Faces of Frankenstein: Reclamation in a New World of Movie Gods and Monsters
By Brian Keiper
Previous ⬅ Faces of Frankenstein: The Weirdos
In the final years of Hammer’s film output, a seismic shift was taking place not only in horror but over the entire film landscape. The studio system, which had ruled Hollywood for six decades, was crumbling and a new crop of young, visionary filmmakers were given unprecedented creative freedom. In horror specifically, the seeds of revolution that had been planted nearly a decade before by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and the films of William Castle and Roger Corman were beginning to flower. 1968 saw the release of numerous fascinating genre films, but four in particular signified a new movement in horror — Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, Witchfinder General, and Targets. Though Targets was not a great success in its day, it defined the “new horror of the New Hollywood” in the most literal of ways, with Boris Karloff and his “painted monster” receding, and the real horrors of the modern world taking center stage. Horror filmmakers let out political frustrations with the continuing war in Vietnam, government deception, and a perception that the 60s “didn’t work” in the form of primal screams like The Last House on the Left (1972), Deathdream (aka Dead of Night — 1974), and, most influential of all, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Gothic horror appeared to be a thing of the past. But then you just can’t keep a good monster down, and Frankenstein began to change with the times. Of course, as with any large movements in film and the arts, there is a great deal of overlap between the classical and modern periods as one era reluctantly transforms into another.
The post-Hammer era saw Frankenstein movies split into at least four distinct streams, each with their own characters, themes, and purposes. Reclamation attempted to return to Mary Shelley’s source material. Parody made fun of the familiarity of the story and the genre attached to it. Subversion more subtly dug into and altered the underlying themes of the story, underscoring the sexual, political, and social beliefs of the counterculture. And finally, Meta-narratives looked at the effects that Frankenstein has had on our world and the people that interact with it in its various forms.
Of these four streams, reclamation may appear to be the most mundane, especially as period horror was going (and continues to remain) largely out of fashion, but they are often quite intriguing, especially for fans of the novel. These films are a reminder of the revolutionary nature of the source material and, despite mostly tiny budgets and lack of wide theatrical release, largely transcend the stoic, buttoned-up feeling often associated with films set around the turn of the nineteenth century. It should also be noted that a great many of these films were made for television in the era of the epic two or even three-night mini-series, including the earliest of this trend which premiered on January 16th and 17th 1973 as part of ABC’s Wide World of Entertainment, a post-primetime series that attempted to compete with the King of Late Night, Johnny Carson.
Monster on the Loose!
Sometimes called Dan Curtis’ Frankenstein after its superstar producer, the film stars Robert Foxworth as Victor Frankenstein, Susan Strasberg as Elizabeth, and six-foot-six Swedish American Bo Svenson as “The Giant,” as the Monster is referred to throughout the film. Dan Curtis had found success on television as the creator of the horror soap opera Dark Shadows (1966–1971) and produced The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Jack Palance for ABC in 1968. Just before taking on Frankenstein, Curtis teamed up with legendary scribe Richard Matheson to bring investigative reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) to the small screen in The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973), the latter airing the same night as Part One of his epic Frankenstein mini-series.
The film itself, which was adapted by Sam Hall and Curtis with a final teleplay by Hall and directed by Glenn Jordan, is very theatrical and clearly made on a tight budget with only a few sets and a handful of actors. These constraints do not make it a bad film, but it is not very cinematic and has something of a stagey feel. The broad strokes of the plot are similar to the novel with several major alterations. For example, presumably because of its budget, the entire film takes place in Ingolstadt where Frankenstein creates the monster and the surrounding wilderness rather than expanding itself to Geneva and the Arctic as the novel does.
The film begins with Frankenstein and his two assistants putting the finishing touches on their creation, which is still in need of a heart. One of the assistants, Hugo (George Morgan), is shot while graverobbing and asks Victor to remove his heart to be placed in the Creature so that he may “be immortal.” This is a fascinating twist on previous versions which, starting with James Whale’s 1931 film, tended to focus on the brain. This is rather metaphysical, implying that personhood is beyond the physical matter of a brain or even the less tangible mind, but held in the heart which is historically and in religious traditions connected with the essence of a person’s character and the seat of human emotion. In a nod to films of the past, The Giant is brought to life through electricity but does not awaken immediately. Frankenstein believes he has failed and chooses to end the experiment and destroy all evidence of it. While he and his remaining assistant Otto (John Karlen) are out of the lab preparing for this eradication of their work, the Giant comes to life.
Unlike the novel, Frankenstein and Otto do not immediately flee from The Giant, abandoning him at birth, but begin to train him to speak and interact. While teaching him to play with a ball, The Giant, unaware of his immense strength and how to control it, accidentally kills Otto. This is a distinctive feature of this version. Svenson plays The Giant as a confused child who does not know his own strength. When he accidentally kills various characters including Frankenstein’s young brother William, played by a very young Willie Aames,[1] he responds with fear and sadness not unlike Karloff’s Creature after drowning little Maria in the 1931 film.
Two sequences tend to arise in nearly all of the films that fall under the reclamation umbrella and are adapted directly from Shelley’s novel. The first is a sequence first seen in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) when the Creature encounters a cottage in the woods. Here, The Giant meets the character of Agatha (Heidi Vaughn) who is blind in this iteration, her husband Felix (Brian Avery), and father Charles (Jon Lormer). The Giant takes care not to reveal himself but listens, observes, and assists them in their needs from outside the cottage. He learns to speak more fluently and ultimately decides to reveal himself with predictably bad results, ultimately leading to more death and destruction.
The second recurring sequence is the Creature’s first encounter with his maker in which he demands a mate. The first encounter between Creator and Creation in Dan Curtis’ Frankenstein is one of the better scenes like it in any version. The Giant does not know who Frankenstein is at first. When he learns that Victor is his maker, the Creature lashes out at first but soon comes to realize that the doctor is his only hope for peace in the cruel, hateful world where he finds himself. As in the novel, The Giant reasons that he and his newly created bride will disappear into the mountains together and no one will ever see them again. Frankenstein says he will do it but if there is any killing, he will stop. The Giant agrees but also warns that he will be watching Frankenstein to ensure that he follows through on his end of the bargain.
As in the novel, Frankenstein begins construction of a mate, here using Agatha’s body in the experiment, but destroys it before giving it life for fear that The Giant and his bride will create a race of monstrous artificial humans. The Creature, enraged by Victor’s actions, promises that he will destroy all that Victor loves, adding a final warning, “I will be with you on your wedding night.” From this point on, The Giant is ruled by rage and intentionally kills those close to Victor, including his new bride, Elizabeth. Victor pursues The Giant through town and the film climaxes with Frankenstein dying in the arms of his creation and the Creature breaking down in tears. The Giant is then shot by soldiers and dies muttering “forgive me” to his maker as he passes back into death from which he came.
Up to that point, this version of Frankenstein was the first to adapt the novel as directly as budgets and various production restraints would allow. The result is admirable if a little lacking and was something of a success for the network. Despite its early success, this version of Frankenstein was soon eclipsed and all but forgotten due to the wildly successful Frankenstein: The True Story released at the end of 1973. In the 1980s it would have something of an afterlife as the version Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) used for her show Elvira’s Movie Macabre in 1982. The film received a home video release with her interstitials and pop-up commentary soon after. Dan Curtis would fare quite well in the following years producing adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973) and Dracula (1974, which he also directed), reteaming with Richard Matheson for the anthologies Trilogy of Terror (1975) and Dead of Night (1977), as well as producing and directing the excellent theatrical ghost story Burnt Offerings (1976) and one of the most successful television miniseries of all time The Winds of War (1983).
He Created the Perfect Man — Then Something Went Wrong
Perhaps the most important film in this movement to reclaim Frankenstein for Mary Shelley barely resembles her novel at all, Frankenstein: The True Story. Despite its auspicious title, this television mini-series, which debuted on NBC on November 30 and December 1, 1973, has much more to do with Universal and Hammer than Shelley. In fact, the film was the first return to the world of Frankenstein for Universal since Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948, and was produced at Pinewood Studios in England, where several later Hammer films were shot, and contains several conceits that are reminiscent latter-day Hammer. When producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr. pitched Dr. Frankenstein (its original title) to Lew Wasserman and Sidney J. Sheinberg at Universal, he insisted that “This isn’t going to be a Hammer film!” referring to the B-picture reputation of the studio. And in that sense, Frankenstein: The True Story is not a Hammer film. It was given a handsome budget for a television project, $3.5 million, during a time when films for the small screen were usually made for less than $450,000. The result is a beautifully made, rather lavish period piece that allows itself to revel in the trappings of Frankenstein films that preceded it, including sweeping melodrama and a surprising amount of gore for a television production.
In Part 1, Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting) is driven by the drowning death of his sixteen-year-old brother William to bring life from death. After the funeral, Victor’s fiancée Elizabeth (Nicola Pagett) warns him that such thoughts are an affront to God to which Victor responds, “If Satan could teach me how to make William alive again, I’d gladly become his pupil.” Upon returning to his medical studies in Ingolstadt, Victor crosses paths with Dr. Henry Clerval (David McCallum)[2] and becomes something of an assistant to him, at least in the beginning. Early in the film, it is Clerval that contains more of the characteristics usually ascribed to Frankenstein and his assistants. He contains something of the mania of Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein, the vanity and subversive humor of Ernest Thesiger’s Pretorius, the cold brilliance of Peter Cushing’s Baron, and even a touch of the physical struggles of Dwight Frye’s Fritz, leaving Victor to be the brawn to Clerval’s rather fevered brain. Clerval’s theories also differ from his cinematic predecessors in that the power of life does not come from lightning, electrical charges, or some kind of chemical elixir, but from the rays of the sun.
Clerval’s physical ailments lead to his untimely death, leaving Victor to carry on his work. Just before dying, Clerval discovers that the process they used to remove blights and decay from dead tissues has begun to reverse itself in one of their specimens, a severed arm with a life of its own. Frankenstein takes Clerval’s dying scrawl, “The processes R” to mean the processes are ready. He transplants Clerval’s brain into the Creature (Michael Sarrazin), which they have dubbed their “Adam,” and starts the machines they have constructed to give it life. As audiences had come to expect in the more than forty years since Whale’s Frankenstein, the creation scene is spectacular, complete with sparking electrical contraptions, bubbling chemicals, and lab-decimating explosions before the creature awakens, rises, and descends a set of stairs to his unconscious creator. This symbolic imagery gives the Creature an unmistakable quality of deity, a god created by a titan, as in the Prometheus mythology from which the novel gets its subtitle. Not only did Prometheus steal fire from the gods, but in some versions of the myth, fashions humans from clay.
When first revealed, the Creature is an Adonis, or as Frankenstein says, “a perfect man…beautiful.” He can also speak right away, though only in imitation of Frankenstein, who serves as his willing teacher. Soon, however, the Creature’s body begins to show signs of decay. Unable to find a way to reverse the process, Frankenstein becomes more distant, and people begin to fear the Creature upon sight, including Mrs. Blair (Agness Moorhead), Victor’s landlady, who dies of fright upon seeing the Creature. Victor begins to feel that he must destroy his creation. As the first half nears its climax, the Creature sees his face in a shard of glass from a mirror and calls upon his creator to help him. Realizing Victor is unable to do anything, the Creature flees toward one of the towering white cliffs of Dover and throws himself into the raging waters below. Before the first half ends, he is seen washing up on the shore and wandering off into the countryside alone.
In many ways, Part 2 of the film begins essentially as a remake of Bride of Frankenstein with the character of mesmerist Dr. John Polidori (James Mason), in a nod to the real-life retreat and ghost story challenge in 1816 that spawned Frankenstein and the real John William Polidori’s story “The Vampyre,” filling the role of Dr. Pretorius. First, we rejoin the Creature as he meets an old blind man in his cottage. He hides as the man’s granddaughter Agatha (Jane Seymour) and her fiancé Felix (Dallas Adams) return home but continues to observe from outside the cottage. Very much as in the novel, he learns to further express himself by listening as they read the Bible aloud together. Eventually, Felix and Agatha walk in on her grandfather as he plays violin for the Creature, who attacks Felix and accidentally kills him. While escaping, Agatha is also killed under the wheels of a passing coach. The Creature carries her lifeless body back to Victor’s home to find Dr. Polidori instead.
Polidori then blackmails Victor into helping him revive Agatha as Prima, a female creation and bride for the Creature, though it is clear that he actually wants Prima for himself. The creation sequence for Prima is unique from that of her male counterpart, incorporating experimental film techniques, floating colors, and chemical effects in one of the most hypnotic and beautiful creation sequences in any Frankenstein film. Prima proves to be both brilliant and devious, even cruel, viciously mocking Elizabeth and attempting to kill a cat. Victor learns that Polidori has been holding the Creature captive in his lab and he is believed to be destroyed when Polidori burns the house down.
Polidori then makes his intentions for Prima clear, that he plans to use her as an instrument of his power, much like Rotwang with his evil mechanical version of the virtuous woman Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). He arranges a kind of “coming out” party for her in the Frankenstein mansion, where she whips the high society men in attendance into a frenzy with her wild, suggestive dancing. The Creature then storms into the party and wreaks havoc, killing Prima by ripping off her head with his bare hands in one of the bloodier scenes shown on network television at the time.
In the midst of the chaos, Victor and Elizabeth board a ship, captained by the 4th (and arguably greatest) Dr. Who, Tom Baker, bound for America to flee from their troubles in England only to find that Polidori is on the same vessel. What none of them realize is that the Creature has also stowed away with them. The Creature hoists Polidori to the top of the main mast where the villain is struck by lightning and burnt to a crisp in an instant before the Creature takes control of the ship and diverts it North toward the Arctic Circle. The Creature then breaks into Frankenstein’s cabin and kills Elizabeth and her unborn child before escaping onto the ice. Filled with rage, Victor pursues the Creature. When Victor finds him, he cries out to his creation, “Forgive me!” which triggers an avalanche of ice that buries them both. In its greatest resemblance to Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein: The True Story was the first Frankenstein film to include an arctic sequence, though it transpires much differently from page to screen.
Written by Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood as Dr. Frankenstein, the last-minute title change to Frankenstein: The True Story has been the source of several persistent misconceptions about the novel from which it was freely adapted. A rather minor one is that Shelley gave the Creature the name Adam. In the passage in question, the Creature says, “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” This is a reference to the Creature’s familiarity with Milton’s Paradise Lost and the contrast it makes between God’s creation of both Adam, the first man, and the fallen angel Lucifer. Technically speaking, Clerval and Frankenstein never actually name the Creature in the film Adam but refer to it as “their Adam” before the Creature is given life. Still, this assumption has found its way into several publications including the children’s book Movie Monsters by the generally reliable Thomas G. Aylesworth, who created more than his share of a new generation of monster kids in the 70s and 80s through his books.
The other, far stranger, idea is that Frankenstein’s Creature is attractive at first in the novel and only gradually becomes ugly. This may partially come from Mary Shelley’s own words in Chapter 5 of her revised and preferred 1831 edition, “I had selected his features as beautiful.” This is a sentence out of context, however. This is Victor’s description in context:
“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
Hardly a description that resembles Michael Sarrazin in his newly awakened form.
Despite Hunt Stromborg’s “This is not a Hammer film” declaration, Frankenstein: The True Story owes several elements to plot points and details from the Hammer series, one of them being the attractive monster that becomes more hideous, an aspect straight out of The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958). Polidori’s mutilated hands concealed by black gloves are reminiscent of Cushing’s injuries in various entries in the series, and his mesmerist qualities echo Professor Zoltan in Evil of Frankenstein (1964). The good-to-evil metamorphosis from Agatha to Prima also bears more than a passing resemblance to Christina’s before and after death dispositions in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). Derivations and misconceptions aside, Frankenstein: The True Story is one of the better adaptations of the story in the modern era. It may not be particularly innovative, but it is handsomely mounted and beautifully made, featuring strong writing, performances, and direction that would inform many of the films that attempted to reclaim Frankenstein for Mary Shelley to come.
Lord Bullingdon Makes a Monster
One of the more forgotten, but also the first film version to closely adhere to Mary Shelley’s novel, is Victor Frankenstein, also known as Terror of Frankenstein, produced by Independent-International Pictures in 1977. Though its opening credits include the inauspicious credit “Based on the Classic by Mary Shelly” misspelling the author’s name, the film, despite its obvious budgetary limitations, is surprisingly well-made and performed. With one major character elimination, Frankenstein family servant Justine, the film follows not only the plot but the Russian doll structure of the novel — a story, within a story, within a story, and back again.
The film stars Leon Vitali (who left acting soon after making this film to become Stanley Kubrick’s personal assistant) as Victor Frankenstein who tells his story to Captain Walton (Mathias Henrikson) after being taken in aboard his ship, which is on expedition to the North Pole. In its one major concession to Hollywood over Shelley, Victor’s creation is vivified through lightning, this time using a kite in a nod to Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment, but he does so without assistants. As in the novel, Victor is horrified when the Monster (Per Oscarsson) awakens and retreats to his bed. Here the film depicts one of Shelley’s most famous passages.
“I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks.”
After escaping to the courtyard, where he spends the rest of the night, Victor is awakened when his friend Henry Clerval (Nicholas Clay) arrives to take him back to Geneva and he leaves the Monster behind in Ingolstadt.
Rather than follow the Monster at this point as most film versions do, Victor Frankenstein follows its titular character back to Geneva where an unknown period of time passes. Eventually, the Monster arrives and kills, presumably by accident, Victor’s young brother William (Jan Ohlsson). Frankenstein takes it upon himself to find the killer and encounters the Monster in the mountains, who then tells his story to his creator by a fire inside a cave. Here the familiar tale of the Monster’s time in the countryside is recounted. First come the reactions of fear from villagers, who chase him off with pitchforks and throw stones at him, before he arrives at the home of the Blind Man (Harry Brogan), his daughter Agatha (Jacinta Martin), and son-in-law Felix (David Byrne). Here he learns to speak by listening in on their conversations and reads from books he finds in a shed adjacent to the house. Presumably, as in the novel, one of those books is Milton’s Paradise Lost, a key thematic element of the Frankenstein mythos. Of course, he is ultimately discovered and rejected by this family as well. He returns to his place of origin and discovers Frankenstein’s diary where he learns of his creator’s work and whereabouts. Completing his story, he demands that Victor create a mate for him.
This is of course all familiar territory to those who know the novel, and the rest of the film follows on in much the same way. Victor begins fashioning a bride for the Monster but decides it would be immoral for him to create a race of artificial humans, which leads to the Monster taking revenge on Victor by killing Elizabeth. Victor pursues his creation to the ends of the earth and perishes in the process. As in the novel, the Monster is last seen disappearing into “darkness and distance.”
Though clearly limited in many ways, Victor Frankenstein is a surprising entry to the canon and one that should not be overlooked. Leon Vitali, who was previously best known for the supporting role of Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), gives a lively and nuanced performance as Victor, and Per Oscarsson is quite good as the sympathetic Monster. The limitations of budget are the film’s biggest downfall as the minimalist makeup is rather unconvincing, and the attempts at a sprawling multi-national story were obviously limited to a few sets and outdoor shooting locations. All in all, however, the film is well worth seeking out for Frankenstein aficionados, especially those seeking a film that closely follows the original novel.
After Victor Frankenstein, this brand of Frankenstein film would go dormant for some time but would be resurrected in the 1980s from the bones of a notorious Broadway flop with a little help from one of the stars of Hollywood’s biggest hit. 🩸
Footnotes
[1] Aames would come to prominence on Eight is Enough and Charles in Charge before creating and playing Christian superhero Bibleman in the 90s.
[2] This is a case of taking a name from the novel but completely changing his character and relationship to Victor.
Sources
“A ‘Frankenstein’ That Never Lived” by Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2020, updated Jan. 4, 2021
Famous Monsters Funbook by William R. Johnson, 1983
Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Gallery 13 (an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.) Edition, 1983, 2020.
In Search of Frankenstein by Radu Florescu, 1975
Little Shoppe of Horrors #38: The Epic Untold Saga Behind Frankenstein the True Story by Sam Irvin, May 2017
Movie Monsters by Thomas G. Aylesworth, 1975
About
Brian Keiper is a featured writer for Manor Vellum. Brian’s also written for Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, F This Movie!, Ghastly Grinning, and others. Follow him on Instagram @brianwaves42, Threads @brianwaves42, and/or X @Brianwaves42.
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