as its title might suggest. Less literal
adaptations include James Cameron’s
Terminator series and the Alien
saga. “The Alien movies’ debt to
Frankenstein only became truly evi-
dent in Alien: Covenant,” Klinger
says, “although we could finally see
the direction it was heading in [Alien
prequel] Prometheus—note the title!”
Like the golem of Jewish folklore and
as in Goethe’s poem “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice,” the resurrections in
Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (the 1983
novel was followed by a film six years
later) are supernatural rather than
scientific, but its main character can’t
resist the very human compulsion to
bring loved ones back from the dead,with predictably harrowing results.
Three films have dealt with the
events that inspired Mary Shelley’s
novel: 1986’s Gothic introduced a
seance, spirit possession, and height-
ened sexuality to the story, while 1988’s
Haunted Summer and Rowing with the
Wind took more realistic, if not mark-
edly more effective, approaches. The
writer’s own life was reflected in the
2018 film Mary Shelley, which dealt
with the difficulties she had to con-
front as a female artist in a male-dom-
inated world.
Surprisingly enough, the best of the
modern Frankenstein films is a comedy
that nevertheless remained scrupu-
lously faithful to Whale’s vision—per-
haps because its director had been so
stirred by the classic as a child. “It was
the scariest thing I saw in my life,” Mel
Brooks later said.“It was the
scariest thing I saw
in my life,”
Mel Brooks said
of Frankenstein,
which he saw when
he was five.79© (^2)
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