Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) on Netflix
After his brother's death, Victor Frankenstein wants to revive him. He helps Henry Clerval build a perfect human out of the bodies of the dead, and gives the creation Clerval's brain.
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- Rotten Tomatoes69%
Trailer
Plot summary
Victor Frankenstein's brother William dies in an accident, so the newly trained doctor turns away from God and wishes he could revive him. In London he meets Henry Clerval, who has found a way to bring dead flesh back to life. Clerval intends to raise a new race of perfect beings out of the dead, and talks Victor into joining the work. They set to work on one perfect human, but Clerval suffers a heart attack and dies before the experiment is finished. Victor gives their creation Clerval's brain and brings it to life, then introduces it into high-class society.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A prologue showing Mary Shelley telling her tale to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron was filmed with Nicola Pagett, Leonard Whiting, David McCallum and James Mason, but NBC station bosses cut it, fearing a slow opening would make viewers switch off.
- An epilogue in which the Creature's hand, drifting south in the melting iceberg, absorbs the sun and opens flower-like, was scrapped during production and never filmed: the makers felt it undermined the tragedy and hinted at a sequel.
- Dr Polidori, played by James Mason, did not appear in Mary Shelley's novel: he was modeled on Doctor Septimus Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein but named after the real John Polidori, whose The Vampyre (1819) was the first modern vampire story.
- The film opens with James Mason wandering through a St John's Wood churchyard, saying it is where Mary Shelley is buried; she actually lies in the family plot in Dorset, though he stands beside a gravestone bearing her name.
