Frankenstein's Monster

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, and the famous character of Frankenstein's monster have influenced popular culture for at least 100 years. The work has inspired numerous films, television programs, video games and derivative works. The character of the monster remains one of the most recognized icons in horror fiction.

The most famous adaptation of the story, 1931's Frankenstein, was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), was also directed by Whale and is probably the most critically-acclaimed of all the Universal horror films. It was followed by Son of Frankenstein in 1939 and The Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942. The latter film marked the series' descent into B movie territory; later efforts by Universal combined two or more monsters, culminating in the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

In Great Britain, a long-running series by Hammer Films focused on the character of Dr. Frankenstein (usually played by Peter Cushing) rather than his monster. Peter Cushing played Dr. Frankenstein in all of the films except for Horror of Frankenstein in which the character was played by Ralph Bates. Cushing also played a creation in Revenge of Frankenstein. David Prowse played two different Monsters.

The Hammer films are a series in the loosest sense, since there is only tenuous continuity between the films after the first two (which are carefully connected). Starting with The Evil of Frankenstein, the films are stand-alone stories with occasional vague references to previous films, much the way the James Bond films form a series. In some of the films, the Baron is a kindly, even heroic figure, while in others he is ruthless and cruel, and clearly the villain of the piece.

American International Pictures (AIP) released the low-budget I Was a Teenage Frankenstein in November 1957, a few months after their wildly successful I Was a Teenage Werewolf. In a desperate and vain attempt to be viewed as a great scientist, an unscrupulous professor creates a monster out of parts of teenagers killed in a car crash, then later directs his creation to kill a good-looking teenager to replace the monster's disfigured face. Whit Bissell stars as Prof. Frankenstein, Gary Conway plays the creature.

An extremely tangential adaptation is Ishiro Honda's 1965 monster movie Frankenstein Conquers the World (Furankenshutain tai Chitei Kaijû Baragon), produced by Toho Company Ltd. The film's prologue is set in World War II; the monster's heart is stolen by Nazis from the laboratory of Dr. Reisendorf in war-torn Frankfurt, and taken to Imperial Japan. Immortal, the heart survives the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and is eaten by a savage child survivor, and after discovered by scientists in Present Day Japan, he feeds on protein, eventually growing into a giant humanoid monster that breaks loose and battles the subterranean monster Baragon, which was destroying villages and devouring people and animals.

Universal produced a television sitcom from 1964 to 1966 for CBS entitled The Munsters with Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster, a character physically resembling the Universal's cinematic depiction of Frankenstein's monster, who was the patriarch of a family of kindly monsters. The rest of the family included a grandfather resembling the Universal Dracula (who may actually be Dracula), a wife that resembles "The Bride of Frankenstein", and a werewolf son. The Munsters' house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane can still be seen on the Universal Studios' backlot tour at Universal Studios in Universal City, California.

The Monster has also been the subject of many comic book adaptations, ranging from the ridiculous (a 1960s series portraying The Monster as a superhero), to more straightforward interpretations of Shelley's work, such Marvel Comics' The Monster of Frankenstein, the first five issues of which (Jan.-Sept. 1973) contained a faithful (in spirit at least) retelling of Shelley's tale before transferring The Monster into the present day and pitting him against James Bond-inspired evil organizations.