Frankenstein - We Belong Dead: Frankenstein On Film

by Gary J. Svehla (Editor) & Susan Svehla (Editor)

Midnight Marquee Press & Luminary Press (series)

To anyone born to the generation of baby-boomers, we can all recall with fondness turning our outdoor antennas toward the dark heavens to pull in distant television channels hoping to catch snowy glimpses of Shock Theatre or other late-night horror hosted festivities where classic Universal Frankenstein films of the 1930s were being shown. The thrill of being able to stay up late, to sometimes watch all alone while all the other inhabitants of the household were sleeping became something very special.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, we saw the recreation of the Frankenstein myth rewritten first by England's Hammer Film Productions and later recast in science fiction terms where even The Thing and It! The Terror from Beyond Outer Space became variations on a theme, Frankenstein monsters from outer space!

We watched filmmakers rediscover Frankenstein during the 1970s and 1980s as they endeavored to retell the story, this time, truer to the original concept by Mary Shelley. Most of us still prefer the Universal and Hammer versions, but once again Frankenstein became redefined for yet another generation.

Frankenstein's Monster, over the course of the 20th-century, became all things to all people. He was the social outcast who still had redeeming qualities. He was the loner, the tortured outsider to whom most of us could relate. He was the symbol of fear and of death, the creature better off dead who still stalked the laboratories of egocentric science. He became the metaphor for science gone bad...he was the Dark Side before Star Wars. He became a symbol of life, no matter how pathetic, was always better than death. The Monster represented a creature who sometimes wanted to die but could not die. The Monster became the mirror by which the movie viewer could view the cruelty of an insensitive society that both creator and later abandoned its own abominations.

Join us for a loving tribute to Frankenstein's Monster and the talented movie technicians who helped create him, proving once and for all you just can't keep a good Monster down.

The new printing of We Belong Dead has been revised and includes a new chapter by Gary J. Svehla, The Evolution of Hammer's Baron Frankenstein. This book stands as a testament to the durability of Mary Shelley's original novel. The fact that today the name Frankenstein still elicits an immediate emotional response speaks of the universality of the Frankenstein mythos. Frankenstein's Monster, over the course of the 20th century, became all things to all people. He was the social outcast who still had redeeming qualities. He was the loner, the tortured outsider to whom most of us could relate. He was the symbol of fear and of death, the creature better off dead who still stalked the laboratories of egocentric science. He became the metaphor for science gone bad... he was the Dark Side before Star Wars. He became a symbol that life, no matter how pathetic, was always better than death. The Monster represented a creature who sometimes wanted to die but could not. The Monster became the mirror in which the movie viewer could view the cruelty of an insensitive society that both created and later abandoned its own abominations. Whether we look at Frankenstein's Monster as the bogeyman, as metaphor, as kindred spirit, or as society's mirror, the fact remains that Mary Shelley knew not what she wrought during that haunted summer of 1816, and this volume is the latest effort in a relatively short line that tries to explain, looking at both cinema past and present, the meaning of Boris Karloff's immortal words from 1935's Bride of Frankenstein—“We belong dead!”