Guide to Frankenstein

Frankenstein Movies: From the 1931 Classic and Young Frankenstein to Guillermo del Toro's 2025 Film

Karloff, the Bride, Mel Brooks, De Niro and Jacob Elordi: a century of the creature on screen

By Tori BooksUpdated November 20267 min read

Mary Shelley

The main films at a glance

Where did it all start?

Mary Shelley's novel came out in 1818, and the stage got to it within a few years. The cinema took a little longer. In 1910 the Edison company released a short silent Frankenstein directed by J. Searle Dawley, with Charles Ogle as the creature. For decades it was thought lost, until a surviving copy turned up and was restored.

Five years later came Life Without Soul (1915), the first feature-length version. Both films are curiosities today, but they show that the story was screen material from the very beginning.

Why is the 1931 film so famous?

Universal's Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, gave the world the creature most people picture: the flat head, the heavy brow, the stiff walk and the bolts in the neck. None of that is in the book. Boris Karloff played him with almost no words, and the opening credits list the actor as a simple question mark.

The film also changes the people. The young scientist is called Henry Frankenstein, the creature is given a damaged criminal brain by mistake, and the story ends with villagers and torches at a burning windmill. It was a huge hit and set the pattern for almost every monster movie that followed.

Is Bride of Frankenstein based on the book?

Partly. In the novel the creature asks Victor to build him a companion, and Victor starts the work before destroying it in disgust. Whale's sequel takes that unfinished idea and carries it through. Elsa Lanchester plays the Bride, with her hissing stare and her famous streaked hair, and she also appears in the prologue as Mary Shelley herself, telling the story to Lord Byron and Percy Shelley.

Karloff returned as the creature in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and again in Son of Frankenstein (1939). Later Universal films passed the role between actors, and the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) showed that the monster could be played for laughs.

What did Hammer Films change?

The British studio Hammer brought the story back in color with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). Peter Cushing played Victor as a cold, brilliant man who will do anything for his work, and Christopher Lee played the creature. Here the scientist, not his creation, is the true monster, and Cushing kept playing him in a whole series of sequels into the 1970s.

Is Young Frankenstein a real adaptation?

No, and that is the joke. Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein (1974) as a loving parody of the black-and-white Universal films, especially Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. Gene Wilder plays the scientist's grandson, who insists his name is pronounced Fronkensteen, Peter Boyle plays the creature and Marty Feldman plays the hunchbacked assistant Igor.

Brooks even shot it in black and white and reused some of the original laboratory equipment. You will enjoy it more if you have seen the 1930s films, and you do not need to have read the book at all.

Which Frankenstein movie is closest to the book?

For a long time the answer was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). Kenneth Branagh directed it and played Victor, and Robert De Niro played the creature as a scarred, intelligent and wounded man rather than a lumbering brute. It keeps the frame of the explorer Walton in the Arctic, the creature's years of hiding and learning, and his long argument with his maker.

It is not a perfect copy. It adds a dramatic scene in which Victor tries to bring Elizabeth back to life, which never happens in the novel. But it was the first big studio film to take the book's ideas seriously.

What is Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein like?

Guillermo del Toro had wanted to make Frankenstein for most of his career. His version premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2025, played in select cinemas from October 17 and arrived on Netflix on November 7, 2025.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi plays the Creature, a part first meant for Andrew Garfield. Mia Goth plays Elizabeth, Felix Kammerer plays Victor's brother William, and Christoph Waltz plays Harlander, a wealthy arms dealer who pays for Victor's work. The film runs about two and a half hours and spends much of that time on the creature's point of view, which is exactly where the novel puts its heart. Del Toro also reshapes the family and the plot in places, so treat it as a fresh retelling rather than a page-by-page version.

Which Frankenstein movie should you watch first?

If you want the book on screen, start with del Toro's 2025 film or Branagh's 1994 version. If you want to understand why everyone thinks of a green giant with bolts in his neck, watch Karloff in 1931 and then Bride of Frankenstein, which many critics consider the best of them all. Keep Young Frankenstein for last, as a reward.

And if the films leave you curious about what the creature is really called, or how a teenager came up with him, the other guides to the novel answer exactly that.

More about Frankenstein

Books Like Frankenstein

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeRobert Louis StevensonLes Liaisons dangereusesPierre Choderlos de LaclosThe Heart of the MatterGraham GreeneJane EyreCharlotte BrontëThe Sheltering SkyPaul BowlesCatch-22Joseph HellerA High Wind in JamaicaRichard HughesDraculaBram Stoker

Written by Tori Books for readers and students.