In the novel Frankenstein, the monster is only fleetingly described,
…how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
This rather cursory collection of details has meant that adapters have had a great deal of freehand in how they realize the monster. In honor of the novel’s 1818 publication date, here are 18 versions of how the monster has appeared, from the sublime to the ridiculous, over the past two centuries.
Frontispiece illustration, Theodore Von Holst, from the 1831 edition of the novel, the only illustration to appear in an edition published during the author’s lifetime.
Playbill illustration from 1823 production of Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein.
Illustration, Bernie Wrightson
Charles Ogle, Thomas Edison’s Frankenstein (1910)
Boris Karloff, Universal’s Frankenstein (1931)
Christopher Lee, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Rory Kinnear, Penny Dreadful (2014-16)
Robert De Niro, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
Kiwi Kingston, The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
David Prowse, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
Nick Brimble, Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
Gary Conway, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)
Clancy Brown, The Bride (1985)
Peter Boyle, Young Frankenstein (1974)
Joe De Sue, Blackenstein (1973)
Frankenberry, American breakfast cereal character
Fred Gwynne, The Munsters (1964-66)
The Monster, Mad Monster Party (1967)
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