Over the years since the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein’s monster has come to life to fight Dracula and King Kong. He has inspired filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and most recently, inspired a feminist retelling in the film Poor Things, for which Emma Stone just won an Academy Award for best actress.
He has been depicted at times as scary and other times as sympathetic.
Adjunct communications professor Vittorio Carli traced the various Frankenstein adaptations in a speech, “The Complete Character is Nowhere: The Evolution of Frankenstein and His Monster in Films, Comics, and Songs” in the Moraine Valley library lounge on March 6. The event was part of the library’s “One Book, One College” series.
“We’ve had 200 years of growth and exploration and conversation about what this character means, what this story means,” said library chair Troy Swanson as he introduced Carli for the talk. “To really understand Frankenstein, you can’t just read one novel or just watch a movie.”
Carli started by discussing two comic book series, with the first one being Marvel’s Monster of Frankenstein. That series had the monster fighting Dracula at one point before ending up in the present.
“The series stopped being interesting when they put the monster in the present,” he said. “It’s kind of lame when the monster is teaming up with Spider-Man. It’s a bad genre mix.” In addition, there’s a Manga version of the series in which the executed housekeeper, Justine, is made into the “Bride of Frankenstein,” and ends up fighting the monster.
Carli began the movies section with the silent 1910 film, which he says was based on previous theater adaptations and various German films.
In one of them, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, he said, “There’s a hypnotist who puts people to sleep and commands them. And it might have influenced some of the scenes in Frankenstein, because it looks like he’s coming out from a sleep when he’s ‘born’, or comes to life for the first time.”
The most famous Frankenstein films, the Universal series from the 1930s, made changes to the story including the addition of Frankenstein’s assistant Igor and different explanations for the causes of the creature’s violent behavior.
“In the novel, he’s kind of like an abused or neglected child who has no love, and that’s why he acts out,” Carli said in an interview prior to his talk. “But in the movie version, the assistant drops the brain that’s supposed to go into him, so he picks up an infected brain instead, and that’s supposed to be an explanation for the monster’s antisocial behavior.”
“In the novel, he’s kind of like an abused or neglected child who has no love, and that’s why he acts out. But in the movie version, the assistant drops the brain that’s supposed to go into him, so he picks up an infected brain instead, and that’s supposed to be an explanation for the monster’s antisocial behavior.”
Vittorio Carli, Adjunct Communications Professor
The Universal films also created a new appearance for Frankenstein’s monster, Carli said.
“In the novel, he was just a big corpse with yellow skin, but in the movie, he has bolts on his neck and he’s got a flat head, and he’s super strong, and sometimes he gets stronger with electricity,” he said.
The scene with the monster coming to life created a bit of a stir at the time.
“There was even a warning before the movie saying, ‘If you have a weak heart, don’t watch the movie,’” Carli said. “But people are so used to seeing gore now that a 7-year-old could watch this movie.”
Bride of Frankenstein is Carli’s favorite out of the series. He said the film was very queer due to it containing an effeminate male character, Dr. Pretorius, two men creating life without the aid of a woman, and the film’s director, James Whale, being a gay man at a time when that was not only taboo, but illegal in many places.
Carli showed a clip where the monster is rejected by his bride and kills her, himself, and Dr. Pretorius out of despair. This clip showed how the monster was still a sympathetic character through his rejection, mistreatment by and isolation from the outside world.
Later audiences and creators felt like the monster’s bride was a wasted female character, and have thus given her increased roles, plus a voice of her own, in their remakes of the story.
Carli discussed the Hammer Frankenstein series from Britain, emphasizing one film called Frankenstein Created Woman. It’s about Dr. Frankenstein resurrecting a beautiful woman with the soul of her boyfriend, who then uses his new body to gain revenge on the people responsible for his wrongful death. Carli noted that at that point, Frankenstein had usurped the monster as the main character of the series, and that the cinematography was often better than the writing.
Some of the more unusual Frankenstein films hail from Japan, where the story was fused with the local popular culture at the time. In most examples, the creature is turned into a giant monster, or kaiju, and fights other Japanese film menaces.
Some of these opponents have included King Kong, Gomerra in Frankenstein Conquers the World, and even an evil version of himself in the sequel. There’s also a Japanese film called Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, about two undead teen girls fighting over their shared crush.
These films influenced the works of Quentin Tarantino, and Carli said Tarantino has even snuck references to those movies into his own films.
Carli then took a detour into TV shows, primarily focusing on two series: Dark Shadows and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the former, there’s a character based on the creature named Adam, who’s created by drawing off a vampire’s energy. In one scene, he gets mocked by the scientist’s assistant with a chicken drumstick, which actually draws from a scene in the first Universal film.
In Buffy, the Adam character is an evil undead cyborg who wants to destroy humanity, and was created by the government as a war tool. Of course, Buffy fights and defeats him, and Carli thought of him as one of the less nuanced portrayals of the creature.
Due to time constraints, Carli had to rush through with short mentions of other films, such as Young Frankenstein, Frankenweenie, and even a soft porn flick called Frankenhooker.
Finally, he got to his favorite contemporary adaptation of the story, Poor Things. He praised it for its feminist retelling of the story and social commentary, as well as the acting, filmography, and creative set design.
“There’s a woman who commits suicide, and a doctor resurrects her using the brain of her baby inside her,” he said. “But the movie is about her, and how she becomes free from the doctor, and from her fiance and her husband, from all the male characters. So she gets her own voice, she gets to choose her own life.”
Only two people attended the talk, not counting those who were in the library for other reasons. Though he was disappointed in the low turnout for the event, Carli said he understood that it was midterms and that not all Moraine Valley events have huge attendance. The event was recorded and made available on the library’s YouTube channel.
Lilliana Haratos, 63, said she enjoyed the talk: “I am still in the process of reading Frankenstein for my COM-102 class, so I haven’t read the entire book yet. But it is interesting, the conversation about Frankenstein, and how that character has evolved over several different types of movies and other literature.”
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