frankenstein Meme focuses on the literary influence of Shelley’s novel: its effect on plays, short stories, and novels. On the other hand, how can we avoid the film versions when many, particularly Whale’s 1930s adaptations, have had a considerable influence on the culture’s (mis)understandings of the story itself? The films have had a literary influence. Studying Shelley’s story through all the storytelling arts, visual and literary, would certainly be well worth doing. But “Frankenstein Filmographies” are abundant (see, for example, Klinger, 312-323) while lists of the novel’s literary influence are scarce…and threadbare where they can be found.

Therefore, the Frankenstein Meme seeks to stay with its “literary” focus, but also to recognize the important role of film in promulgating ideas about Frankenstein; so, we offer an inadequete compromise and include the following discussions of only eight films, allowing a limited view into an extra-literary medium, still driven by narrative, that has had a powerful effect on literary productions created in the wake of Shelley’s story.

1. At the advent of film, filmmakers turn to Frankenstein for its evident opportunity to revel in spectacle. J. Searle Dawson’s 1910 Frankenstein from Edison Studios has as its special effects centerpiece the creation of the monster in a great closed chamber using trick photography. The monster itself is declared, in intertitle cards to the silent film, to be a reflection of the “evil” in the creator’s mind. The creature, who does not speak, is overcome by “love,” disappearing into a mirror. (See also Schor, 65, and Hanes, 240-1)
2. James Whale’s Universal “monster” version in 1931 creates powerful visuals of the laboratory where the creature is brought to life, the Gothic landscape and castle, the angry mob hunting the creature, and in defining the Creature’s iconic “look” through Karloff’s outstanding makeup and acting. Karloff manages to be a violent “monster” who does not speak, yet nevertheless raises sympathy in just moments like the pathetic way he holds out his hands to us—a remarkable performance that elevates the entire production. The movie is based on Peggy Warbling’s 1927 play, which is itself the issue of a century of stage adaptations that depart from Shelley’s original going back to Peake’s Presumption in 1823. Unlike those plays, the film brings us close in on the Creature’s face, creating a new, intimate experience with a monster. (See also Schor, 67-70, Jancovich, 192-194, and Hanes, 241)
3. Whale’s sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, returns Karloff as the Creature (now speaking a few crude sentences), adds the evil yet compelling Dr. Pretorius, with his homunculus jars, who hectors “Henry” Frankenstein back into his lab to make the creature a mate. The sequel draws on a part of the book missing from Whale’s original, and so is also an adaptation, though it is otherwise no more faithful to its source material than Whale’s first. The Bride is herself a brauvra creation of makeup, iconic and unforgettable. Mary Shelley appears at the beginning of the movie, egged on by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron to continue her story; the same actress plays the Bride, a fine connection that raises questions about Mary Shelley’s relationship to her creations. (See also, Schor, 720-724 and Hanes, 241)
4. Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, with Christopher Lee as the Creature and Peter Cushing as Frankenstein, inaugurates a spate of successful horror, sometimes gory, “Frankenstein” films for Hammer that will run into the 1970s. Appearing in a horror heavy time for movies, these films, like the Universal productions before them, help keep the “Frankenstein Monster” as a staple monster of the horror genre (and Halloween costumes) from the 1930s to today. (See also, Jancovich, 194-196 and Hanes, 241)
5. Frankenstein: The True Story, written by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, appeared on TV in 1973. The odd, sometimes faithful, sometimes fanciful version is much less well known than other adaptations on our short list, and yet it remains of interest as part of the tradition of “queering” Mary Shelley’s story. The “Queer Frankenstein” theme is a key subtext of Shelley’s novel, and important, for example, to Whale’s version, but the intense relations explored between men in Isherwood and Bachardy’s version are part of an increasing attention to what was subtext but becomes a more central focus—from Lynd Ward’s 1934 illustrations for Shelley’s novel to, even more prominently, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), where Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a “sweet transvestite” and proud to sing about it. Rocky Horror is based on a play from 1973, and so appears in the Frankenstein Meme on that basis. (See Jancovich, 198-199)
6. Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks and written by Brooks and Gene Wilder (from an original idea of Wilder), released in 1974, is adaptation by parody: Shelley’s original is revealed and explored by the upending of its conventions for comic effect. For example, Wilder, as Frankenstein’s grandson, sits on his Creature’s lap and calls him “a good boy”—pointing, in a silly way, to the loneliness and isolation everywhere in Shelley’s original. In this backwards fashion, Brooks and Wilder have written one of the films paradoxically most faithful to Shelley’s themes and concerns. (See also Schor, 75-76)
7. Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott, released in 1982, is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). This may seem the film the least connected to Shelley’s novel, yet it is one of the most powerful iterations of a central question originating in Shelley’s novel: What is human? In Frankenstein, readers puzzle with the feeling that the Creature is more human than Frankenstein, even as the Creature murders, first in anger, then in cold calculation (“I will be with you on your wedding night”). Bladerunner has an important confrontation between the created replicants and their creator, and directly raises the question of who is real, a matter central to Dick’s concerns. The prominence of Philip K. Dick’s work and Scott’s adaptation to film history demonstrate how deeply Shelley’s themes, at the origin of science fiction itself, lie deep in the DNA of the sf field and worry at our society today.
8. Kenneth Brangah’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is from 1994. Branagh also stars as Frankenstein with Robert De Niro as an underwhelming Creature. Outwardly, Brangah’s version is the most faithful to Shelley’s original, a gambit signaled by the title. However, his version, like Whale’s “Bride,” brings the Creature’s mate to life—something the novel never did. The creation scene is filled with lots of viscous fluids meant to reference the fluids of natural birth (and to give us a shirtless Branagh). The production values are high, and yet the movie is not compelling and Shelley’s novel awaits its next film iteration I the uncertain future. (See also, Schor, 71-73 and Hanes, 242)

 

Works Cited

Hanes, Stacie. “Frankenstein’s Monster” (entry). The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. Ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. 238-243.

Jancovich, Mark. “Frankenstein and film.” The Cambridge Guide to Frankenstein. Ed. Andrew Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 190-204.

Klinger, Leslie S. The New Annotated Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. New York: W.W. Norton, 2017.

Schor, Esther. “Frankenstein and film.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 63-83.