Many film Frankenstein’s have been happy to do what the novel’s Frankenstein refused to do – create a mate for the monster. Besides Bride of Frankenstein we’ve been presented with female creatures in Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein the True Story, The Bride, Frankenstein Unbound, Frankenhooker and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m sure I’ve missed a few.

The illustration above is inspired by Helena Bonham Carter’s creature in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I’m rather fond of this version of the story. It’s bombastic and operatic and generally over the top. The biggest misfire is De Niro’s performance as the creature. He’s got no otherworldliness about him. He’s ugly but he’s not Wrong, an aberration. Ah well. One of my favorite reviews of the film can be found at And You Call Yourself a Scientist. Go and read!

Frankenstein’s creation, as described in the novel, has never appeared on film. Mostly we’ve been given reanimated patchwork corpses. When I reviewed the novel I came to the conclusion that, while some of ingredients originated in the charnel houses the creature had to be more than just stitch together body parts. There are a couple of films that apparently come close in appearance – Hallmark’s 2004 miniseries and Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove – but even they are unlikely to have presented him in his full glory. Shelley doesn’t give much of a description –

“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 luxuriences 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”

Beyond that he’s eight feet tall and, unlike most of the slow lurching film versions, he can move swiftly, with agility and quietly.

A good recent depiction I’ve seen was by Steven R. Bissette for, of all things, a recent translation of the Phantom of the Opera. For some reason my links to his site aren’t working so you’ll need to go to http://srbissette.com and look around in the sketch section.

Berni Wrightson did an incredible illustrated edition of the novel (the 1834 version) in the early nineties. His creature is both sad and hideous.

So the portrait at the top of this entry is my version of novel’s creature as he might have looked in the century after the novel’s events. He’s older. He’s, if not at peace with humanity, no longer at war with the world. He’s found a place for himself and his kind, hidden away in the place human beings don’t think to look.

Why does the Bride hiss and shriek? She just woke up and there’s a bunch of weird guys mooning at her. No wonder she’s in a bad mood. Maybe she would have come to love her intended Groom eventually but the dude was definitely rushing things.

I watched the first Universal Frankensteins for the first time early this year. I’ve been looking at images of the Monster and his Bride since I was a kid but except for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I hadn’t actually watched the movies. The common wisdom is that Bride of Frankenstein is a better film than Frankenstein and that’s probably true. It’s certainly a more interesting film. Frankenstein is a pretty straight forward story and has few surprises to it – man creates monster, monster escapes, people get killed and a torch bearing mob hunts the monster down. Bride of Frankenstein adds another mad doctor, has the monster begin to speak and gives us a second monster in the Bride.

And, honestly, still pictures of the Bride, don’t do her justice. Elsa Lancaster gives a wonderfully twitchy performance. I think the most unfortunate things about the Universal series is that the Bride only appears this once and, after this film, the Monster returns to being a mute, mostly zombie-ish creature. Ah well, her single appearance means we’re left wanting more rather than wanting her to go away.

By now you may have noticed that I have a fondness for monsters. I’ll usually take a badly acted, low budget monster movie over a star filled, Oscar nominated drama. I’ve read far more pulp horror than “fine” literature. And, I must admit, I have a greater fondness for some monsters than others. I have greater love for fishmen than vampires, more enthusiasm for apemen than zombies and giant monsters will grab my attention over more average sized specimens.

In the last few years I’ve developed a minor obsession for Frankenstein’s monster. So when I found A Patchwork of Flesh, an open blog gallery of Frankenstein Monster artist trading cards, I just had to contribute. I did four portraits and sent them in four separate envelopes. Coop, the blog organizer, is in England so I expected some of the portraits to arrive on different days. But no. They all arrived on the same day and he posted them all in one gallery.

Coop is asking people to vote for their five favorite images so, if you’ve got a few minutes, take a look and speak up for five good ones.

I like to draw things out so I’ll be posting the portraits over the next four days rather than all at once. Today’s image isn’t based on any particular version of the creature. Most modern depictions present him as composed of badly sewn together body parts so I went with that idea here. I’ll use the other portraits to provide links to other Frankenstein related spots of interest on the net.