Frankenstein t-shirt from EyeBallMania

The third eye we are spotlighting is Frankensteyen. Come back often for more in-depth profiles of all of our parodies of Eyes Through the Ages.

Every few years someone takes the horror story Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelly in London in 1818 and turns it into a movie. This parody of Frankenstein is based on the 1931 classic film in which Boris Karloff played the monster. The novels subtitle was The Modern Prometheus. Shelly wrote the novel and published it anonymously when she was only 19 years old.

Shelley’s Frankenstein has been called the first novel featuring a “Mad Scientist”, called Victor Frankenstein. The original story portrays the creature as an innocent loving being. Not understood by the outside world the creature changes after people inflict violence on him out of fear. Things never change.

The first movie version of Frankenstein is a silent film made by the Edison Company. The film was made in Bronx, New York in 1910. In 1931, James Whale drastically changed the story for Universal Studios. Whale added an Igor-like character, called the creature’s creator Doctor, and gave us the image of the monster we all recognize made famous by Boris Karloff. This led to three sequels, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and Ghost of Frankenstein. Later films portrayed Doctor Frankenstein as a sexual pervert, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. In the film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the doctor (Dr. Frank-N-Futer) is portrayed as a necrophiliac. In Frankenstein Created Woman, the doctor transplants a man’s soul into a woman’s body and then in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, the doctor transplants a fellow-scientist’s brain into another body. Mel Brooks created the classic comedy, Young Frankenstein in 1974.

Interesting side note: The year that Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein, 1818, is also known as “the year without a summer”. In 1818, there was a major eruption of Mount Tambora, located in Indonesia. The eruption threw so much volcanic ash into the atmosphere that it blocked out sunlight around the globe. The lowered the Earth’s temperature to the point where summer did not occur in most locations. This caused famines worldwide.

Welcome to EyeBallMania. T-Shirts for those who dare to be different!