Frankenstein: Encyclopedia II - Frankenstein - Film adaptations

Frankenstein - Film adaptations

• Silent era: The first film adaptation of the tale, Frankenstein, was done by Edison Studios in 1910, with Charles Ogle as the Monster. For many years this film was believed lost until a print was discovered by a collector in the 1950s. This was followed soon after by another adaptation entitled Life Without Soul and at least one European film version.

• 1931 - 1948: 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 first sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), was also directed by Whale and is considered by many to contain the most spectacular laboratory scene of any of the series. Son of Frankenstein followed in 1939. Later efforts by Universal rapidly degenerated into farce, culminating in the outright comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The Universal films in which The Monster appears (and the actor who played him) are:
  1. Frankenstein (1931 - Boris Karloff)
  2. Bride of Frankenstein (1935 - Karloff)
  3. Son of Frankenstein (1939 - Karloff)
  4. The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942 - Lon Chaney Jr.)
  5. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943 - Bela Lugosi with stuntman Eddie Parker in some scenes including a close-up)
  6. [[House of Frankenstein (1944 film)|House of Frankenstein]] (1944 - Glenn Strange)
  7. House of Dracula (1945 - Strange)
  8. Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948 - Strange). This film is usually referred to as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein but the title given above is its official title according to the Internet Movie Database.

• 1957 - 1974: 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 monsters. 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 series (and the actor playing The Monster) consisted of:
  1. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 - Christopher Lee)
  2. The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958 - two Monsters: Michael Gwynn and Peter Cushing)
  3. The Evil of Frankenstein (1964 - Kiwi Kingston)
  4. Frankenstein Created Woman (1967 - Susan Denberg)
  5. Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969 - Freddie Jones)
  6. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970 - David Prowse)
  7. Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974 - Prowse)

• 1958: Another wildly differing adaptation is the 1958 film Frankenstein 1970, which focuses on the themes of nuclear power, impotence, and the film industry. Boris Karloff stars as Dr. Frankenstein, who harvests the bodies of actors to create a clone of himself using his nuclear-powered laboratory. His intention is to have this clone carry on his genes into future generations.

• 1965: An extremely tangential adaptation is Ishiro Honda's 1965 tokusatsu kaiju film 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.

• 1966: War of the Gargantuas (Furankenshutain no Kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira), also directed by Honda, is a sequel to the above film (although this is obscured in the US version), with the Frankenstein Monster's severed cells growing into two giant humanoid brother monsters: Sanda (the Brown Gargantua), the strong and gentle monster raised by scientists in his youth, and Gaira (the Green Gargantua), the violent and savage monster who devours humans. The two monsters eventually battle each other in Tokyo.

• 1976: Victor Frankenstein (The Terror of Frankenstein,) was the first version to truly attemept to remain faithful to Mary Shelley's novel, though it was generally discarded as a failed and slow-moving attempt.

• 1981: Another Japanese version, this one animated, was Kyofu densetsu: Kaiki! Furankenshutain (called in the U.S. simply Frankenstein,) released in 1981. In this violent, adult-oriented film, the Creature was portrayed as a sort of tragic superhero.

• 1985: The Bride was an adaptation directed by Franc Roddam. It stars Clancy Brown as the monster, with rocker Sting as Dr. Charles Frankenstein. The plot features the Monster wandering about Europe with a tragic circus midget (David Rappaport) while the Doctor himself engages in a Pygmalion-inspired relationship with a female creation, the eponymous monster's bride played by Jennifer Beals. A love triangle between Doctor, Monster and Bride provides the film's pivotal conflict.

• 1990: Frankenstein Unbound was a science fiction movie based on the novel by Brian Aldiss. In it, a scientist travels back in time to meet Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, as well as Mary Shelley herslf.

• 1994: A notable recent adaptation is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) which was directed by Kenneth Branagh who also portrayed Victor Frankenstein. It featured a star cast with Robert De Niro as the monster, Tom Hulce as Henry, John Cleese as Professor Waldman, Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth, and Aidan Quinn as Captain Robert Walton. As its title suggests, Branagh strived for an adaption faithful to Mary Shelley's original novel.

• In 2004, Universal released Van Helsing. This film was a reinvention of the famous Universal stable of monsters of the 1930s and 1940s. Shuler Hensley plays the Monster who, contrary to usual practice, is directly referred to by the name Frankenstein. The portrayal of the creature in this movie is somewhat close to the portrayal in the book.

• In 2006, the film "Subject Two" was released at the Sundance Film Festival. Meant as a modern version of the story, it features a Doctor Franklin Vick, a scientist who lives in a cabin atop the Rocky Mountains. Using advanced techniques (referred to in the film as a combination of "cold, nanites, and...such.") he creates a serum capable of restoring the dead to life. The film is about his relationship with his second subject, a young medical student whom he tricked into coming to the cabin before killing him and reviving him over and over again in an effort to improve the treatment, eventually giving the student effective immortality.

Frankenstein - Trivia

• Depictions of The Monster have varied widely, from mindless killing machines (as in many of the Hammer films) to the depiction of The Monster as a kind of tragic hero (closest to the Shelley version in behavior) in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Van Helsing.

• Three films have depicted the genesis of the Frankenstein story in 1816: Gothic directed by Ken Russell (1986), Haunted Summer directed by Ivan Passer (1988) and Remando al viento (English title: Rowing with the Wind) directed by Gonzalo Suárez (1988).

• Certainly among the goriest Frankenstein movies was Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein from 1973 [1]. This film was paired with Warhol's Blood for Dracula. Both of these movies were satirical in the overabundance of shock and gore.

• Victor Frankenstein studied in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt. The medical department of the University was famous up to the year 1800, when the University was closed by royal order.

• The regeneration sequence of the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, into the eighth incarnation, Paul McGann, in the 1996 film, Doctor Who, is set in a hospital morgue. The night attendant at the morgue is watching the 1931 Frankenstein in the next room, and scenes in which the monster is brought to life are intercut with images of the Doctor's "resurrection".

Frankenstein - Parodies and satires

• The Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder comedy, Young Frankenstein (1974), borrows heavily from the first three Universal Frankenstein films, especially Son of Frankenstein. The production used many of James Whale's original laboratory set pieces and employed the technical contributions of their original creator, Kenneth Strickfaden.

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) was a musical parody of the story. In this twisted comedic tale, Dr. Frank N. Furter creates a creature for his own pleasure and finds he cannot control the creature's lust.

• Frankenhooker (1990) is a parody of Universal's films in which Frankenstein gathers body parts from various streetwalkers in order to build the "perfect" woman.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Film adaptations", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki