Curated by Danél Griffin
The first movie I ever loved was James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein" -- which I first viewed at the age of 5. The first book I ever loved was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, read at the age of seven. Both were therefore pivotal in my lifelong love affair with film and literature. Since I was young, I made it my mission to learn everything about always-evolving Frankenstein folklore -- an obsession which included watching every adaptation that I could get my hands on. Not all of them were good, needless to say (in fact, some of them were downright awful), but they all nevertheless represent the way that folklore never remains at its starting point -- it is always evolving through every retelling, whether good (Boris Karloff's trilogy from Universal set the standard, of course), bad ("Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" and "Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter" come to mind), or ugly ("Flesh for Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein's Army" are among the most grotesque examples of that the mythology offers). This section collects Scarecrow's impressive range of Frankenstein titles, which you are invited to browse in order to explore stories centered on Mary Shelley's lonely creation yourself.
Interested in curating your own special section? That's one of the perks at the $500+ member level! You can learn more about our membership program and other ways to support Scarecrow at scarecrowvideo.org/SOS
