S03E16 — Frankenstein
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Frankenstein.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
Alright baby listeners… you’ve had almost 200 years to read Frankenstein, so we’re not holding back.
This week we’re talking about the original story, the one that somehow started everything, and then diving into multiple film versions that all looked at that same idea and said, “what if we did something completely different?”
We get into the book itself, the choices that still don’t make sense (yes, we’re looking at you, Victor), and why the creature might actually be the most sympathetic character in the whole story… depending on who’s telling it. Then we jump into the movies, from the iconic 1931 version to the newer adaptations, and try to figure out why no one can seem to agree on what this story is supposed to be.
There’s science, there’s chaos, there’s questionable decisions, and at least one version that had us genuinely asking, “why did they do that?” Baby listeners, this one is messy, philosophical, and a little bit unhinged… just like the story itself.
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
Overall, baby listeners… this is one of those episodes where the book stands strong, but the movies are all over the place depending on what you’re looking for.
Donna: The 1931 film was the best.
– Book Score: 7/10
Rebekah: The 1994 film was the best.
– Book Score: 8/10
Josiah: The 1994 film was the best (second only the stage play)
– Book Score: 5/10
Tim: The 2004 Hallmark Miniseries was the best.
– Book Score: 9/10
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Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Donna: I was working in the lab late one night when my eyes beheld an eerie sight for my monster from his slab began to rise and suddenly, to my surprise, he did the motion. He did the Monster, monster smash, the monster. It was a graveyard smash.
[00:00:26] Rebekah: We can’t record music remotely. It doesn’t work. We’ve tried. The timing is bad. Editor. It’s embarrassing for all us.
[00:00:34] Donna: Why did you through all,
[00:00:56] Rebekah: welcome to the podcast folks, baby listeners, you filthy animals. Spoiler alert, you have had almost 200 years to read Frankenstein and we will spoil it. And if you haven’t read it, it is your fault or your grandparents’ fault. So content warning, just depending on if you’re listening to the around lake kiddos, et cetera, um, we do get into some topics of violence and maybe some body horror and there may be some content.
About things that happen that are supposed to happen between mommies and daddies. And so, uh, yeah, that’s your content warning. All right, everyone starting the episode off with a fun fact. What song or piece of music would you most closely relate Frankenstein story? Now I thought about this long and hard, and my answer is completely my own.
No one gave me this idea or helped me figure out what it was or how to pick a piece of music that relates to, um, a work of fiction. So my incredibly unique answer that was only my own is weird science. The song from the eighties sung by, how does that go? A band. Where’s science? Something like that thing by all I can hear is monster meshed.
So sometimes in my head right now it sounds like it goes like the monster mesh. I’m pretty sure it’s weird science. Isn’t that right? Does that sound Yeah, that’s
[00:02:26] Josiah: veggie tails.
[00:02:28] Rebekah: No
[00:02:28] Josiah: walking.
[00:02:29] Rebekah: I don’t
[00:02:30] Josiah: duck down your walk. Walking
[00:02:33] Rebekah: veggie tails. Stroll it.
[00:02:34] Josiah: It’s weird science.
[00:02:36] Rebekah: Alright, someone else. Go. Now begin.
[00:02:40] Josiah: You know I gotta go with a classic Jimmy Neutron movie remix called, he Blinded Me with Science, which is, she blinded me with science from the eighties.
But I guess the, he is Jimmy Neutron and after seeing the fun fact like 15 minutes ago, I was looking it up and it is vastly different. It’s a, it’s a creative remake of the song and I do have a lot more nostalgia. For the Jimmy Neutron version, uh, you know about a mad scientist. And in a funny way, it’s Jimmy Neutron.
But you know, Dr. Frankenstein, Victor, sometimes Henry is, uh, a mad scientist. Certainly is he the first ever mad scientist in literature? Probably
[00:03:28] Tim: he is supposed to be the one that started it all.
[00:03:32] Donna: That song does bring back great memories of younger years. Woo. Um, so mine is the way we were. It was written, the lyrics were written by Marvin Hamish.
Here’s just the short lyrics. Uh, memories. Light the corners of my mind. Misty Watercolored, memories of the way we were scattered. Pictures of the smiles we left behind. Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were. Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we, could we,
[00:04:11] Rebekah: so what are you associating with Frankenstein?
[00:04:13] Donna: As you’ll see in a little bit as we get to discussing this, I am completely perplexed with. Why the doctor doesn’t give his creation 35 seconds to endear himself to him. Oh, okay. Before hes him.
[00:04:30] Rebekah: All right.
[00:04:30] Donna: And so, yeah, memory. All right.
[00:04:31] Tim: Which leads into my answer.
[00:04:33] Donna: Yes.
[00:04:34] Tim: A song made popular by Frank Sinatra and then sung by some other people a little more recently.
But it is, I did it my way, and I thought of that when I thought of this, because that is Victor’s story. Should I? No, never. Don’t even consider that I did it my way.
[00:04:55] Rebekah: That makes sense. Honestly, we had an interesting time figuring out how we wanted to structure this episode. We’re not actually discussing a single film only, so we’re gonna cover similar to how we did in Dracula.
We’re gonna talk about four different versions. However, the two we’re gonna focus on most heavily film-wise are the 1931, which is like the first film, Frankenstein, I think, and then the 2025. It’s been nominated for a bunch of academies. We’re gonna talk about two additional versions. You’ll understand why, but Josiah, would you like to start us off with the plot of this book?
[00:05:28] Josiah: Yeah, yeah. I can describe a plot summary to you guys. What about this? A story told through a series of letters by a young man, Victor Frankenstein. He is a scientist who creates a creature utilizing the scientific method, but also alchemy and, uh, science fiction almost. And he is repulsed by his successful result and abandons the creature.
Now, the creature we find out through the creature’s kind of point of view, uh, immediately sought refuge at this house where he learned language from the family by stalking them. And then their blind grandpa was nice to him. But then whenever the sighted children and grandchildren saw him, they were horrified.
And as a result of this unkindness mixed with how he, you know, he’s learned to read through this process. So now he can read Victor Frankenstein’s letters and realizes all that Victor has done. To ruin his life. So the creature goes on killing spree to make Victor suffer the way the creature has. The letters kind of found footage format, uh, for this 18, 18 novel.
The letters describe the struggle between creator and creature until finally the creator dies and the creature chooses death to loneliness.
[00:07:04] Rebekah: So, uh, let’s talk about the book a little bit before we move into the films. We had a, just a couple of interesting things that we wanted to share. The book was originally written in 1818, and there is a follow-up version that Mary Shelley published in 1831.
So in the next 13 years between her original right and the Aada or her own adaptation, I guess her edit, her second edition. Um, she changed several factors, so I looked up some interesting things like what do people say about how they compare? And so 18, 18 is usually read as the bolder and more politically charged version of the story.
It’s driven much by choice and less by fate and destiny. 1831 is more polished, especially she said she rewrote a lot of the beginning sections, more fatalistic and morally narrowed. And it does paint Frankenstein and the creature as like victims of destiny and inevitability, not like, oh, you just made different choices.
So in the 1831 version, Mary Shelley gives an introduction to explain how she came to write the story. The monster in the second version is made more intentionally malicious, which I think is interesting ’cause you change it to be more that Victor is the victim of fate, but then the monster is like truly a monster.
She explored Victor’s scientific leanings more like she set it up better, where in his earlier life he was more interested in science versus the original 19 or 1818 version kind of seemed like he was just like reckless and irresponsible. Um, and then one of the major things that people mentioned, several in several different sources, because I, I read the 1831, I’m pretty sure all of us read 1831, but Elizabeth is literally Victor’s cousin in the 18, 18 version in 31.
She was like an orphan who was adopted but wasn’t actually related to their family. Which I think is the most, IM, it’s just most important because they end up married Victor and Elizabeth. So I think that, that’s interesting. I assume that where and when this occurred, it originally probably wouldn’t have been as weird, I guess, for cousin marriage and things to happen.
So
[00:09:21] Tim: apparently the story, at least the the original short story, was written in response to a dare. She and her husband, Percy Bis Shelly, were very good friends with Lord Byron, famous writer and poet and, uh, Percy Bis. Shelly is a romantic poet and they were friends and it was a dare on a weekend that they were spending together who can write the best horror story, and this is the result.
There’s also a lot of information on the fact that she had had a very difficult childhood, and so some of the details. Kind of mirror some of the things that happened to her, and it’s a rough story, but she had a rough life. Apparently
[00:10:07] Donna: these, uh, writings. I, I looked around for some information on the 1818 version, but everything that I could find was on 1831.
So I did see in Good Reads, this is rated 3.91 out of five, and on story graph it’s 3.89 out of five.
[00:10:28] Josiah: That’s so interesting what dad was saying about this novel being written on a dare because I was just watching a video that said Agatha Christie’s first novel was written on a dare.
[00:10:40] Tim: That doesn’t seem to be all that uncommon among writers because the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia are the results of a group of people who challenged one another to write a fantastical story and they would read it to one another.
[00:10:58] Rebekah: Well, uh, let’s talk. Films. Then we’ve got four, like I said, so we’re gonna start, we’re doing these in chronological order. We’re gonna start and end with the two that are like the most well known. So 1931 director’s last name, whale. Uh, it is a black and white film and, uh, it is the one that the universal studios, the epic universe thing that we saw.
That’s what, that’s one of the versions of the films that, uh, is used to create the rides and all of those kinds of things. Uh, so we just wanted to kind of talk about a few of the most notable differences of each of these. Maybe give a couple of thoughts we have and then tell you a little bit about how the film performed.
[00:11:44] Tim: They like to change names for some reason in several things. And although it’s Victor Frankenstein in the novel, uh, they changed it to Henry Frankenstein, which I think that was the name of another character in the book. That was either the name of his Henry Cler younger brother.
[00:12:03] Donna: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Tim: Was his friend, right?
His friend.
[00:12:04] Donna: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:05] Tim: His friend who does not appear in this version.
[00:12:08] Rebekah: I saw something about Henry Frankenstein becoming like a pop culture icon for a while. Like that specific version of him. I don’t know.
[00:12:18] Donna: Uh, the creature in the 31 film is mute and childlike versus eloquent and intellectual as we’ll get into some other, some of the other versions that we’ve seen.
Um, he’s more like a true monster. They, they were going for another, they were, uh, universal was building this body of, of monster works, universal monsters and yeah, so that’s what they were looking for, uh, focusing like on rejection and, and. Moral responsibility and stuff like that. So, um, you know, the Frankenstein, he’s the picture that most people now, maybe younger people that would be a little farther removed from some of these, from some of these classic monster films, they might not think about it.
But, um, not only did we see Frankenstein with the squared off head kind of tall and, and the bolts in his neck and that kind of thing. Um, then when I was young, they had a series, uh, there was a television series, a comedy, a sitcom, uh, called The Munsters. And the dad So Good was he was a Frankenstein.
Character, you know, monster. That’s where this film is, where that began made him a, an iconic face and head.
[00:13:42] Tim: Probably should mention, just in case somebody is not super clear on this, Frankenstein is the doctor. The monster does not have a name other than Creature Monster. But after the 1931 film, because of some of the editing that was done and some of the editing that was required, after people saw it, they thought the monster’s name was Frankenstein.
And that’s where that comes from. When people say, oh, you’re talking about Frankenstein? Uh, no, Frankenstein’s, the doctor, the monster doesn’t have a name.
[00:14:15] Josiah: You know, another piece of trivia I saw was that the stage play, that the 1931 film was largely based on, uh, in a lot of ways. Included the creature being referred to as part of the Frankenstein family as a sort of stylistic choice so that the doctor and the creature were both Frankenstein’s.
That was not included in the movie, but it is cited as the first time the monster was referred to as Frankenstein. I
[00:14:45] Rebekah: didn’t know that there was a stage play. I know this is one of those prolific things where, similar to Dracula, where they’ve had it in lots of different mediums and things, but I didn’t know the original movie was not just an original movie.
[00:14:59] Josiah: Well, you know, this movie ha features the creature being evil, partly because of the criminal brain used to create it. Dr. Frankenstein had to resort to using criminal body parts ’cause that’s what was available to him.
[00:15:19] Donna: Interesting social commentary. Yeah,
[00:15:22] Tim: the assistant stole the wrong brain.
[00:15:26] Josiah: Oh, he broke the jar.
Yeah. Of
[00:15:29] Tim: the good brain. He stole the wrong brain and brought the criminal brain. ’cause uh, professor at the school from which they took the brain was talking to his students about these two brains. One was a criminal and one was an intellectual. And he said, you can tell there are differences in the brains.
And when the assistant stole the brain, he stole the wrong one.
[00:15:50] Josiah: Was the assistant Igor,
[00:15:52] Tim: not in this film,
[00:15:53] Josiah: who was the assistant
[00:15:55] Rebekah: Fritz. That was one of the added things to this version. Fritz was his hunchback assistant. And where Shelly left a lot of the like lab and the science and a lot of those details, very unstated.
This movie added quite a lot of like the laboratory kind of area and all of that. Which I think was interesting because all of the, like subsequent Frankenstein films have kind of used some variant of that. They, the monster has looked quite different, the creature in many different ones. The lab assistant was the one, by the way, that was, it’s alive.
Like that was the spectacle that it, it kind of created in the film. But, uh, I do think it’s interesting, like, you know, going to Universal and seeing the ride with all of that. And then if you actually look at the way that the scientific equipment was set up in like the 94 movie and the 2025 film, there actually were a lot of things that it seemed that they pulled from the 1931 film.
[00:16:55] Josiah: There’s not a lot taken from the book because there’s not a lot happens. So a huge part of the book is the Arctic Pursuit. So there’s nothing like that in the 31 film. Frankenstein never has his journey in the forest with the blind man in his family, so he never learns to speak, so he never. Demands for a bride like he does in the book.
Uh, there’s no death of Dr. Frankenstein at the end. It’s kind of replaced with Village Panic, the famous sequence of pitchforks towards the castle and stuff like that. There’s the drowning of a little girl instead of the drowning of Dr. Frankenstein’s, uh, brother and of course the windmill climax, where Frankenstein’s Monster is earned at the, uh, burning Blade Tavern.
[00:17:50] Tim: Would it be appropriate to say that the second film featuring Frankenstein. Is the bride of Frankenstein, in which most of the film is about Frankenstein’s Monster, but the bride is introduced. That second film includes some of these pieces from the original novel he does ask for, for a bride, and that’s where that part comes from, but that’s from the book.
The scientist does make the bride or gets close to completing that and destroys it because he can’t believe he did that.
[00:18:24] Donna: Looking back, they kept movies to a limited time too. The movie, I think is le just under an hour and a half. The, the original, the the 31 film. I’m sure somebody at the time thought, could we build this franchise out?
[00:18:40] Rebekah: We did build this city on rock and roll though,
[00:18:42] Tim: so, yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:18:42] Donna: That’s right.
[00:18:43] Tim: The, the bride of Frankenstein did begin with the Shelleys and Lord Byron. Daring each other to write a story or talking about that dare. So they had a little bit of that background trivia as
[00:18:57] Rebekah: well. So Mary Shelley was present in the bride of Frankenstein from 1935.
I hope that never comes back to bite us.
[00:19:06] Tim: Well, the person who plays the bride of Frankenstein in that film is the actress who played Mary Shelley at the beginning of that film,
[00:19:16] Donna: almost like the ghost of Mary Shelley inhabited her.
[00:19:20] Rebekah: I just wanna say that I, some of my favorite food that we had at Universal came from the Burning Blade Tavern.
And when we saw it in the third or 1931 movie, I was like, that’s, that’s it. That was it. That’s why the blade is burning. And so, uh, there’s also right next to his Delacey cottage, and we didn’t stop there, but they do apparently have a yummy, um, desserty snack that I did not have yet.
[00:19:46] Donna: Oh.
[00:19:46] Rebekah: But it was cool to see the film, like brought to life, I would say.
I mean, it’s from 1931, so that tells you a lot about the film and like the way it feels. It’s a, it’s an old black and white movie, but for what it was and when it was, it was pretty good.
[00:20:02] Tim: The same person that made several of the Dracula films that were not technically Canon or whatever from the book, also produced a number of Frankenstein films in the seventies.
[00:20:17] Donna: So a few pieces of trivia. To share with you, this movie released in November of 1931 on no, November 21st. Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie a 94% fresh rating. IMDB gives it 7.7 out of 10. So it, it gives it strong ratings for a black and white movie. It still holds on to, and, and yet, could some of that be just the nostalgia of it?
Sure, it could be, but I do think it was good for what it was and, and what they did with it. Interesting. When you kind of compare it to Dracula, we felt like the black and white was just, something was wrong. And then we found out more about it and there were issues with the making of it and the way people, the seriousness that was lost on it, like they didn’t take it seriously and there were a lot of things going on.
I didn’t feel that way about this one. I do feel like there was thought behind it. That they were intent on creating a better film.
[00:21:16] Tim: This was the second film in Universal’s, monster movies. Dracula was first, and this was the second one. There were a lot of things left out of this one that were filmed.
[00:21:27] Donna: The production cost is somewhere between 262 and $291,000.
Uh, the opening weekend in the US the closest I got was in the first two weeks the film was out. It made $53,000. You know, thinking about that being in depression era, to me that makes it more, oh, that’s more than you might think it would get. The total, at the end of the release of it in, in the thirties was around 1.4 million.
Now, by 1953, the movie had been rereleased and out, and of course the franchise had grown. With several other films and things, it had earned an around 12 to 13 million. So, you know, universal is still profiting from it because everybody and their brother has tried to make an adaptation of either the film or the book.
[00:22:20] Rebekah: Well, because, you know, I can’t help myself. I looked up an inflation calculator to see what that would be now.
[00:22:27] Tim: Yeah,
[00:22:28] Rebekah: take a wild guess
[00:22:29] Tim: what, 1.4 million or what, what they co, what it costs
[00:22:32] Rebekah: 1.4 million in 1931 to 2026. What would it be now?
[00:22:37] Tim: Gracious, that would have to be a billion.
[00:22:39] Rebekah: Actually not. It is almost $30 million.
[00:22:43] Tim: Wow. So 30 times.
[00:22:45] Rebekah: Yeah. So if they spent $275,000 on it, that would be 5.9 million. So they, they five Xed. What they spent, which I mean you can do from the original math, but I just think comparing it to today’s numbers is helpful for me. ’cause we talk a lot about budgets today, but 290 something thousand dollars sounds like essentially $0 when you talk now about it.
[00:23:10] Tim: Guess the year that it was first re-released at theaters?
[00:23:15] Rebekah: Ooh, 19 54,
[00:23:19] Donna: 45.
[00:23:19] Tim: It was 1934 just before the bride of Frankenstein.
[00:23:23] Rebekah: It was filmed in Universal Studios. I mean, you should probably know that ’cause I’ve mentioned that there’s a bunch of Frankenstein stuff at Universal. One of the most well-known films scenes when the Monster encounters Maria by the Lakeside.
Uh, they were actually at Malibu Lake in Agora Hills, California.
[00:23:40] Tim: Apparently there were several issues, however, with the film in some of the scenes. In the original 1931 film.
[00:23:51] Donna: So one was the scene where the monster throws Maria in the lake, her drowning, which, which was accidental. I mean, the film, that’s the way it’s portrayed.
But this was very controversial even so far as to go, uh, the second half of it was actually cut from the original release by state censorship boards in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.
[00:24:17] Tim: So here, this is what, the second half, the part that was cut and wasn’t put back in for decades. Um, they’re doing the flowers.
The monster sees the flowers floating and they’re playing together. He throws the little girl in the water thinking she’ll float or, or something like that, and she doesn’t. And the part that’s left in is they’re playing with flowers and then. The girl’s father is carrying her body.
[00:24:50] Josiah: It was not until the early eighties that they discovered that film strip in the British National Archive, it was restored to subsequent prints of the film.
We mention that this was a pre-code film, the Hayes code. Which was put into effect in 1934 before we had pg and r rated this, that system, every movie had to obey the haze code. Here’s what you couldn’t do, pointed profanity, any licentious or suggestive nudity the illegal traffic of drugs.
[00:25:29] Rebekah: Well, what about the legal traffic of drugs though?
[00:25:32] Josiah: Hmm. Maybe you could not feature white slavery. Interracial relationships we’re not allowed scenes of actual childbirth, venereal diseases, willful offense to any nation race or creed. Any, so that’s good. Right?
[00:25:50] Rebekah: Oh wow. Oh, sure.
[00:25:51] Josiah: And ridicule of the clergy. So dad’s safe and there are some, be careful as I won’t go through all of them, but be careful.
Special care must be exercised with the following, the use of the flag, uh, religious ceremonies, arson, the use of firearms, actual hangings or electrocutions, sedition, first night scenes, the use of legal drugs. There you go. Yeah. So the haze code was in, was, uh, put into effect in 1934. And, you know, before that, dad mentioned that it was on a state by state level that the movie was getting censored.
So, 1934 Universal had to make the cuts on a national basis, including to the lake scene.
[00:26:37] Rebekah: So those three states, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, with the censorship boards and all of that stuff, they wanted to add a line during dialogue between Victor and Henry, uh, because they feel, felt like the existence of the, the dialogue as it stood was blasphemous.
So the dialogue in the film. Victor says Henry in the name of God and Henry says, in the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God. And they again wanted some line to like clarify that it was blasphemy to say such a thing. Now that is in the film. So I assume that those request the film happen that we saw,
[00:27:15] Josiah: which could have been
[00:27:16] Rebekah: restored the night.
Well, that’s true. The, it could have been ’cause the film has been discovered at this point,
[00:27:19] Josiah: but also I bet they kept it in.
[00:27:21] Donna: In addition to those three states wanting certain things cut out. Kansas wanted to cut 32 scenes out of the film, which would’ve slashed it in half.
[00:27:33] Tim: Bella Lago, who had played Dracula, had shown some interest in playing the part of Henry Frankenstein.
He was enjoying his success from Count Dracula, but an initial producer who had pegged him to play the Monster, when they gave him the first copies of the scripts, Laci said, no, I do not want to play that. I, I’m a star. And this monster is simply mute. So I’m not going to play a scarecrow in this film.
Although LA lost the offer after, uh, staff and ownership changes occurred. There was change in producer and all that stuff. By the time Boris Karloff portrayed the creature, the story in character had changed significantly.
[00:28:19] Rebekah: Well, we are gonna move on to the second film. Uh, this one we have a little less to say, but we’ll share what we found.
Um, this is the 1994 film directed by Kenneth Brano. Uh, this film kind of stands out number one to me, this film, which is officially called Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Um, it is very similar, in my opinion, to the nineties version of Dracula that was like very nineties coded. Um, it, you know, it’s very, very obvious when that film is from when you watch it.
But it was one of the biggest in terms of releases I think like, um, like up until recently. And so it is definitely, it stands as one of the iconic versions. ’cause like if you ever are, if you have like an Apple TV and you look up Frankenstein, there’s a zillion of them and there’s a zillion ways that like, kind of the vague idea is then used to create something else.
So, um, a few differences in this one as well.
[00:29:20] Donna: One difference that drove me just a little wacky because it was over the top done. Kenneth Brando’s, bare Chest is everywhere, all through this movie. Anytime they get the opportunity, Kenneth has his shirt off and I’m like, come on. I mean, that’s fine for some, I mean, it’s not that you can’t see him without a shirt on, but I’m like, okay.
When you’ve been working really hard on the monster and you’re all pumped up, blah, blah, blah. Then it shows you waking up in the morning and you’re all pumped up, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, come on, let’s get real. And Brandau directed it. He made those choices as well, starring it. So it’s like,
[00:30:06] Josiah: ugh. The monster in this movie is much more grotesque than Shelly describes.
Uh, there’s a lot of body horror in this version of the film. I looked at the monster and thought, oh my goodness, that that could totally be Robert De Niro. I know it’s not, but it totally could be. And I looked up, it’s Robert De Niro. I waited till the end of the film and it’s Robert De Niro.
[00:30:29] Donna: Oh, you didn’t know?
No.
[00:30:32] Josiah: I thought it was some guy who looked kind of like Robert De Niro. I didn’t think he would’ve ever played the creature. I feel like that’s so out of typecast for him.
[00:30:41] Donna: I will just say I wasn’t super convinced with his performances. The monster, like other iterations we’ve watched with other people portraying the monster, they were more believable to me for what my mind had pictured this monster would be.
He came across so awkward to me.
[00:31:03] Rebekah: Well, this is also the first time in a lot of the adaptations until possibly the 20 25 1 where the monster also becomes displayed or portrayed very sympathetically. I wonder if part of like De Niro’s affectations might’ve just been because of that. I don’t know. That’s a possibility.
Like maybe it just didn’t translate as well.
[00:31:25] Tim: In this version, the creature murders, Victor’s father instead of his friend Henry Clavell.
[00:31:32] Rebekah: Henry Clare doesn’t die in this version, right?
[00:31:37] Tim: Correct.
[00:31:37] Rebekah: In the versions where he shows up and in the book he does, he is killed either by the monster or has some other death.
[00:31:44] Tim: Yes.
[00:31:44] Donna: And, and the film was full of stars. I, I mean mm-hmm. It was full of,
[00:31:49] Tim: or at least people who would become Yeah.
[00:31:51] Donna: Who would become stars. Yeah, for sure.
[00:31:53] Rebekah: And I will say, leading up to the next change we’re gonna discuss, when we first started the film and I saw the person playing Elizabeth, I said, why is Helena Bonum Carter doing this role?
She’s supposed to just be this like sweet and beautiful, uh, you know, whatever, like this Elizabeth character. And then we discovered why
[00:32:14] Josiah: Elizabeth is resurrected briefly after the creature kills her, and she becomes this patchwork Tim Burton esque bride of Frankenstein for a scene. And then you see, oh, yes, Helen, a Bono Carter there is what she wanted to do with this movie.
Mm.
[00:32:34] Donna: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:35] Rebekah: Just the, the like hair, just the way they did her, like weird fried off, balding hair. It was horrifying.
[00:32:45] Donna: Uh, the film ends with Franken son’s corpse and a monster sailing out in the Arctic waters in on a raft. And in full view of the sailors, the monster sets himself and Victor on fire. And so that’s kind of a, an interesting way for them to end together.
[00:33:04] Tim: It’s a nice drift with a funeral fire, the wooden fire for the body. Uh, and they’re both on it.
[00:33:12] Donna: Well, thank you Peter Jackson for making that all Lord of the Rings for me.
[00:33:17] Tim: So what’d you think about this one?
[00:33:18] Rebekah: I had a hard time not picking up my phone, which is a sign for me that a film has not like grabbed me in some way.
I honestly will blame it a little bit though on the fact that this whole nineties coded thing. Where everything’s kind of gross and weird in this, like it’s a very nineties thing, like I don’t mind eighties movies. I don’t mind movies from like the early two thousands and on like even some older stuff I don’t have like a huge problem with, and I can, I can get through it.
There was this like section of the nineties where every movie I just, I hated the way it was done. Like I just hated it. I guess. Some of it’s eighties and like late eighties, early to mid nineties. So like think of Dune and the gross guy coming out of the liquid and then think about in Dracula what he looked like when he was aging.
And then think in Frankenstein. It’s just that weird.
[00:34:08] Tim: So pushing, pushing grotesque envelopes
[00:34:11] Rebekah: sort of, because I don’t
[00:34:12] Tim: see how far the audience is willing to. Let you go,
[00:34:17] Rebekah: maybe because I don’t mind like grotesque, gory things in some contexts in current movies. It’s just the way it was filmed.
[00:34:27] Donna: I couldn’t get away from hearing my son in my ear going, Kenneth Brandau makes pretty movies, but he’s not a good director.
I couldn’t get that outta my head. And so the whole time we were watching it, I’m like, Kenneth Brandow directed this. And there were some moments of it that were pretty, there was some visually interesting things in the movie that, that’s true. It didn’t, it wasn’t like a complete bomb for me. But I did think there were some elements that didn’t resonate with me, and I hate that Robert De Niro being in it was such a weird thing for me, but that’s just literally a personal opinion thing.
So
[00:35:06] Tim: it was not my favorite version. I, there were several things about it that kept distracting me from the story
[00:35:12] Rebekah: Producer Francis Ford Coppola. Who 20 years earlier directed The Godfather, I almost said Dracula. He wanted to direct as a companion piece to Brahm Stoker’s Dracula directed by him, which is probably why these films maybe have like, maybe why they have so many similarities, like, or at least feel that way.
’cause he was still the producer. He stepped away to let Brenna direct the film. But he did say that he later regretted the decisions because, uh, he had some creative differences with Brenna that never got resolved.
[00:35:48] Donna: Brenna makes pretty pictures. That’s not what Coppola wanted.
[00:35:52] Tim: Well, apparently De Niro studied stroke victims to get inspiration on the creature’s speech.
Struggling to emerge from his stitched together lips. I felt like his skin was a constant distraction. To me. It all looked paper thin. It just looked like it was, if he had opened his mouth, it should have ripped. Everything should have ripped apart. I couldn’t stop watching that.
[00:36:17] Donna: And then another aesthetic change, which I’m not sure gave the intended outcome.
Normally as seen as a comic actor, John Cleese, who played a scientist, one of Victor’s, uh, professors at the university in the film was given prosthetics to make him look more serious. I, I wondered if maybe it was to try to not make him look so much like John Clea or something. I’m not sure why it. It was odd when he was talking, but then when he dies and he’s laying on the table, the his mouth is like back over the teeth and it, I couldn’t even think about what’s going on in the scene.
It was so distracting.
[00:37:03] Josiah: Oh, that’s okay. You know, the amniotic fluid that the creature was brought to life in an extended sequence in the film,
[00:37:12] Tim: in addition to any of the previous stories.
[00:37:15] Josiah: Yeah. Dr. Frankenstein like pulled the creature, or he fell out into this amniotic fluid, and they were just for an extended period of time kind of slipping and falling in the fluid.
And I think Bobby De Niro was nude except for prosthetics covering his entire body. Turns out that amniotic fluid was boiling Gelatin. Uh.
[00:37:45] Rebekah: Gross.
[00:37:46] Donna: Alright. You’ve had time revisit my question. What was the point of that scene? It was horrifically disgusting and I need to know why you would put it in there.
[00:37:56] Tim: The 1990s apparently was looking for the way to gross the audience out.
[00:38:03] Donna: Well, they grossed this audience out
[00:38:05] Tim: for all the world. It just looked like a wrestling scene in pudding or jello or mud. It just was it, it was just weird. It was, and it was so long.
[00:38:22] Rebekah: All right, we’re gonna briefly touch on a version that you probably didn’t expect us to do.
Uh, this one was released in 2004, director’s last name, Connor. And this was produced by, shall I say, the purveyor of the world’s most iconic. Horror films. And this two part mini series, not only features actors that you would recognize, but is also the closest to the source material of all the versions of the film Frankenstein, when compared to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
That’s our, that’s right. I am talking about the Hallmark Edition. Yeah, I don’t, of course, you’re, I literally, like, I kept looking that up on Google because I kept thinking I was misremembering because it never made sense to me. So
[00:39:11] Donna: without
[00:39:12] Tim: a, before they had their own channel. Well, in this version, um, the creature is presented as less violent.
Um, he’s a tone down version. Of course that could have been because it was made for tv. He has a lot of characteristics, reminiscent of Shelly’s original writing, thoughtful, trying to make friends You.
[00:39:36] Donna: There are two additional sex scenes that aren’t in other works with Elizabeth and Victor, and then there’s also the creature watching Felix and Agatha for some, again, unknown reason why somebody would choose to have him do that.
[00:39:56] Tim: I think it was because he didn’t know where he came from and so he discovered where babies come from.
[00:40:04] Donna: Yeah,
[00:40:05] Tim: I guess. And where, and he learned language and all of that from this group of people as he was secretly observing their life.
[00:40:14] Donna: Hmm, I’ll, I’ll accept that as an answer, but it was, it was definitely interesting.
[00:40:19] Tim: I don’t think it was supposed to be salacious. The first one was probably more salacious.
[00:40:25] Josiah: Uh, it seems in this version that the creature kills William by accident rather than in a violent, intentional rage, which could have been inspired by the 1931 film, of course. But, uh, I, I, I feel like it’s cowardly that Mary Shelly’s intent for the monster purposefully killing William, I feel like has seldom been accurately portrayed on screen.
[00:40:56] Donna: In general. My, my overall impression was having seen the 1931 film, which was an hour and 10 minutes. Then the 94 movie, which was a full length feature, but you know, a little over two hours. This did not keep my attention enough that I was like so excited to see the second part. Like we wa I watched it. I mean, I, I watched both parts, but it could flush out the story more, but it just didn’t grab me.
[00:41:24] Rebekah: You guys, I think were the only ones that saw this version, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I saw a lot of videos on YouTube that were like, people were very, that, you know, impressed by how closely it follow the source material. But I do think it’s interesting ’cause I wonder, and I don’t, I mean I named this podcast, the book is better, obviously I, my opinion is usually clear.
But I wonder if one of the things that maybe that communicates is that following the plot of a book to, its like closest manner. Is just not necessarily the best way to adapt the story.
[00:42:01] Tim: This one was probably about three hours runtime, uh, because it was made for TV and two parts would not mean four hours because you’ve got all the commercials.
That’s the other part for me. The commercial breaks were so evident to me. You know, it’s almost like somebody, they end their sentence and you know that there’s a commercial
[00:42:26] Donna: and it cuts sharply.
[00:42:27] Tim: Yeah. It’s just the, the cuts because of that are uncomfortable when you watch it now,
[00:42:33] Rebekah: which I think is true for most, you know, things that fall in that way.
You know, like most things that were made for tv, when you watch it without commercials, it just feels uncomfortable, you know? Alright, moving right along to the final version that we wanna talk about, um, before we share a little bit with you about, uh, what we thought about all this and some mini games and the worst movie that’s ever been made.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, uh, we’re gonna talk about the 2025 Guillermo del Toro. Um, now this Frankenstein, I must say, is maybe one of the most confusing movies in some ways that we’ve ever covered because. Why was this movie released on Netflix only? And then how did it get nominated for an Oscar?
[00:43:21] Donna: There was a limited release.
It was released at the theater.
[00:43:24] Tim: First
[00:43:24] Donna: it was a limited release,
[00:43:26] Rebekah: just enough they could get an Oscar. But then if it was that good, why wouldn’t you just make it a full theatrical release? Well, whatever. Um, all right. So let’s talk about some of the notable differences here. First of all, in this one, a lot more time is spent on and around Captain Walton’s ship.
There are a lot more scenes than you get in the book. It’s really because it’s that like found footage type of style with the letters. Walton like talks at the very beginning and very end, but you’re not getting like plot from him, but like. The creature kills members of the crew. The creature gets to physically tell his side of the story.
There’s a lot more nuance in Walton and things going on with his crew, and so they made that more of a thing. I did look it up too. It they also changed the time slightly to be later in the 18 hundreds because it coincided with a war and the ship was out specifically to do with this other war or something like that.
So
[00:44:19] Tim: one of the notable differences in the Deltoro film is that Victor is abused by his horrible father in this version, which is really strange because in the book, he is a son of privilege. He’s loved very much and given all sorts of latitude. So this is a strange addition. Oh no. It was a terrible father that caused him to do this.
[00:44:43] Josiah: Elizabeth is completely different. She is Lady Elizabeth Lander. An entomologist with a direct relationship to the creature. There’s no adoption orphan aspect like the book or previous movies. This Elizabeth is simply there to be a love triangle member.
[00:45:07] Donna: I thought that the whole idea of her being orphaned and them taking her in and her and Victor growing up as dear friends, I thought that was cool.
Like, I thought that was a cool idea, but, so I didn’t know why they left this. Um, there is an added character, uh, Elizabeth’s uncle, and they, he’s known as Harle. He’s an arms dealer and an army surgeon that, uh, oh,
[00:45:32] Rebekah: he’s the worst.
[00:45:35] Tim: Sorry, which actor plays him? Tell me what you really think.
[00:45:37] Rebekah: That really weird guy with the, I don’t know what this boy sounds like.
I can’t describe it. Like I just, he has this like lip and mouth thing going on in every like part he plays, but I don’t know. Yeah. Peter
[00:45:49] Josiah: Petru, a
[00:45:50] Donna: Coof and mouth disease.
[00:45:51] Rebekah: All I’m gonna say is I was not a big fan of Harle. I felt like he was such a weird added part and like he seemed to be a plot device to explain how Frankenstein had access to equipment rather than just letting him have access to equipment at school, which was I believe the book, which made more sense.
And so it was like, how does he have access to a house? And then let’s introduce him to Elizabeth. Except why do we need someone to introduce him to Elizabeth? Why does she have to be this different person? Anyway, I just thought it was weird.
[00:46:23] Josiah: Now, and do I remember correctly that Har or in the movie with British accents, it was all Hollander.
Hollander. Hollander. Yeah. So I was like, I guess his name is Holland. Like he’s from Holland. Uh, he dies in the process of making the creature, and then it’s an, I feel like it’s never really paid off of anyone, like finding the body and being a horrified. It’s just like, okay, well he died.
[00:46:51] Tim: He wanted Frankenstein to be successful so that he could put his brain into a new body ’cause he was dying.
[00:47:00] Josiah: Henry Larval is eliminated from the story altogether. I’d say that Har kind of replaces him in a very vague, roundabout way, but no, John Cleese with prosthetics in this movie.
[00:47:12] Tim: Henry Cvo is his friend in the book and the films that he is in, he’s not in all of them. He plays the role of Victor’s conscience.
He’s the most moral of the people there.
[00:47:27] Donna: Genuinely cares. He’s a solid guy.
[00:47:30] Tim: Yeah. I’m sorry that they didn’t include him. ’cause I think that left most everybody else in the film. You couldn’t have cared less. In this version, the creature is chained in the basement of Frankenstein’s rented castle for weeks on end.
Thank you Dr. Frankenstein. Uh, versus being left when Frankenstein runs away from him immediately after creating him. So in one, he’s completely uncaring and leaves him the other, he’s. Abusive.
[00:48:03] Josiah: That is how it happens in the novel, isn’t it? He immediately abandons the creature.
[00:48:07] Tim: Yes, it is the strangest part of the entire story.
[00:48:11] Donna: It wrecks my brain.
[00:48:13] Tim: The strange thing. One of worst
parts.
[00:48:15] Tim: Parts of the
[00:48:15] Josiah: novel.
[00:48:16] Rebekah: Yes. It doesn’t, I was listening to it. I think I was literally showering, literal shower and so like rinse my hand and I kept like going back in the audiobook because I was like, I missed something. I, my head must have been underwater and then I rewound and I was like, no, it just doesn’t make sense, I guess.
Okay. Whatever the case, my best guess is that as an author she maybe thought that she really did something there. Like thought she accomplished something really impressive and like that she stated it in a way that was really impactful and that you would pick up on and I just, it didn’t actually work,
[00:48:49] Donna: but.
Unlike the weird decision Mary Shelley made in the 2025 film, Victor is the villain all throughout the creature hurts people, but it feels as if the point was justified. He’s justified in these things, poor, poor creature. And I think that’s similar to what they were doing with Robert De Niro too. And I don’t know, I, it, it was, it was missing
[00:49:16] Tim: when they gave Victor a terrible childhood.
It was to make sure we understood that because he was a hurt person. He lived his life hurting people.
[00:49:28] Rebekah: So another thing that changed this version for some reason is that the creature and Elizabeth have a very awkward romance. They fall in love. Why it’s not long. By romantic. By what? Romantic. I thought I was literally misreading what was going on.
’cause I was like, there’s just no way. It feels like romantic, but like they’re not. Why would they? What do you mean? I was shook if like I, it bothered me that I was like, no, it seems romantic, but though it can’t be Right. I’m misreading it. No, it is, it’s romantic.
[00:50:10] Donna: Yeah, they definitely took a turn there that nothing else I watched.
None of them took that turn. All of them have Elizabeth grieved over Henry or Victor, whatever his name is, and worried about him and all and repulsed by the creature and all that. Yeah, this was definitely a departure from
[00:50:29] Josiah: that. Elizabeth ends up getting off, uh, in a similar but wholly different way than the source material.
So in the source material, basically the creature promises. Dr. Frankenstein, Hey, your wedding night is gonna be a tragedy, and Victor is so consumed. Thinking that it’s gonna be the creature attacking him, Victor, that he lets his guard down on Elizabeth. And I think a similar thing happens in the movie where Victor, maybe with less forewarning, is worried about the creature coming to kill him.
But I guess it’s the creature coming to run away with Elizabeth or something. And Victor tries to shoot the creature, but instead, Elizabeth jumps in front of the bullet and dies. Saving the creature’s life earning Jacob, I lordy an Oscar nomination.
[00:51:30] Rebekah: Here’s all I have to say about this. I don’t understand why this was the point, but it was very clear from that scene that essentially the film decided that Frankenstein was a bad guy.
The creature wasn’t really a bad guy. So then they had to like change a hundred million other things to make it fit in. And this was one of them.
[00:51:53] Donna: This movie was released for a short theatrical show on August 30th, 2025 at the Venice Film Festival. And then on October 17th, they had a short release in the us and then on November 7th, 2025, it premiered on Netflix.
The Rotten Tomato score for this film is 85%. IMDB gives it 7.5 out of 10, just a little below that. The Flixter audience score 94 production cost was 12 million. Does that seem low?
[00:52:26] Josiah: It seems low, yeah.
[00:52:27] Donna: Yeah. I mean, I found something that set a box office of like 480 K. It was in the theater purely to get the Oscar buzz going, get Oscar possibilities.
It was rated R. It’s a little bit, I found out about it. Doesn’t it sound like we completely line up with that audience score?
[00:52:50] Rebekah: I had seen the Rotten Tomatoes and the audience score, and I expected to adore this film, but I mean, okay, here’s the hard part. I had never read Frankenstein before this. I think I probably, in this case, just like I disliked the film more once I had finished the book, because again, why are you taking a story that was written and made to be a certain thing and then you change one of the most in important like core themes of that story.
You make a different person the villain. It’s like, can you just make a good story? Can you just make a good film? Why? Why do we have to reinterpret? You know what I mean? But I’m not a filmmaker. Who the heck knows?
[00:53:34] Josiah: Well, I know it was filmed in Scotland, Edinburg, Glasgow, Aberdeen. Sure. England, Lincolnshire and Wiltshire.
Royal Mile in Edinburg. Gosford House in East Loath. And the Canadian, Rocky,
[00:53:53] Rebekah: not the Canadian Rocky.
[00:53:54] Donna: Okay. Alright, baby listener. Let me share with you. I look this information up. Okay. This is part of something and I like doing it. One reason I got so detailed with this was the 1931 film, which was what we were most comparing it with.
It was filmed in Universal Studios and then they did just a very small number of action scenes like there in Malibu Beach and whatever. And I just found it so interesting when I read where all they filmed, they were like everywhere. I was trying to figure out did I see that many different places like.
Could they not have pared it down? And then I saw the $12 million production cost. I was like, what?
[00:54:40] Tim: There are places like their home, the school that he went to, the lab that he went to, and they may have found places that were very close to what they wanted without having to do a lot.
[00:54:52] Donna: Yeah. And Del Toro, you know, whatever.
[00:54:54] Rebekah: So speaking of practical things, Frankenstein’s Lab and Captain Anderson’s ship were built in full and to size. Del Toro stated, I don’t want digital, I don’t want ai, I don’t want simulation. I want old fashioned craftsmanship. Now I will say, I actually, I, I don’t always notice stuff like this in films. To be totally fair, I think that I really did notice this when we were watching.
I remember thinking that the ship itself, like it felt more like a real set than I feel like a lot of things do like. Watching modern television and, and film and stuff. I feel like there’s so many times where I can tell something isn’t real. It like feels a little too fake. And this actually did FI felt what he was going for.
[00:55:41] Tim: Well, apparently before I Lorde took the role of the creature or the monster or whatever we want to call him, Andrew Garfield was first cast to be the creature, but he had to back out due to some scheduling conflicts, which feeds into what Josiah said a few moments ago. Now, a Lordy is the only actor to have portrayed the monster who has been nominated for an Oscar
[00:56:06] Donna: Del Toro floated a plan to make this film into a trilogy, focusing a film on Victor, a film on the Creature, and one on Captain Robert Walton.
Horrible. Your general thoughts about this
[00:56:21] Josiah: horrible idea.
[00:56:24] Donna: I knew the answer already.
[00:56:27] Rebekah: I, yeah,
[00:56:29] Donna: I der it from the source material.
[00:56:31] Josiah: I think that the part with the creature is the best part of the movie where it’s from his point of view, but like the entire first half from Victor’s point of view was insufferable at almost every turn.
And Captain Robert Walton, I like the ending of his story where he decides not to keep trudging forth into the Arctic. But other than that, I would cut him from the novel as well as all the movies.
[00:57:02] Rebekah: Really. So you didn’t like the structure of him being like, the introduction anyway?
[00:57:07] Josiah: No, I think it, it immediately turned me off in the 2025 film.
And then when I started reading and I, ’cause I actually watched that months earlier for just Oscar prep and then when I started reading the novel, I’m like, this is from the novel. Ugh.
[00:57:25] Rebekah: Yeah. It is kind of weird.
[00:57:26] Josiah: What it does for me is lowers the stakes of the whole thing. You start with this framing device where let’s, let’s say in the 2025 film in particular, but also in the novel for most of this happens, Dr.
Victor is taken on board, captain Robert Walton’s ship and he’s freaking out man. And I think the creature is in the distance. Maybe he starts, uh, beating up the ship a little bit and then he eventually like kills some of the sailors. And while all of this is happening is when Dr. Victor has chosen to describe his ponderous biography.
And I’m like, oh, okay. So you’re not in mortal danger. You have time for a little campfire story with Robert Walton. Uh, it completely takes away all the stakes for me, uh, in, in both novel and movie. I do think the movie is worse about it, but the novel makes just about as much sense to me.
[00:58:36] Rebekah: I really wanted to like this movie.
I was really excited to see it. I loved the previews. I had gotten into, into the book enough to know that I was gonna, you know, that I liked the story. And like I said, I, I like, like I watched the film, I was pretty engaged. It kept my attention, which was like obviously the first win. Um, but I felt myself like feeling weird about it from the start because I was like, I don’t like Victor.
Like, I really don’t like Victor. I really didn’t like Elizabeth. I really didn’t like, gosh, I can’t think of his name now. Har Harbinger? No, har Har
[00:59:13] Tim: Har
[00:59:15] Donna: Harbinger. I didn’t like Harbinger.
[00:59:17] Rebekah: I didn’t like Harbinger. Um, I just, you liked
[00:59:19] Donna: him so much. He changed his name. That’s good. I like
[00:59:22] Rebekah: that. Yeah. I wasn’t a, I just wasn’t a big fan of a lot of the characters.
I expected to inter like, to connect with. Obviously you connect with the Monster and that’s all fine. And then I think I just, I got done and then I went to read the rest of the book and I was like, this is better. Like, this makes more sense. I felt like Del Toro was trying to say something, but I don’t know that, I think it was a relevant thing that he needed to say and I, it bothered me how sad you were for everything that happened to the creature, like.
When Delacey’s family like killed, tried to kill him. And like all of that stuff happened because it was like the most heartbreaking thing. But I just, I, it wasn’t supposed to feel that way. Like, you were supposed to be scared in this story. You weren’t supposed to feel bad for the thing that was scaring you.
And so, yeah, I just, I thought it was really annoying.
[01:00:18] Donna: So as we kinda move toward a conclusion, wanted to take a moment for a mini game. The first part of the mini game is kind of just, uh, it’s, it’s a stat. We, not intentionally, but we were filmed this episode just after. The movie The Bride released and um, some other scheduling things come up, came up.
And so we, we ended up moving it to, to record, uh, the weekend after the bride came out. And good. We saw, you know, there, there was a lot of hype about it. I’ve seen trailer for it forever and whatever, so we went to see it. We thought it was horrible. Not gonna spend a ton of time on that. The budget for the film though was about just over $90 million the first weekend.
They hit a $7 million opening. I’ve read several things now that have talked about like walkouts. People just got up and left. The only reason I think we’d stayed was because we were hoping that there’d be something redeeming about it. Uh, I just wanted to mention that made me think of something. Do you know the film that’s considered at this point to have been the largest?
Loss for a production company?
[01:01:37] Josiah: Just overall.
[01:01:38] Donna: Yeah.
[01:01:38] Josiah: Well one of them would be John Carter of Mars.
[01:01:42] Donna: That’s it. It it’s still considered to hold the highest loss for a production company. They cited some other things. They cited some Disney things.
[01:01:52] Josiah: Mars needs moms.
[01:01:54] Tim: They decided that any title that had Mars in it was a jinx for them.
[01:01:59] Josiah: Yeah. So
[01:02:00] Donna: yeah, ‘
[01:02:01] Tim: cause because those two were terrible losses.
[01:02:04] Donna: But yeah, I just wanted to throw that out. My personal recommendation, and I’m pretty sure my other fellow podcasters agree. Don’t go see the bride. If you wanna take a shot when it comes out in streams and you already pay for the service, I mean, you can try to watch it, but if you liked it, come and tell us and we’ll try to see if we can get medications.
Comment,
[01:02:25] Josiah: comment on Apple
[01:02:26] Donna: Podcasts. Comment somehow. Yes. That you like the bride. Yeah, yeah, I do. You do that? Oh, Jesus.
[01:02:33] Rebekah: I agree that we probably shouldn’t talk about it for a long time ’cause obviously this episode’s not about the bride. But I will say it was one of the most disappointing movies that I had been looking forward to, that I’ve seen in a long time.
And I think that honestly, even the good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes even captured some of what I had a problem with. A lot of it was ideological in nature. She was trying to say something very strongly and it made her look like an idiot. And I’m glad she said it as stupidly as she did. ’cause it made her argument look very dumb.
But in addition to the ideological stuff, that was very preachy. I also agree with so many of the reviewers and I, I just don’t understand like, why are you trying to do that many things at one time, she’s trying to take five movies and smush them into one movie, and so none of the things that she was trying to do actually work.
[01:03:25] Donna: It’s sad because, uh, I did enjoy Christian Bale’s performance.
[01:03:29] Rebekah: I thought that he did an impressive job. That’s fair.
[01:03:31] Donna: I thought, I thought he was a good creature. Mini game, part 2, 20 20 fives. Frankenstein and Sinners are the ninth and 10th horror films nominated that have ever been nominated for a best picture.
O Oscar Horror doesn’t, that genre just doesn’t usually hit that category.
[01:03:50] Rebekah: It’s usually campy.
[01:03:51] Donna: Can you name any of the other eight?
[01:03:54] Rebekah: My only guess is Silence of the Lambs.
[01:03:57] Donna: Okay. Tim, would you have another thought?
[01:03:59] Tim: I would say that’s, that’s probably one that has won. It would not surprise me to to find out that the comical version of Frankenstein.
Was nominated.
[01:04:09] Josiah: Young Frankenstein.
[01:04:11] Tim: Young Frankenstein.
[01:04:11] Donna: It was, I’m sorry, and I’m only looking at Best Picture, so it could have gotten other, other nominations. I don’t know.
[01:04:18] Josiah: Silence of the Lambs is the one that won best picture. It was a bit of a surprise. It won the Big five, which it was only like the third movie to do that.
It was picture director, screenplay, lead actor, lead actress. Um, yeah, not many films have done that. Might be that a film hasn’t done it since, but I’m thinking of a couple others like the Substance last year.
[01:04:45] Donna: That is one That’s
[01:04:46] Josiah: good. And probably get out.
[01:04:48] Donna: Yeah.
[01:04:49] Josiah: And I would be surprised if something like The Exorcist or Blair Witch Project jumped on there.
[01:04:56] Donna: Exorcist from a 73. Yep.
[01:04:58] Josiah: Okay. Uh, Rosemary’s Baby.
[01:05:01] Donna: No.
[01:05:02] Josiah: Oh, maybe it Chapter one?
[01:05:04] Donna: No. Surprise. I would not have been surprised if that had been, uh, uh, there’s, uh, one that we have covered the book to film.
[01:05:14] Josiah: Yeah. Well, obviously it is. Um, uh, that 1D uh, Dracula
[01:05:20] Rebekah: The Shining?
[01:05:21] Donna: No,
[01:05:21] Josiah: the Shining. Oh, they didn’t like it if we covered
[01:05:25] Rebekah: another horror
[01:05:26] Josiah: film.
Sorry. They didn’t like Shining at the time.
[01:05:28] Donna: I didn’t think it was Horror Jaws.
[01:05:31] Josiah: Oh, yeah. At the time
[01:05:32] Donna: they thought about it as a horror film
[01:05:34] Josiah: that was very horror
[01:05:35] Donna: esque. Yeah. The other one, so you’ve hit all of them except, uh, there’s one from 19 99, 1 from 2010, and then the oldest one from 1944, which I’d never heard of.
I’ve heard of the rest of them. Uh, 1944, the first horror movie to be nominated was Gaslight. It was a black and white film, but I,
[01:05:56] Josiah: yeah, I don’t know that. Oh, does Rebecca count? That’s from 1940, I would say. That is dark. I was
[01:06:01] Donna: getting ready
[01:06:02] Josiah: to say your
[01:06:02] Donna: sister does count.
[01:06:04] Josiah: It
[01:06:04] Donna: wasn’t, it wasn’t one, but
[01:06:05] Josiah: I would consider that dark literary drama with thriller elements.
But I guess it’s not horror.
[01:06:12] Rebekah: I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me. ’cause I don’t know if that’s actually a horror movie.
[01:06:16] Josiah: It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s first major release. Got it. It won the Oscar in 1940. Wow. It’s with two C’s.
[01:06:25] Donna: Wonder if they considered it like thriller more or more suspenseful then, or I don’t know.
Um, so from 1999, the Sixth Sense.
[01:06:35] Josiah: Oh, okay. Do, oh, obviously.
[01:06:37] Rebekah: Interesting.
[01:06:39] Donna: And from 2010 Black Swan.
[01:06:43] Josiah: Yes.
[01:06:43] Donna: Yeah. So
[01:06:44] Josiah: both movies, everyone loved
[01:06:46] Rebekah: for this se session of Final Verdicts, let’s say, tell us, give us a rating for the book. And let’s just say like which film adaptation did you like the best? Um, I’ll go first.
Mine’s easy. I really enjoyed the book. I would say like eight outta 10 for me. I’ll reread it, which is wild. I’m not really a classics reread. I thought it was really interesting. I thought that it was nice to read something that wasn’t ideologically driven, which is not something you can say about a lot that’s been written recently.
I thought it was nice to read something about like the ills of scientific inquiry and what happens when you try to play God. I thought, you know, the themes were interesting and I enjoyed the story. Like I liked the characters. I felt bad when people died, that I cared about all that stuff. Honestly, I dunno that I’ve liked any of the films.
Um, I didn’t see the 2004, but I would say of the ones we saw, I liked 1994 the best. I thought that it was like the, what I would’ve expected the film to be like. More, and I hate it. ’cause the 2025, it was beautiful. Like it was so like beautifully crafted. But the story stuff, once I started thinking about it, it just annoyed me too much.
I couldn’t handle it. That’s my verdict.
[01:08:05] Donna: As far as my final verdict, I like the book. All right. This is the one where I listened to an audiobook reader who was literally horrible. He was a terrible reader.
[01:08:15] Rebekah: Didn’t you listen to one of the 18, 18 versions?
[01:08:18] Donna: Yes. There’s probably ai. It was the guy, was he the guy was he had an American accent.
Yes. So,
[01:08:25] Rebekah: yep.
[01:08:25] Donna: I started that when I hated it. Shoulda have heard it. I should have heard it in a British accent. I think I would’ve resonated with it more because I was thinking of it in a more Victorian setting. I, I probably could go back and listen to it with a better reader, but once I started I was like, look, I started, I’m gonna commit.
Let’s get to the end of it. Um, so it kind of, that kind of spoiled it for me as far as the films. Honestly seeing the first one because of the, the short length, an hour and 10 minutes, they told the story. You know, there was a lot of things about it just because of the period and the restrictions they had and compared to what movies can do now and all those things combined.
Still, this one more so than Dracula, I really thought I was gonna just love, love it, and I didn’t. But this one I was, the nostalgia of it was better for me. The others I didn’t mind. The others we watched, I would agree. Some of the things in the 2025 film that could have been changed just a little bit, and I would’ve possibly liked it a lot, but, you know, there was a miss there.
But, so that’s kind of my thing. I’ll, I’ll definitely say for the nostalgia of, of the piece. I would pick the 31 movie over the book and the other movies. Yeah, I think that’s fair to, that’s fair for me,
[01:09:54] Josiah: there is a Frankenstein play I have not seen in full sort of, I would have to do more research to figure out exactly what it was I saw.
Basically when I was in college, there was this big marketing campaign for Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, who were at the time Sherlock Holmes in Britain and American Television, weirdly. Yeah, it was like Johnny Lee Miller was Sherlock on a, b, c while Benedict was on the BBC Sherlock. They starred as Frankenstein and the creature and they switched roles every night.
Or something like that. They switched roles consistently. And the play, from what I understand of it, is my favorite adaptation of the novel. I think it’s better than the novel now. When I was a freshman in college, we were going, we were going to perform a Frankenstein play and it was quite good. And then, so sorry, Jeff Frame for exposing you like this and for anyone who was in school with me at the same time for opening old wounds, but on, I believe the morning before opening night, we realized that we did not have the rights to perform the show.
I think what happened was they just didn’t respond and. Running a theater like I do now. I can’t imagine going in like planning rehearsals for a show without having the rights. Uh, but yeah, our director was just like, yeah, it’ll just work itself out. I’m sure I’ll pay for the rights whenever they get back to me.
And then they’re like, oh no, we’re on like tour in America. We’re not giving out the rights to college or community theaters. So we didn’t perform the play, but it was quite good. It was pretty good production value for our little college. But the story, the script was quite good. So I have not experienced a story adaptation of Frankenstein that is better than that play.
I didn’t like the novel. I think the novel was a little coy about Dr. Frankenstein. The novel to me portrayed Victor as like, yeah, he’s done some awful things, but he never meant to be bad. It was just like accidents that happened and he, he was too consumed with science or something like that. Ultimately, I don’t really like any version that we covered.
Uh, yeah, the novel. I mean, it’s a classic, but, uh, maybe I’d give it a five outta 10. It’s just like the, the structure. It’s
[01:13:05] Rebekah: so interesting.
[01:13:06] Josiah: Well, I’m glad you liked it, and I think that there might have been a science fiction element to it that made you like it better than like Dracula or other classics. I
[01:13:15] Rebekah: do like hard sci-fi,
[01:13:16] Josiah: you like science stuff, so maybe that, maybe that is part of.
What helped you enjoy that. But, um, I, I didn’t like the framing device in the 2025 movie and the book, it immediately took me out of things. It immediately made me think, oh, okay, so Dr. Frankenstein and Captain Robert Walton aren’t in any danger ’cause they have time for an hour and a half slash a 10 hour story to be told.
So that didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. I think in the book and the 2025 movie, the best part was the Delacey cottage. Uh, it was beautiful to see the creature acclimate to humanity and befriend the old man, but then horrify his family, his heartbreaking. And you can see how that would turn you into a, a monster on the inside.
But, uh, I guess Kenneth Brando’s version is what I’d prefer. Like if I was showing anyone a film version, that would be the one I say. Yeah, that’s probably the closest to the novel and, and probably the least frustrating story, I would say the Kenneth Brandau version is the one I’d choose out of all of the stuff we’ve covered
[01:14:31] Tim: well down to me then, I suppose.
Um, I would say the 2004 Connor Hallmark miniseries probably does it, uh, best for me, partly because I think it is the most faithful adaptation of the book, which I really enjoyed. When I read it a few years back, I thought, wow, this is, this is really nice. I like this. This is not what I expected it to be, because I was used to the Frankenstein that I got to see as a child, used to the pictures of the 1930s Frankenstein, the movies of the seventies, one of which I watched during this whole process.
That’s Frankenstein to me. And so, uh, to read the book and then to see this film, I thought was, I thought was good. Like I said, it’s got its problems. You know, the, the film does. I don’t disagree with Josiah on the plot device where it’s a series of letters that the captain of the ship writes to his sister in this long narrative of Dr.
Frankenstein telling the story, but it didn’t take it out for me. I, I kind of dismissed that pretty quickly. Uh, gonna give numbers, I would say I would give the book a nine out of 10. I would give the Hallmark movie an eight out of 10. Uh, I would give the original probably a seven out of 10. They were, it was, it was good, but I would include.
Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein as a two part because the bride of Frankenstein took parts from the book that ha were missing in the first film. Um, and I appreciated that. That is a little bit off putting, uh, if you’re look watching it and thinking, okay, this is a drama. It’s like, okay, there’s a drama and there’s a comedian doing comedy routines sporadically through it.
That’s a little bit weird. That’s what I would do. I would also say, since we’ve been to Universal, the story that is just a tiny, tiny little story in Universal Dark Universe, uh, Frankenstein’s Castle, uh, its Monsters Unchained the Ride. The part before it. I thought that is a great Frankenstein story. Oh, good.
I would love to see that concept made into a movie, a new generation of Frankenstein. Doctor is trying to capture all of the other creatures, uh, from these monster movies and what, how they would be captured and what would happen. I think that that’s a very interesting concept. I would actually give that a nine out of 10 as well, um, and would love to see it developed if anybody ever watches or listens to, to those kinds of recommendations.
But here again, this was one that I suggested because I had read the book a few years ago and I was fascinated by how different the book was than most of the versions of the films that I’ve seen.
[01:17:43] Rebekah: Yeah, it’s an interesting one. There’s so many things that Frankenstein has created, like, you know, spawned the creation of, I guess, which is really appropriate.
I would say for what it is. So,
[01:17:54] Tim: yeah. If you look up a list, there’s about a hundred movies that have been made that are connected to the Frankenstein mythos.
[01:18:03] Rebekah: What’s the one that we almost watched that was the Teenage Girl and she’s like, Lisa Frankenstein. I wanna watch that one. It does seem interesting.
[01:18:13] Tim: It’s a little, it’s a little comical.
[01:18:15] Rebekah: Yeah.
[01:18:15] Tim: But dude coming of age not using, I think do watch Young Frankenstein can, can I give tiny bit of Truvia Young Frankenstein, they wanted to be so true to the original because their parody was a loving parody of the first Frankenstein movie, the 1931 version. They went so far as to get the set pieces for the lab from the 1931 movie.
They, they were able to acquire them, at least, one of which was an actual Tesla built. Creation. Oh, that, that in 1931, they had found and acquired this actual Tesla coil to use in the movie. And that was one of the pieces that was used in the Young Frankenstein parody. And they were, because they loved it so much, they said, I want as much of the, the original set pieces as possible.
So I thought that was an interesting little thing.
[01:19:19] Rebekah: It’s a cult classic for a reason. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, we’d enjoy your five star rating or review on your favorite podcast app and or YouTube. Uh, you should also, oh my gosh, it’s YouTube. Please comment and subscribe and ring the notification bell for new episodes dropping every other week.
Ah, uh, hey, we have a Patreon, so if you wanna support us, you can do that for some fun subscriber only content, including a discord or. Will it be a Discord much longer? Who knows? You can also find us on social at book is better pod and uh, social is probably the easiest place to send us feedback request episodes or just, you know, hang out.
I’m just saying we give preferential treatment to Patreon subs. That’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying. Every does it. You just gotta say it. You gotta be honest. So, uh, yeah, I don’t know. I’m doing the Donald Trump hand thing, which I think means it’s time to go. I think it’s time to go. So, uh, baby listeners, it was great to hang out with you and, uh, you’re alive because you’re listening to this.
It’s alive. It’s alive,
but. It’s happening.
[01:20:48] Music: That was the intro hour.
[01:20:52] Rebekah: Welcome to the episode.
[01:20:55] Music: It’s supposed to sound like the wolf man.
[01:20:58] Donna: Oh, sorry.