Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and the famous character of Frankenstein's monster, have influenced popular culture for at least a century. 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.

Film derivatives

Silent era

The first film adaptation of the tale, Frankenstein, was made by Edison Studios in 1910, written and directed by J. Searle Dawley, with Augustus Phillips as Frankenstein, Mary Fuerte as Elizabeth, and Charles Ogle as the Monster. The brief (16 min.) story has Frankenstein chemically create the Creature in a vat. The Creature has encounters with the scientist until Frankenstein's wedding night, when true love causes the Creature to vanish. For many years, this film was believed lost. A collector announced in 1980 that he had acquired a print in the 1950s and had been unaware of its rarity.

The Edison version was followed soon after by another adaptation entitled Life Without Soul (1915), directed by Joseph W. Smiley, starring William A. Cohill as Dr. William Frawley, a modern-day Frankenstein who creates a soulless man, played to much critical praise by Percy Standing, who wore little make-up in the role. The film was shot at various locations around the United States, and reputedly featured much spectacle. In the end, it turns out that a young man has dreamed the events of the film after falling asleep reading Mary Shelley's novel. This film is now considered a lost film.

There was also at least one European film version, the Italian The Monster of Frankenstein (Il Mostro di Frankenstein) in 1921. The film's producer, Luciano Albertini, essayed the role of Frankenstein, with the Creature being played by Umberto Guarracino, and Eugenio Testa directing from a screenplay by Giovanni Drivetti. This film is also now considered lost.

Universal Pictures

The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the creature. 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 with Karloff as the Creature. It was followed by Son of Frankenstein (1939), the last of the three films with Karloff as the Creature. The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) marked the Universal series' descent into B movie territory; later efforts by the studio combined two or more monsters, culminating in the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The later Universal films in which the Monster appears (and the actors who played him) are: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942 – Lon Chaney Jr.) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943 – Béla Lugosi, with Eddie Parker, Gil Perkins, and a possible third stuntman often doubling) The House of Frankenstein (1944 – Glenn Strange) House of Dracula (1945 – Strange) Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948 – Strange, with Lon Chaney Jr. taking the role for one scene).

Hammer Films

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 The Horror of Frankenstein, in which the character was played by Ralph Bates. Cushing also played a creation in The Revenge of Frankenstein. David Prowse played two different Creatures.

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, by contrast, carefully connected). Starting with The Evil of Frankenstein, the films are standalone 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, cruel and clearly the villain of the piece.

The Hammer Films series (and the actor playing the Creature) consisted of: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 – Christopher Lee) The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958 – two Creatures: Michael Gwynn and Peter Cushing) The Evil of Frankenstein (1964 – Kiwi Kingston) Frankenstein Created Woman (1967 – Susan Denberg) Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969 – Freddie Jones) The Horror of Frankenstein (1970 – David Prowse) - a black comedy remake of The Curse of Frankenstein Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974 – David Prowse)

In 1959, Hammer shot a half-hour pilot episode for a TV series to be called Tales of Frankenstein in association with Columbia Pictures. Anton Diffring played the Baron, and Don Megowan his creation. Curt Siodmak directed. The series was scrapped, largely because of the two companies' disagreement over what the basic thrust of the series would be: Hammer wanted to do a series about Baron Frankenstein involved in various misadventures, while Columbia wanted a series of science fiction stories loosely based around the idea of science gone wrong. Though unreleased at the time of its production, the episode is available on DVD from several public domain sources.

Other films Depictions of the Monster have varied widely, from a savage, mindless brute to the depiction of the Monster as a kind of tragic hero (closest to the Shelley version in behavior) in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Bride, and Van Helsing. Throughout the Universal series, he evolved from the latter to the former.

Four 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) and Mary Shelley directed by Haifaa al-Mansour (2017). The opening scene of Bride of Frankenstein also dealt with this event.

1950s and 1960s

1957: American International Pictures (AIP) released the low-budget I Was a Teenage Frankenstein in November 1957, a few months after its 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 Professor Frankenstein, and Gary Conway plays the creature. A follow-up, How to Make a Monster, was released in July 1958. This film features actor Gary Conway as an actor playing the Teenage Frankenstein in a film. 1958: Another 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 Baron Victor von 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. 1958: This year also brought the bizarre Frankenstein's Daughter, in which a modern descendant of Frankenstein (Donald Murphy) experiments with a Jekyll/Hyde type of serum before stitching together a grotesque female creature. John Ashley and Sandra Knight co-starred. 1961: Frankenstein, el Vampiro y Cia ("Frankenstein, the Vampire and Company") is a Mexican remake of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 1965: Ishirō Honda's 1965 tokusatsu kaiju film Frankenstein vs. Baragon was 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, by 15 years later, has regenerated a new body which feeds on protein, eventually growing into a giant humanoid monster named Frankenstein that breaks loose and battles the burrowing dinosaur Baragon that was destroying villages and devouring people and animals. There is also a loose sequel to this film (see below). 1965: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster. Martians come to Earth to steal Earth's women with the goal of repopulating their planet. When they cause a NASA space craft to crash, the humanoid robot pilot (Captain Frank Saunders) becomes horribly disfigured. Becoming a "Frankenstein"-like monster, he must save the women of Earth. 1966: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. Director William Beaudine's sci-fi\Western contribution has what would actually be Frankenstein's granddaughter, Maria Frankenstein, cobbling a monster out of Jesse James' (John Lupton) brawny partner-in-crime, Hank Tracy (Cal Bolder), after an ambush by the law. Frankenstein renames her creation Igor. Narda Onyx plays Maria Frankenstein. 1966: The War of the Gargantuas (Furankenshutain no Kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira), also directed by Honda, is a loose sequel to Frankenstein vs. Baragon (although this fact is obscured in the U.S. version), with samples of Frankenstein's 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.

1970s and 1980s

1971: Dracula vs. Frankenstein by Al Adamson is an extremely low-budget horror thriller, starring aged film stars J. Carroll Naish and Lon Chaney Jr. In the film, Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) has the last living descendant of Frankenstein (Naish) revive his famous ancestor's creation (played by John Bloom). 1971: The Italian La Figlia di Frankenstein ("The Daughter of Frankenstein"), released in North America as Lady Frankenstein. Joseph Cotten plays Baron Frankenstein, who is killed by his creation early in the film. Sara Bay, as the Baron's daughter, creates her own creature from a handsome young man and the brain of her homely but brilliant lover (Paul Muller). 1972: Jesús Franco contributed Dracula contra Frankenstein ("Dracula vs. Frankenstein"), which hit the North American drive-in circuit as Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. Baron Frankenstein (played by Dennis Price) revives Count Dracula (Howard Vernon) in order to enslave an army of vampires to help his Monster (Fred Harrison) conquer the world. 1972: Franco followed up his Dracula/Frankenstein effort with The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (also known as The Curse of Frankenstein, but having no relation to the Hammer film of the same name). Here, Baron Frankenstein (Dennis Price again) is killed off early on by minions of the evil Count Cagliostro (Howard Vernon), who wants to use the Monster in his plots to rule the world. 1972: Frankenstein '80, a film by Mario Mancini, featured a modern-day scientist named Albrechtstein (Gordon Mitchell) creating a monster called Mosaico (Xiro Papas). Mosaico is driven to homicidal mania by lust, and by his body's constant rejection of its constituent parts. The ingenue was played by Dalila Di Lazzaro (under the pseudonym "Dalila Parker"), who later appeared as the female creation in 1973's Flesh for Frankenstein (see below). 1973: Blackenstein, a low-budget blaxploitation film. 1973: Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein has Udo Kier playing the Baron, a bizarre but brilliant scientist who creates a male and a female creature in the hopes of breeding a superior race. Joe Dallesandro plays the handyman who attempts to thwart the Baron's mad dream, and Monique van Vooren is the Baron's nymphomaniac wife. 1974: Young Frankenstein, a comedy/horror film based on Boris Karloff's three Frankenstein films made by Universal. 1976: Victor Frankenstein (a.k.a. Terror of Frankenstein), a fairly faithful version of the book, starred Leon Vitali as Frankenstein. Per Oscarson played the creature.