Sword & Sorcery & Cinema: Frankenstein

May has been split between two themes for me.  We started off with Sci-Fi month with a bunch of reviews on sci-fi games and movies and I ended with a week-long journey back to Ravenloft with the new 5e Ravenloft book.

What movie could I watch that would cover both halves of this theme?

Well really there is only one that could do it proper justice and I have a LOT of choices of that one.

The story is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  The movie is...well there are a lot of them.

While Frankenstein, or as it properly titled, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818 when she was only 20 years old.  

While it is a horror novel and a Gothic and Romantic Horror novel at that, it really is more properly one of the very first Science Fiction novels published. Jules Verne and H.G. Welles were not even alive at this point.  They might be known as the fathers of Science Fiction, but the mother of Science Fiction was a teenage girl and one of the most prominent feminist icons of her day.

So suck it up. Science Fiction was created by a teenaged feminist.

Currently, there are over 70 movies featuring Frankenstein and/or his monster. And those are just the ones I have access to on the Internet, there are likely even more.

No way am I going to watch them all tonight!  That would be a good October Movie Marathon month. But here are some I have seen in the past.

• House of Dracula (1945)
• Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)
• War of the Gargantuas (1966)
• Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
• Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) One of my favorites.
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Gothic (1986) The story behind the story
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
• May (2002)
• Splice (2009)
• Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009)
• Victor Frankenstein (2015)

I am surprised by what is not on my list.  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh is one of my favorites and the closest we have seen to Shelley's book.

Maybe a Frankenstein Movie Marathon is in order after all!