Frankenstein: 190 Years On, the Force of Mary Shelley's Imagination is Alive
The greatest gift to the horror genre came from an unwed teen mother.
Mary Shelley was 18 when she started writing the novel that would be published anonymously in London the following year, in 1818, titled: "Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus."
With nothing more than the force of imagination, Shelley launched a global phenomenon - a feat few artists have pulled off and one that was cemented by James Whale in 1931 when he cast the 41-year-old British actor Boris Karloff as the creature that's sewn together in a castle by a crazed scientist.
If you greet trick-or-treaters Friday, chances are good someone will show up wearing a mask that replicates one of the most famous (and copyrighted) movie makeup jobs in the history of cinema.
Frankenstein, in one form or another, also lurks on the horror shelf at the DVD store. Almost anything you might watch will have something - an image, or a theme, or a character type - from the "Frankenstein" mythology.
A century from now, when the monster is 300 years old, few will remember the nihilistic "Saw" movies - but everyone will know who Frankenstein is. As Susan Tyler Hitchcock says in her book "Frankenstein: A Cultural History," which is available at the McMinnville Public Library, he "is our monster."
"To know him," she writes, "is to know ourselves."
McMinnville High School language arts teacher Jody Mechals teaches the novel, and notes that few are encountering the story or character for the first time.
"Many students have seen some form of the story, whether it be the movie or 'Scooby-Doo,'" she said. "They all know the character of the monster, but many believe that the monster is Frankenstein."
That misconception took little time to establish itself. In the 1939 "Son of Frankenstein," title role star Basil Rathbone actually alludes to it as a sort of in-joke, complaining to his wife that most people have slapped his good family's name on the monster itself.
Before Whale brought "Frankenstein" to life in 1931, Shelley's story had been rendered on stage in London and in a 1910 silent film - his first screen appearance.
"Frankenstein" may not have packed them in like "Titanic," but it was definitely an "event" movie for its day, and was protested in some quarters.
Since then, nearly every decade has had at least one big "Frankenstein" movie. Whale made only one sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935 with most of the original cast, but Universal kept cranking out Frankenstein movies until 1948. Britain's Hammer Studios produced several gruesome entries in the 1960s. There's the beloved parody with the late Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle, "Young Frankenstein." Only one, Kenneth Brannagh's 1991 telling, which features Robert DeNiro as the monster, makes any attempt at being faithful to the source material.
This writer first encountered what Karloff preferred to call "the creature" (not "monster") in the form of an oversized hardback at the Salem Public Library. It contained virtually every shot and all the dialogue from Whale's classic film.
The sheer heft of the book, and the fact that it was on the "adult" side of the library, hinted at its subject's importance.
I no longer remember the first time I actually saw the film, though I vaguely recall an early impression that it was rather corny, and not scary. Almost painfully dated, it will not - as actor Edward Van Sloan promises in the cheesy introduction - "horrify you."
Whale was a thoughtful man, but his first "Frankenstein" outing dumbed down the novel for all the reasons you'd expect. The creation scene, which consumes two short paragraphs in Shelley's book and offers no clue as to precisely how Frankenstein built the creature, is a noisy showstopper full of spectacle and danger - and he ramps it up more in the sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein."
Shelley's complex narrative, which features flashbacks folded within flashbacks, is essentially thrown out, as is her monster: On the page, the creature is articulate to the point of being a philosopher. On screen, he's that lumbering giant - mute, childlike, yet homicidal. Not unlike, to cite one of many examples, Michael Myers in the "Halloween" movies.
"As far as I know, there hasn't been a film that treats the Frankenstein monster in the same sense that Mary Shelley's book treated it," says Linfield College film professor William Lingle. "You really get inside him in the book. You get a sense of the internal war going on inside him. In the movie, Karloff has to suggest most of that with his eyes."
Whale didn't want to do the sequel, Lingle says, but the studio insisted. "Bride of Frankenstein," which picks up only minutes after the first one ends, is almost universally regarded as a superior sequel. Whale's hand was more assured - he had the original cast, a bigger budget and total artistic control.
And given that "Hollywood is always about creating the couple," Lingle notes, "Bride" can be read as a parody of the movie romance where the lovers live happily ever after - because in Whale's endlessly clever film, they don't.
Mechals says the book is popular with students. They connect with the monster's abandonment, and they also find their allegiances torn, as they sympathize with both the scientist and the monster.
The book also provides a convenient way to tie together social studies and science.
"They find it challenging and enjoy the theme of science without ethics because it applies to so many real-world ideas," she said.
The McMinnville Public Library has more than 30 items that are "Frankenstein"-related, says Director Jill Poyer, including a graphic novel that recently went missing. "Unfortunately, it sprouted legs," she says. "I guess that is a testament to some sort of popularity."
Among the other offerings, there's an abridged "short classic" version in the section that attracts grade school readers, and there's also "Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich" and "Frankenstein Takes the Cake."
"It definitely qualifies for cultural icon status," says Poyer. "Anything translated into a graphic novel is definitely for all ages and generations."
Mary Shelley was 18 when she started writing the novel that would be published anonymously in London the following year, in 1818, titled: "Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus."
With nothing more than the force of imagination, Shelley launched a global phenomenon - a feat few artists have pulled off and one that was cemented by James Whale in 1931 when he cast the 41-year-old British actor Boris Karloff as the creature that's sewn together in a castle by a crazed scientist.
If you greet trick-or-treaters Friday, chances are good someone will show up wearing a mask that replicates one of the most famous (and copyrighted) movie makeup jobs in the history of cinema.
Frankenstein, in one form or another, also lurks on the horror shelf at the DVD store. Almost anything you might watch will have something - an image, or a theme, or a character type - from the "Frankenstein" mythology.
A century from now, when the monster is 300 years old, few will remember the nihilistic "Saw" movies - but everyone will know who Frankenstein is. As Susan Tyler Hitchcock says in her book "Frankenstein: A Cultural History," which is available at the McMinnville Public Library, he "is our monster."
"To know him," she writes, "is to know ourselves."
McMinnville High School language arts teacher Jody Mechals teaches the novel, and notes that few are encountering the story or character for the first time.
"Many students have seen some form of the story, whether it be the movie or 'Scooby-Doo,'" she said. "They all know the character of the monster, but many believe that the monster is Frankenstein."
That misconception took little time to establish itself. In the 1939 "Son of Frankenstein," title role star Basil Rathbone actually alludes to it as a sort of in-joke, complaining to his wife that most people have slapped his good family's name on the monster itself.
Before Whale brought "Frankenstein" to life in 1931, Shelley's story had been rendered on stage in London and in a 1910 silent film - his first screen appearance.
"Frankenstein" may not have packed them in like "Titanic," but it was definitely an "event" movie for its day, and was protested in some quarters.
Since then, nearly every decade has had at least one big "Frankenstein" movie. Whale made only one sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935 with most of the original cast, but Universal kept cranking out Frankenstein movies until 1948. Britain's Hammer Studios produced several gruesome entries in the 1960s. There's the beloved parody with the late Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle, "Young Frankenstein." Only one, Kenneth Brannagh's 1991 telling, which features Robert DeNiro as the monster, makes any attempt at being faithful to the source material.
This writer first encountered what Karloff preferred to call "the creature" (not "monster") in the form of an oversized hardback at the Salem Public Library. It contained virtually every shot and all the dialogue from Whale's classic film.
The sheer heft of the book, and the fact that it was on the "adult" side of the library, hinted at its subject's importance.
I no longer remember the first time I actually saw the film, though I vaguely recall an early impression that it was rather corny, and not scary. Almost painfully dated, it will not - as actor Edward Van Sloan promises in the cheesy introduction - "horrify you."
Whale was a thoughtful man, but his first "Frankenstein" outing dumbed down the novel for all the reasons you'd expect. The creation scene, which consumes two short paragraphs in Shelley's book and offers no clue as to precisely how Frankenstein built the creature, is a noisy showstopper full of spectacle and danger - and he ramps it up more in the sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein."
Shelley's complex narrative, which features flashbacks folded within flashbacks, is essentially thrown out, as is her monster: On the page, the creature is articulate to the point of being a philosopher. On screen, he's that lumbering giant - mute, childlike, yet homicidal. Not unlike, to cite one of many examples, Michael Myers in the "Halloween" movies.
"As far as I know, there hasn't been a film that treats the Frankenstein monster in the same sense that Mary Shelley's book treated it," says Linfield College film professor William Lingle. "You really get inside him in the book. You get a sense of the internal war going on inside him. In the movie, Karloff has to suggest most of that with his eyes."
Whale didn't want to do the sequel, Lingle says, but the studio insisted. "Bride of Frankenstein," which picks up only minutes after the first one ends, is almost universally regarded as a superior sequel. Whale's hand was more assured - he had the original cast, a bigger budget and total artistic control.
And given that "Hollywood is always about creating the couple," Lingle notes, "Bride" can be read as a parody of the movie romance where the lovers live happily ever after - because in Whale's endlessly clever film, they don't.
Mechals says the book is popular with students. They connect with the monster's abandonment, and they also find their allegiances torn, as they sympathize with both the scientist and the monster.
The book also provides a convenient way to tie together social studies and science.
"They find it challenging and enjoy the theme of science without ethics because it applies to so many real-world ideas," she said.
The McMinnville Public Library has more than 30 items that are "Frankenstein"-related, says Director Jill Poyer, including a graphic novel that recently went missing. "Unfortunately, it sprouted legs," she says. "I guess that is a testament to some sort of popularity."
Among the other offerings, there's an abridged "short classic" version in the section that attracts grade school readers, and there's also "Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich" and "Frankenstein Takes the Cake."
"It definitely qualifies for cultural icon status," says Poyer. "Anything translated into a graphic novel is definitely for all ages and generations."
Originally published in the News-Register, McMinnville, on October 30, 2008
