Editorials
‘Frankenstein’ Page to Screen: Guillermo del Toro’s Modern Updates of Mary Shelley’s Classic
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
We’re all familiar with Frankenstein. Or at least we think we are. Each October, we’re inundated with the iconic image of Boris Karloff’s scared and oddly rectangular face, accompanied by the electric hair of Elsa Lanchester’s reanimated Bride. Most of us can recite the bones of the story: Mad scientist creates a body pieced together from salvaged corpses. Lightning animates this monstrous man, and the scientist is tormented by the hellish figure he’s unleashed upon the world. In the two hundred years since Mary Shelley first published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, we’ve seen countless adaptations and homages, filtering the innovative tale through all manner of cultural lenses. In a new adaptation for Netflix, Guillermo del Toro recaptures the heart of Shelley’s original novel with an empathetic retelling of her foundational narrative. Bombastic, bold, and bloody, Frankenstein deviates significantly from its source material while bringing Shelley’s themes to the fore and updating the story for a modern audience.
Gods and Monsters
FRANKENSTEIN. Jacob Elordi as The Creature in Frankenstein. Cr. Ken Woroner/Netflix © 2025.
Shelley’s novel begins with several innocuous journal entries from Captain Robert Walton, currently helming a journey to the North Pole. En route, he crosses paths with a deranged Victor Frankenstein who tells him his side of the twisted story. Del Toro adds action to this snowy scene while introducing us to a ferocious beast. Rather than simply recounting his tale, del Toro’s Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is found clinging to life near a flaming ruin. As they struggle to transport the injured man back to the ship, Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) hears an inhuman roar from off in the distance. A Creature (Jacob Elordi) soon descends upon the ship, demanding they hand over their patient. Impossibly strong and impervious to bullets, he barrels through a sea of attacking sailors, killing six men with his bare hands. He can only be stopped when Anderson fires a mammoth blunderbuss into the ice at the Creature’s feet, sending him plummeting to the icy sea floor.
Shelley’s Monster may be eight feet tall and imbued with surprising power and strength, but he is not immortal. This significant change to the source material lends a modern filter to Shelley’s original warning. Once “born,” the Creature is here to stay, and no change of heart on Victor’s part can erase the painful life he’s created. Once the genie has been unleashed, it can’t be put back in the bottle. Not only a warning to reckless inventors, del Toro cautions against the spiraling damage sparked by unchecked innovation.
Fathers and Sons
Frankenstein. (L to R) Charles Dance as Leopold Frankenstein and Christian Convery as Young Victor in Frankenstein. Cr. Ken Woroner/Netflix © 2025.
Often nominally confused with his undead creation, Shelley’s Victor is a complex and tragic hero who suffers greatly at the hands of his ill-considered progeny. After an idyllic childhood in Geneva with his adopted sister Elizabeth (his cousin in an earlier edition), Victor studies chemistry and anatomy at Ingolstadt, where he becomes consumed with conquering death itself. Adding pathos to his obsession, del Toro’s doomed scientist comes from a life of immense grief and rejection. We meet the young Victor (Christian Convery) at his family home shortly before the return of his cruel father, Leopold (Charles Dance). This abusive doctor puts his son through torturous anatomy lessons and uses corporal punishment as a teaching tool.
Victor’s life is turned upside down when his beloved mother dies in childbirth. Not only does he watch Leopold dote on the resulting younger son, the burgeoning doctor becomes convinced that his father let his wife die to rid himself of a troublesome partner. While praying to an archangel, Victor vows to discover the secrets of life and death, ostensibly to prevent others from suffering similar grief. However, his true motivation is a desire to prove his father wrong as punishment for his mother’s death. This narrative deviation asks us to empathize with Victor while laying the foundation for future cycles of abuse. We will see Leopold’s painful tactics manifested again as Victor tries in vain to teach the Creature to say anything but his creator’s name, one bestowed by an abusive father.
The Sick and the Dead
In addition to a more fulfilling home life, Shelley’s Victor is not such a solitary figure. He attends university with his childhood friend Henry Clerval, who becomes a confidant and constant companion. By contrast, del Toro’s Victor seems to push his colleagues away with outlandish and grisly presentations designed to thumb his nose at the medical establishment. After a particularly disastrous seminar, he’s approached by Harlander (Christoph Waltz), a wealthy arms dealer and former military surgeon who shares his interest in reanimation. Harlander’s niece Elizabeth is engaged to his younger brother William (Felix Kammerer), Victor’s sole living kin. Shelley’s Elizabeth was the orphaned daughter of a peasant family adopted by the Frankensteins and raised alongside Victor. They share a close bond and plan to marry as soon as the doctor can find his way to a stable life.
Del Toro’s Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is an altogether different woman, seemingly inspired by Shelley herself. Though she is wealthy and privileged, Elizabeth longs for autonomy and seems frustrated by her place in this staunch patriarchy. She and Victor bond over a love of science, though her interest lies in bugs and other tiny organisms. Perhaps equally matched in intellect, Elizabeth nonetheless reads something distressing in Victor’s behavior. She visits the scientist at his apartment and seems to be considering romance, but abruptly changes her mind and flees, recommitting herself to William. She will grow ever more distrustful of Victor as she learns more about his ghastly experiment.
While Elizabeth does offer key insight into the Creature’s reanimation, her uncle proves essential to the project’s success. Not only does he become Victor’s financial backer, but he also provides Victor with a crucial piece of scientific knowledge. Harlander is in possession of the valuable 5th Evelyn Table, a board that maps the human body’s lymphatic system. He fully funds Victor’s experiment and helps to procure cadaver pieces, only asking for a small favor in return.
As the thunderstorm rolls in, Harlander reveals his terminal syphilis and fear of succumbing to screaming pain. He has been assisting the idealistic scientist in the hopes that his own brain would be transplanted into the Creature, granting the wealthy man immortal life. Victor adamantly refuses, claiming that Harlander’s diseased cells will pollute his carefully constructed body. A major departure from Shelley’s source material, this rebuff shows the true nature of Victor’s motivation. He does not want to help the sick or find a way to prevent pain and suffering. He is only interested in revenge disguised as accomplishment.
It’s Alive!
Central to our collective understanding of the Frankenstein story is a scene in which a maniacal scientist frantically prepares the Monster’s body on a dark and stormy night. As lightning strikes, he shouts, “It’s alive!” and the Monster slowly begins to move. But this iconic scene was created by director James Whale for his beloved 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein. Shelley’s version of this monstrous birth is much more subtle. Her Victor is so frightened by the Monster’s appearance that he flees to his bedroom and spends a fitful night dreaming of the menacing beast. He awakens to find the Monster looming over his bed and once again runs away.
Del Toro takes elements from both stories before spinning the tale in a new direction. We watch as a picturesque thunderstorm rolls in and Victor struggles to attach metal rods to the crumbling tower housing his laboratory. A bolt of lightning does seemingly spark a battery attached to the Creature’s chest, but the devastated scientist can find no other signs of life. Dejected, he collapses in bed only to wake up to a strange visitor. The Creature lurks nearby, shyly reaching towards his symbolic father. Victor is initially delighted and begins teaching the Creature to move and speak. But he quickly grows bored when the constructed man struggles to pick up other words and assumes his innate stupidity. The thrill of discovery fades away, and he begins to resent his child’s existence. Perhaps the most political element of del Toro’s adaptation is that Victor only cares about the Creature’s miraculous birth. He abandons this flesh and blood human being as soon as his care becomes inconvenient.
Del Toro’s Victor becomes a father figure to the confused Creature, encountering the world for the first time, but rather than mentoring him through these developmental stages, Victor immediately leads the lanky man into the underground sewers of his laboratory and chains him to a slab of stone. Each dismissive interaction seems designed to instill a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing in the strangely hulking child. Victor refers to the Creature as “it” and uses his father’s cruel methods to instruct him in simple humanity. It’s not until Elizabeth discovers the prisoner that he experiences an act of kindness.
Companions
FRANKENSTEIN. (L to R) Mia Goth as Elizabeth and Jacob Elordi as The Creature in Frankenstein. Cr. Ken Woroner/Netflix © 2025.
Overcome with loneliness, Shelley’s Monster demands Victor make him a companion, but the frightened scientist destroys a salvaged female body midway through its construction. Whale plays this horrific idea out to its logical conclusion in his 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, with a frightened Bride (Lanchester) built from a murdered woman. Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, ups the emotional ante as Victor reanimates Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), who, horrified by this grisly existence, immediately lights herself on fire. But regardless of the outcome, each version sees Frankenstein’s Monster threaten to be with Victor on his wedding night.
Del Toro remixes the story by reuniting Creature and Creator on the day of Elizabeth’s wedding to William. Enraged, the Creature violently confronts the horrified scientist, demanding that he construct an undead companion. Hearing the sounds of their struggle, Elizabeth enters the room and immediately rushes to the Creature’s side. Perhaps protective or territorial, Victor grabs a nearby gun and aims it at the hulking man, but accidentally shoots Elizabeth instead. As blood stains her pristine, white dress, the Creature carries the dying bride through the crowded house and a sea of awe-struck wedding guests. Injured in the struggle, a dying William vocalizes Shelley’s central theme: Victor is the story’s monster.
Elizabeth will peacefully succumb to her wound while staring into the Creature’s eyes. She admits that he is the otherworldly companion she’s been yearning for and dies in the joy of fleeting love. Unwilling to put another through his unique pain and sorrow, the Creature abandons his desire for a mate and instead dedicates his life to making Victor feel the pain he has caused.
Freedom in Forgiveness
Shelley’s poignant novel ends in tragedy as Victor reaches peak monstrosity. Aboard Captain Walton’s floundering ship, he spends his dying days objecting to the crew’s pleas to turn around and rhapsodizing about the thrill of dangerous discovery, proof that he has learned absolutely nothing. Later, Walton will discover the Monster weeping over his creator’s body and finally decide to turn the ship around. But del Toro gives us a glimmer of hope in the midst of this bleak cautionary tale. Creature and creator finally make peace as Victor offers a heartfelt apology. Moved, the Creature offers his forgiveness and comforts his symbolic father as he drifts toward the release of death. Victor, in turn, offers a bit of poignant advice. Gazing upon his progeny, he says, “If death is not to be, then consider this my son. While you are alive, what recourse do you have but to live?”
Taking this to heart, the Creature emerges from the ship’s cabin and resumes his icy journey. Impacted by this desolate tale, Captain Anderson orders his crew to man the sails and begin the process of reversing course. He’s abandoning his perilous quest for the North Pole and finally returning home. Galvanized into positive action, the Creature uses his inhuman strength to break the ship free from the ice, then turns to face the morning sun. Unlike Shelley’s bleak conclusion, Del Toro seems to suggest that we all have the power to reverse our own course and mitigate the damage that we’ve caused if we only have the courage to face the truth.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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