Frankenstein

I read this a few years back. The modern image of Frankenstein comes a lot from Karloff's interpretation of the monster. The Universal Frankenstein series did a brilliant job of capturing the romantic goth tone, which I find to be more gritty than in the vein of horror as it's commonly known. In the opening for Bride of Frankenstein, the Mary Shelley/Percey Shelley conflict is pretty funny for those who know of the authors surrounding these works. Something that amused me about the book is that it's told fourth-hand for that little bit of chapters. It reminds me of Grounded For Life, when they flash back within a flashback.

There was a time period there when female authors that wrote gothic romance were really popular. I'm really anxious to dig into more of this type, as with many other things.

I agree that the film image and the book (Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus is the full title) are enjoyable for different reasons. The recent Beowulf movie took severe liberties from the old poem, for instance, which in my opinion brought some new ideas but didn't devalue the original work. Frankenstein is somewhat sympathetic early on in the Universal series, but audiences took him as a villain so the producers might've dropped a lot of his human characteristics in response. In Bride of Frankenstein an old man (slightly similar to the old man in the book) teaches him to speak, but then he just stops talking in the later movies. Ygor (there are honestly multiple correct spellings of his name) appeared in Son of Frankenstein, my personal favorite. I think that might have been his introduction as having a relationship with Frankenstein, and maybe his introduction overall. I don't know the whole history - I just know Bela Lugosi played Ygor and Karloff handed the role of Frankenstein to some other guys afterwards.

One thing most people see in Shelley's book is that Victor goes through so much trauma for having cheated nature, but because of the violent portrayal people often characterize with the monster they fail to see how he's punished for merely being unnatural. The relationship between the criminal and the one slightly involved with the crime is always intriguing to me - it's echoed today in movies like Collateral, Se7en, V for Vendetta. Pretty much a huge chunk of our cinema. The relationship between the hero and the villain is always something that had to be intact for me if I was watching a movie, reading a book or even listening to a song.

I noticed that too. I read Shelly's Frankenstein in school. It amazing how often the books are completely deviated from in adaptations. LOTR, The Godfather, Oliver! even Harry Potter...nothing like the books.

It's surprising, isn't it? I feel as if the movie renditions' differences preserve the books and allow fans to retain their own respective images of it.

I kind of agree that when it deviates too much from the original that it shouldn't have the same title. There should maybe be a note like "Inspired by the Novel..."

The big ones for me are "The Bourne Identity" and "I Am Legend"

That's a matter of publicity. I wouldn't mind either way.