The 5 Frankenstein Movies You Should See Before Your Body Parts Are Harvested

More than any of the early Universal Frankensteins, this one provided the plot engine for Mel Brooks’ 1974 lampoon Young Frankenstein, a pastiche so thoroughly affectionate and convincing it can serve as a gateway drug to classic black-and-white horror for the skeptical. Basil Rathbone, who played many a mustache-twirling villain before settling into a long run embodying a logical but still ardent Sherlock Holmes, is insistently intense in the title role here — first name Wolf (really!). With his bride he returns to the old castle, convinced that his dad was right with that resurrecting-dead-flesh project. This gets him in hot water with the already hostile villagers and arouses the suspicions of Lionel Atwill’s constable. It’s quite a faux-gothic romp, featuring Bela Lugosi as a hairy Igor and Karloff’s last go-round in Jack Pierce’s indelible monster makeup. (Lugosi would allow himself to be so transformed for 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, a questionable move for both actor — too short, among other things —and studio.)

Where to stream Son Of Frankenstein

Because the book Frankenstein was in the public domain, British studio Hammer could make as many movies with that name in the title as it wanted. What it couldn’t do, though, was make its monster, or monsters, look anything like the Karloff model, because Universal pictures had an active copyright for the makeup and design. Hence, the first Monster, in 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein, was a scarred, bloody creature (the movie was indeed Hammer’s first in color), played by Christopher Lee in a slightly head-scratch-worthy casting decision. (Not that Lee doesn’t do a good job, but why would one want to deprive this performer the use of his distinctive voice?)

As the sequels mounted, the absence of a fixed Frankenstein-monster “look” seemed to give the creators of the movies more latitude to explore themes that were prominent in Shelley’s original conception, and even beyond that. The convoluted plot here posits the scientist Frankenstein, played by a very chilly Peter Cushing, as a rapist and murderer. Truculent, vehement, possessed of seemingly inexhaustible evil energy, he makes the movie’s title seem self-evident. This monster is not one of parts but the result of a brain transplant on a pompous hospital administrator. He has no superhuman power; just rage and confusion and Identity issues. Super creepy and provocative.

Where to stream Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

This follow-up to Destroyed keeps continuity with it, up to a point. The Baron (Peter Cushing) survives the fire of the previous film —his scarred, nerveless hands are the result of his wounds. He works at an asylum, where he blackmails its actual, corrupt and perverse administrator into doing his bidding. Despite his ruthlessness, he’s a little less overtly evil than in the previous films. Despite the increasing lunacy of his experiments — grafting a new pair of hands of a misshapen creature, then going about replacing its brain with what should be a better one — he seems driven by a desire to do something resembling good.

Assisting him is the mute daughter of the administrator, and then, a patient at the asylum, Spaderesque surgeon Shane Bryant. A perfectly rational man, he got run into the bughouse after being caught with a mason jar full of eyeballs. Clearly the Baron’s kind of guy. The creature, played by future Darth Vader David Prowse, looks kind of like a beat-up carpet monster. Monster From Hell lays on the Grand Guignol pretty thick, showing the brain transplant in lovely gooey detail. In other words, good stuff.

Where to stream Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell

This adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft pulp delight both honors and sends up its creator by bringing the tale into the very present day and putting perverse sexual content, among other things, at its forefront. Plot-wise, this tremulously hovers between Frankenstein and zombie/undead narratives. But once evil Dr. Hill starts carrying around his own severed head, the better to commit sexual assault on poor Barbara Crampton, we are in territory never before charted — but leaning very hard into Frankenstein territory (the facial characteristics of the actor playing Hill, the great David Gale, do yeoman labor in this respect). There’s also some Brain That Wouldn’t Die spice thrown in.

The film debut of maverick Stuart Gordon, this movie was a sensation on its grindhouse release in the mid-’80s and remains a remarkably roiling and eccentric horror milestone. All the performers are game (to say the least), but Jeffrey Combs as the Baron Frankenstein analog Herbert West is remarkable, playing his reanimator as a prim, callow and intense troubled teen of sorts. Once he meets up with Bruce Abbott’s square but equally obsessive Dan Cain it’s as if Reed Richards and Dr. Doom had become college roomies after all. Inspirational dialogue: “Get a job in a sideshow!”

Where to stream Re-Animator

Definitely what you’d call a “one-joke” movie, and nowadays the joke is subject to even more disapprobation as it was two decades ago. Where might one begin?

Med student Jeffrey Franken is devoted to his very sweet-natured, pleasantly plump girlfriend Elizabeth until she meets a grisly end in a lawnmower accident. The movie’s writer/director, Frank Henenlotter, is perhaps best known for his gnarly 1982 Basket Case — which provided the plot hook (unbeknownst to a lot of contemporary critics, to their possible shame I must say) to a recent, much-talked-about marquee horror title. That, and other pictures of his, traffic relentlessly in bad taste, and boy, this gore fest doesn’t skimp, displaying consistently flippant attitudes toward drug addiction, sex work, serial murder and more.

But 1980s Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen, as both the living plump girl and reanimated-as-a-sleek-but-scar-laden streetwalker/title character, is creepily indelible in the twitchy way she reiterates the movie’s most crucial question, “Wanna date?” And the movie’s twist ending shifts the movie definitively from objectionable to transgressive, if you can stick with it.

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.

Where to stream Frankenhooker