🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 18 Bonus Post 1🎃
Frankenstein (1952)
★★ Watched 18 Oct 2025
Produced for the early science-fiction anthology Tales of Tomorrow, this 1952 Frankenstein adaptation stands as a fascinating curio from the dawn of television.
Performed live as it was shot, in an era when the medium itself was still in its infancy, the film stars Lon Chaney Jr., just four years removed from his last Frankenstein-related appearance as Larry Talbot in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. He returns here as the Creature, but by this point, Chaney’s alcoholism had consumed him, and he reportedly believed this broadcast was only a rehearsal. Given that misunderstanding, when his Creature grows enraged and begins “throwing” furniture, Chaney instead lifts each piece carefully and sets it down gently, a strange accident of live TV that—ironically—makes the monster seem like he's struggling to contain his own power.
Weirdly, after binging the Universal and Hammer Frankenstein films, this short, crude TV version feels almost refreshing. For the first time, we get real nods to Mary Shelley’s novel. The Frankenstein family is actually from Geneva; Victor’s little brother, William, appears; the elder Frankenstein and Elizabeth both have meaningful roles. William even meets the Creature, whom the boy rejects for his ugliness, and in the following scene, a maid is murdered, though she's not named Justine. These little morsels of fidelity feel like a feast after decades of films that used Shelley’s story as little more than just a title.
The makeup, too, is surprisingly strong for live television. Chaney’s bald, scarred, and crudely stitched together creature looks like a prototype for Robert De Niro’s version in Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation.
It’s rough, it’s rushed, and it’s far from definitive. Yet it’s a rare early-TV attempt at doing Frankenstein “right”, and in many ways, it feels closer to the book than most of the big-budget films before it.
