Pierce who came up with innovations such as the Monster's flat head, the bolts through the neck, the droopy eyelids, and the poorly-fitted suit. His father, the most parasitic of aristocrats, is utterly scornful of the notion of his son working at all. There, Henry and Fritz are preparing to use the power of lightning to charge their electrical mechanisms and give life to a body they have pieced together. The point at which this film most closely resembles the novel from which its story was drawn is their mutual conception of Frankenstein himself, who is certainly not mad, but rather suffers from a tragic mixture of overweening ambition and weakness of character. It was such a hit back then, that it is still people still republish and make shows and movies from the book.

In Branagh's film, it is Professor Shmael Augustus Waldman (portrayed by John Cleese) —first and middle name revealed in the comic adaptation of the film—who teaches Victor how to re-animate dead tissue.In the main story, at a funeral, Fritz, a dwarf, and young scientist Henry Frankenstein dig up a freshly buried body, claiming that the corpse is waiting for a new life. This is likely derived from the fact that in the novel, Victor Frankenstein attended school at Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Germany. Universal Studios gives the 1931 release of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein the regal treatment with its inclusion in the Monster Legacy DVD Gift Set. I have certainly cried over the fate of that beleaguered ape, as I am sure many of you have; yet our sympathy for Kong operates on a different level from that which we feel for the Creature. As a reward, Whale was offered his choice of project, and cast his gaze over all of the films in development at Universal, looking for one that would offer him, as he put it, “strong meat”.

Frankenstein, but we're also treated to perhaps the most oft-quoted movie line ever, and certainly the defining moment of Clive's career. Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was a fictional student at the University of Ingolstadt. For the roles of Henry Frankenstein (as far as I’m aware, no-one has ever come up with a reasonable explanation for why Victor Frankenstein and his best friend, Henry Clerval, swapped first names) and his fiancée, Elizabeth, Leslie Howard and a struggling ingénue named Bette Davis were touted; while for the Creature, only one actor was considered possible: Universal’s new star, Bela Lugosi. Balderston, Lionel Belmore, mad science, Mae Clarke, Marilyn Harris, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Michael Mark, Peggy Webling, science fiction, Universal. Bette Davis was the next to go, her casting vetoed by Carl Laemmle Sr, who found the young actress distinctly unsexy.

He resorts to robbing graves and hangman's gallows to amass a parcel of sometimes less than acceptable body parts.