Drawn to Darkness

23 - Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein

• Anne Azano • Episode 23

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In this episode, we discuss Guillermo del Toro’s gorgeous and gothic adaptation of Frankenstein, an epic, operatic exploration of creation, obsession, abandonment, and the horror of living after being rejected by the world. We discuss our own life goals and the hollowness that can follow achieving your greatest ambition, before diving into this reimagining of Mary Shelley’s  ground-breaking novel. We unpack the cinematic devices, symbolism, use of light and colour, as well as each character and what motivates them. We explore themes of immortality as a curse, intergenerational trauma, scientific overreach, colonialism, class violence, and what happens when society decides someone is a monster.

Content & Spoiler Warning:

We spoil Frankenstein (the novel and film), and the film and our dicussion has body horror, animal death (wolves), child abuse, death during childbirth, toxic father–son relationships, and corpse desecration.

Palate cleanser:

Star Wars (Original Trilogy) – Caroline is revisiting the entire Star Wars universe in timeline order, and despite some CGI should never have happened, these movies hold up.

Recommendations:

  • Little Shop of Horrors – mad science, creation, and unintended consequences
  • My Cousin Vinny – for unexpected tonal callbacks
  • Marvel films (Frankenstein connects to Captain America, Ultron, and Hulk lore)
  • Inglourious Basterds, Indiana Jones, The Sound of Music – confronting Nazi violence and persecution
  • Death Becomes Her and Vampire lore– immortality is its own horror
  • Alice in Wonderland and Beetlejuice – embracing the strange and unusual
  • Little Women (2019) – the dance scenes are similar.
  • Dr. Death (podcast) – psychotic doctors and medical hubris
  • Book Cheat (podcast) – a comic shortcut to classic literature
  • Epistolary horror: Dracula, Carrie
  • “The Monkey’s Paw” – the danger of subverting death
  • Jurassic Park, Terminator, M3GAN, Oppenheimer, Edward Scissorhands – losing control of creation
  • Guillermo del Toro’s other works: Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water, Pinocchio, Hellboy, Blade II 

Homework:

Watch Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers (Netflix)
A documentary that continues exploring how society punishes those it deems monstrous. 

Special thanks to Nancy Azano for the podcast cover art (Instagram: @nancyazano) and Harry Kidd for the opening and closing score (Instagram: @harryjkidd, Spotify).

Anne:

Welcome back to Drawn To Darkness, a sometimes weekly, sometimes bi-weekly podcast where we discuss our favorite horror and true crime. If you're longing for more gothic horror in your life, we're here for you. My name is Annie and I'll be introducing Caroline to my favorite horror movies, podcasts, TV shows, and books.

Caroline:

And my name is Caroline and I'll be doing the same from the true crime side of things.

Anne:

Happy New Year.

Caroline:

Oh, it New year in the time warp that we are in podcasting?

Anne:

the new year. Happy 2026.

Caroline:

Hallelujah. Goodbye 2025. Will not miss you.

Anne:

Wasn't there that, fuck 2020 thing a few years ago and it just keeps getting worse.

Caroline:

There was a great meme in 2020 with that Darth Vader at the end of the tunnel. rogue One, 2020 is behind us and at the end of the tunnel, and then the light at the end of the tunnel is our theder. This

Anne:

Perfect. Well, here's to a better 2026. All right, Caroline, this is a big question. But what is your biggest life goal? What's your Everest something that would make you feel like you have reached the pinnacle if you accomplished it?

Caroline:

I'm gonna be really lame on this question up, I mean, when I was little, little, little people would say, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And I would say, I wanna be a mommy.

Anne:

You've done it then.

Caroline:

every time I like thought I was gonna die in an airplane, which is every single time I've been in an airplane, I've been like, just let me have a kid first. Just let me have a kid first. I really felt very, like that was my purpose. I feel differently about it now. Not that I regret having them, I just, that just feels a little, I don't know. it doesn't feel like Everest to

Anne:

Yes. It's, it's been done a lot.

Caroline:

yeah, it's been done.

Anne:

has Everest, too many people have climbed Everest.

Caroline:

It can be challenging, but like, it's not like I used a skill, you know, like

Anne:

Right.

Caroline:

it, it's like not a skillset, now I feel like my baseline is I just want to leave a positive imprint and kind of just be forgotten thereafter.

Anne:

No legacy, just not a legacy of harm.

Caroline:

Right. Please just forget about me. Hopefully when I was around things were okay for you.

Anne:

I guess My Everest is to become a writer who makes enough money that I can quit my day job and run writing workshops at a school and go in, in and out as I please and not have the day-to-day grind of being a teacher. the reason I bring this up is because we are discussing Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein today, and it has been his life goal to adapt this novel, which is interesting because it's. A novel and a movie about creation and obsessively seeking a goal. At one point, Victor Frankenstein says, having reached the end of the world, there was no horizon left. And the achievement felt unnatural. And Guillermo del Toro has also talked about feeling a sense of hollowness now that he's done it this, what next feeling when you've achieved the thing you've worked for? I don't think I'd feel that way.

Caroline:

I could

Anne:

Sense of hollowness. Yeah. Ango montoya, he felt pretty rudderless after achieving his life goal of vengeance.

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

Anne:

Right. What's next?

Caroline:

he should feel really proud because just today I was listening to how did this get made, which I know we've mentioned before, and they were covering the movie toys and they were saying how that script was written over like 10 years, and it was like a life goal of. The person who created it, but almost always in movies and in cinema when there is a movie that has been a life goal of a big name person who finally achieved it, it's almost always a flop.

Anne:

yeah.

Caroline:

I would say that he should feel very proud about this accomplishment because it's not often that it ends up being successful.

Anne:

Yeah, he should not feel hollow.

Caroline:

No,

Anne:

he threw away his shot. It's fantastic.

Caroline:

it is

Anne:

I mean, obviously I think it's fantastic. I recommended it, but, this ties in with our last episode on a Christmas Carol in terms of its 19th century Victorian setting. It's obviously linked with our episode before that the Tuskegee syphilis study in terms of medical experimentation and the impact of syphilis and the careless treatment of bodies. Also, stranger things about a month ago with Dr. Brenner and his treatment of l. But one thing I'll say for Dr. Brenner, he does not abandon his creations unlike Victor Frankenstein. Before we get too much further into it, content warning, I feel it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning. We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation, life, and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you, it may even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to, well, we warned you. Does that sound like my usual content warning?

Caroline:

Uh, no it does not.

Anne:

It is the actual content warning from the original 1931 Frankenstein. They say that,

Caroline:

It was beautiful.

Anne:

like this guy comes out and delivers that little speech and then they start the movie.

Caroline:

I was like, what's with this fancy?

Anne:

Not the way I usually write, right? but I just find it funny that in 1931 they were essentially doing a little bit of a trigger warning. And obviously the intent was more to spark interest than to warn people off something that might actually bother them. But, trigger warnings are very controversial and a hundred years ago they did it. Here's my real trigger warning. there is gruesome wolf death, no dogs, but also bad CGI, toxic father son relationships, child abuse, child and mother mortality, loneliness, abandonment, desecration of corpses, sawing at limbs, body horror, suicide as usual. Check does the dog die for specific triggers. And we will be spoiling this movie and book You've been warned.

Caroline:

Yeah. You did not warn me enough for the level of gore.

Anne:

Sorry, I made my parents watch it too. My mom was, cringing at some of the sawing scenes. Okay. The story opens with muteness Danish sailors on an Arctic expedition attempting to free an icebound ship. An explosion in the distance leads them to a gravely injured man, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who's being pursued by an unstoppable monster. The creature in his pursuit kills six of these sailors, but they managed to blast a hole through the ice and watch it sink beneath the surface. But Dr. Frankenstein assures them he will be back. As he recuperates, Victor begins to tell his story to the captain, his traumatic childhood his harsh and abusive father, the death of his mother, giving birth to his brother, and how he discovered how to create life and created an eight foot tall sewn together man out of body parts, pilfered from executed man in bloody battlefields. However, when he made this man, he did not think about what happens after creation and is disappointed in his creature who appears childlike and unintelligent and can only say one word, Victor. Echoing his father Vicar beats the creature, keeps it chained up alone in a basement. And Elizabeth, the fiance of Victor's brother William, is the only one to treat the creation. With kindness, she criticizes victor's, impatience and cruelty. Victor sets the tower on fire in an attempt to murder his creation, blowing his own leg off when he regrets his decision, a moment too late and attempts to reenter the burning tower. From there, the story is divided into the creature's tale. After escaping the tower, he wanders until he comes across an isolated farm in the mountains where he hides. Observing the family slowly learning to speak and read, and offering them gifts like firewood. After a vicious wolf attack, the family leaves to hunt the wolves, leaving the elderly blind father alone. This man accepts the creature, befriending him and showing him kindness. However, when he leaves the old man alone to discover his past, the elderly man is attacked by wolves and killed. The family. Comes back at just the wrong moment, blaming the creature for the old man's death and shooting at him. Despite grievous wounds, he recovers and realizes he cannot be killed. He seeks out Victor with one request to create a companion for him. The request is refused. A conflict ensues ending in the death of both Elizabeth and William. Victor then chases the creature deep into the Arctic in an attempt to kill him. But after hearing his story, Victor accepts the creature as his son, and the creature forgives him before walking toward the horizon to live because what other choice does he have? So what adjective or words come to mind?

Caroline:

I thought it was quite beautiful. I mean, not to be boring and basic, but visually there's a lot of beautiful like use of color and stuff like that. It's a beautifully poetic I was really thinking about how all of your recommendations to be able to like close out in a bow or not intentionally,

Anne:

It's fiction.

Caroline:

yeah, the

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

stuff doesn't have that, but it's quite lovely.

Anne:

Yeah. I was gonna go with evocative, opulent. Beautiful as well. I, I agree. It's gorgeous. I wish I could have seen this in cinemas. It's one of those movies that would've been really good on the big screen. it's cathartic. I felt really emotionally rung out after watching it. I'm really happy that there's this resurgence in interest in the Gothic, Eggers is making a werewolf movie coming up and there was no Alto, uh, earlier this year or last year, there's gonna be a new Christmas Carol, so please

Caroline:

Wednesday,

Anne:

stuff coming Wednesday. Yes. Okay. Fun facts. first of all, I love a joke or meme about. The name Frankenstein versus Frankenstein's Monster and like making fun of the way elite literary types. Lord it over everyone always makes me laugh.

Caroline:

literally I went to dinner with two girlfriends last week, one of whom really loves when I shout her out. Hi Abel. she's the one who was friendly with the Maisel brothers. Anyway, she was, saying that she didn't realize that Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the monster. And I was like, how did you not know that? Even I knew that

Anne:

Yeah, I think a lot of people learn it from the joke, right? Even if they

Caroline:

from social media. I

Anne:

Yeah. Even if you haven't engaged with the book or the movie, it comes up. Right. other fun facts, Jacob. All Lordy had his dog on set. There are the cutest photos of him in full makeup cuddling his dog and it's very cute. I believe the drawings are Guillermo del Torros, so a lot of the drawings that you see in it are by him. the font on the film's poster is the actual handwriting of Mary Shelley, which I thought was a very cool little nod to her. And there's minimal CGI lot of Handbuilt sets. There's this really great behind the scenes documentary on, not on Netflix that shows the building of the sets. And it's just fantastic to watch all the mood boards and the costume design and the attention to color, just all the thought that went into this. It's pretty fantastic. Another interesting fun fact about this movie is the way it was released. this is not the type of thing you usually see coming out of Netflix. it only had three weeks in cinema, so it wouldn't have been able to make much. It had 120 million budget through week theatrical release. I don't know how much it made, but it's a very different way to release a movie. So I don't know. Will we see more of Netflix doing this, like doing something really big budget? Will it draw in more people to Netflix that weren't already subscribers? Because I didn't give Netflix any extra money. I was already a subscriber.

Caroline:

Well, I'm sure that'll also depend on the pending mergers and acquisitions that are going on.

Anne:

Murder's and executions. Every time I hear that, I think of that American psycho line.

Caroline:

Which I haven't seen.

Anne:

Another thing you gotta see,

Caroline:

No, I don't

Anne:

he gets,

Caroline:

don't make me see things with torture.

Anne:

yeah,

Caroline:

That's why I

Anne:

well

Caroline:

it.'cause I've heard that the torture is just really epic and I,

Anne:

I heard the book is worse in terms of the description of torture, which I haven't read. My husband was like, don't read it. He, it's really bad. And if he thinks I can't handle it, it must be bad'cause I can't.

Caroline:

think so.

Anne:

Right. So have you read the book?

Caroline:

No, I started to listen to it on my travels after the Christmas Carol, but I just ran outta time. I was trying to to it before we recorded.

Anne:

my dad's yes, I have. I think I would've read it high school university age and then I read it a year or two ago. so it was pretty fresh in my memory, but, not fresh enough that the changes bothered me that much. So this is obviously an adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. So we should start with her, the origin story of this. I feel like rivals, Stephen King's carry maybe better than Stephen King's carry, you know, which was famously fished out of a trash can by his wife, Tabitha King. I found this podcast called Betwixt the Sheets and the host recounts her journey. They were backpacking around Western Europe. Shout out to friends.

Caroline:

Ken Adams.

Anne:

often we think of these like 19th century people as kind of stuffy, prim and proper. English people, but they were really quite bohemian, lots of sleeping round and having affairs. And Lord Byron was with them. Do you have a Lord Byron reference that you'd like to make? Maybe

Caroline:

Mad, bad and dangerous to know was him.

Anne:

I,

Caroline:

Dylan McKay

Anne:

I wrote that down. Drink for 9 0 2 1 oh, Caroline's mentioning 9 0 2 1 oh, was like, I am gonna set you up.

Caroline:

0 2 1 oh and friends, like within a minute, this might be my favorite episode.

Anne:

Who said this is stuffy gothic 19th century stuff. Right. so she ran away with, married father pre Shelly, who might have also had an affair with her sister Claire, while Mary was pregnant. and that at one point, according to this podcast, they were kind of sleeping on this riverboat on the Rhine, and they met German medical students who likely told them about Frankenstein's Castle. So that's kind of where the seed was planted in her brain that came together, that fateful summer, where they were all on Lake Geneva. Eva, so here's an interesting connection between Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley Dickens grew up during the mini Ice age. Have you ever heard about that?

Caroline:

Oh

Anne:

the year without a summer.

Caroline:

Yes.

Anne:

So there was this volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora and what's now Indonesia. And it caused the coldest summer on record at that time. And was called the Year Without a Summer. this happened when Charles Dickens was a child, but perhaps both of them were inspired in their, future writing about the gothic. So basically to quote the cat in the hat, it was too wet to go out and too cold to play ball. So they sat in the house and did nothing at all. That's when Lord Byron came up with the idea to have a storytelling contest. Mary Shelley couldn't think of anything to write at first. And then she had this dream about the moment that creation looms over the creator's bed. And that was the spark. And I love stories about the spark, like what, what brought, especially something so iconic as this into creation. So a little more about Mary Shelley's biography. Lots of loss, unlike Charles Dickens, who really beat the Victorian odds with nine out of 10 children surviving childhood. Mary was pregnant five times, one miscarriage, three children died, one within a few days, another after a few weeks of dysentery, and another around three of malaria. And only one survived childhood. Her mother died giving birth to her. So just death, death, death all around her. And. I found this quote, you can read her journals and there's lots of really interesting, poignant stuff in there. So she wrote, was writing to a friend, asking for her to, or him, I'm not sure who it was to come visit. And she wrote, my baby is dead. Will you come to see me as soon as you can? I wish to see you. It was perfectly well. When I went to bed, I woken the night to give it suck. It appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then. But we did not find out till morning from its appearance. It evidently died from convulsions. Will you come? You are so calm a creature. And Shelly is afraid of a fever from the milk. I'm no longer a mother now, and that's so sad.

Caroline:

It is.

Anne:

So just a reminder, I feel like we came down a little hard on scientific researchers and the Tuskegee episode, because we were referring to those specific researchers, but we should be really grateful for modern medicine because this was the historical reality for a lot of people.

Caroline:

Yeah. And actually, funnily enough, my colleagues who I'm working with right now, they are actually in Brisbane. they're at a conference. They're actually discussing, how to prevent additional losses in pregnancy after prior loss at any point in, in pregnancy or, or shortly after birth. So, and they're there.'cause apparently Australia's like at the forefront of maternal fetal medicine,

Anne:

Good for us. I wish them the best of luck then. it wasn't just maternal loss with, Mary Wilson, craft Shelley, and. Mary Shelly losing her, her own babies. Percy also died in 1822. He drowned and so they were only together for eight years.

Caroline:

mm.

Anne:

Some of her other inspirations she weaved in themes from Prometheus, the myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods to give to humans, and then was doomed to have his liver eternally eaten by an eagle, which is referenced in the movie Harle threatens Victor, I will be the eagle that feasts on your liver when Victor refuses to put his syphilitic brain in the new body. And also Milton's paradise lost when Adam says, did I request thee maker from my clay to mold me? Man, did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me? Which I suppose is something any child might ask of us someday when the world they were born into can be quite cruel. Now, the other creator we need to discuss is Guillermo del Toro. Have you watched many Guillermo Del Toro movies?

Caroline:

Can you name others?'cause I am not sure.

Anne:

So I haven't, I I was kind of realizing how, many gaps I have in my Guillermo del Toro journey. Crimson Peak comes up in relation to this a lot as having a similar kind of opulent gothic tone. The Shape of Water is a, who's the real monster story Hellboy. But I haven't seen any of those. And I do remember being absolutely blown away by Pan's Labyrinth. Have you seen that one?

Caroline:

Oh yeah, the old one. With David

Anne:

That's him no, no, no. That's just Labyrinth

Caroline:

just

Anne:

Labyrinth.

Caroline:

Yeah. Pan Labrinth.

Anne:

Yeah. Pan's Labyrinth.

Caroline:

No.

Anne:

It's about like this Spanish Civil War and a little girl who kind of goes into an alternative realm, and it's got these really, this really scary monster with hand eyes. It's horrifying.

Caroline:

if he does horror, then I probably have not.

Anne:

Kind of like fairytale fantasy horror. I'd say it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Pan's Labyrinth is very, very good.

Caroline:

Mm.

Anne:

You should watch it. And he also did this, Netflix series called Cabinet of Curiosities, which was just like, episodic horror tales. It was cute because he would always come out at the beginning kind of in this like Hitchcock way and present something about the story that was associated with like an object. So he had a cabinet and he'd like pick something out and talk about it and then present the story. So it was fun. So as we said, this is a passion project for him. He first read it at 11 and he wanted it to be operatic. He calls himself a Frankenstein groupie. He has a museum practically devoted to it in his house. You should see the pictures. It's just like sculptures and paintings and objects, and it's very cool. He said, seeing Boris Karloff changed his life in the 1931 version. Have you seen that one?

Caroline:

This is the

Anne:

I watched it.

Caroline:

iteration I've seen. I haven't even seen the Gene Wilder, like Young

Anne:

I haven't seen that one. Yeah.

Caroline:

my husband loves drink. I mentioned my husband.

Anne:

I feel like it's interesting because we know Frankenstein, right? But how many of us have actually writer or watched it? And I think I saw somewhere there's like 400 versions of it or something.

Caroline:

Oh my God.

Anne:

that might count like plays, I'm not sure, but there's a lot of iterations of it. Another reason I love Guillermo del Toro is his stance on ai. He said he'd rather die

Caroline:

Mm.

Anne:

very anti ai, which is good for him.

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

Well, let's talk about setting. the novel set in the late 17 hundreds, but Del Toro changed the timeline to make it in like 18 56, 57 ish during the Crimean War. Some scenes are in Edinburgh, which is a city I lived in, and I don't know if there's a more gothic city that exists, like with this historic buildings and cobblestone everywhere. Though when I was there, there were no literal puddles of blood to step over, which is nice. We discussed last week in our Christmas Carol episode how gross the Dickensian era was, and I think you see that here. There's a scene with women crossing the streets by walking over planks because they were so foul. But at the same time, I think one of the things that's interesting about this movie is it's not true to history, right? Like nobody dressed the way these characters dressed. He hasn't hamstrung himself with authenticity, which I think is an interesting choice.

Caroline:

I thought that was cool. And I saw some TikTok clips about that, taking this like seventies spin on the, uh, and stuff and I think it worked out well.

Anne:

I love it. Del Toro said he wanted, Victor to be like Mick Jagger.

Caroline:

And a mission accomplished

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

I also thought it was cool, connecting this aspect to the him strongness or lack thereof. Like they still use the cool old guns, like when the guys are shooting and stuff like that. Like there's ways that you reinforce, I think the timeline and the circumstances that you're trying to build not putting yourself in a corner about having it be authentic, that

Anne:

And I think being caged by authenticity would be really hard, right? If you're willing to kind of just let that go, you've got a lot more freedom

Caroline:

like input bits and pieces of that so that it, it feels real even, and you can like give yourself plausible deniability or excuse some of the things that are not authentic because enough of it puts you in that place,

Anne:

if you're too historically accurate. The places where you can't recreate that or you make a mistake will be criticized.

Caroline:

Totally. so on the of authenticity, but not aspect I thought was interesting was that the, siblings don't look like siblings like clearly. Dr. Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac is Latino and his brother is clearly not. And they have the same parents, right? His brother, like, what's his name? William Christopher.

Anne:

William. He looks very English private school boy. Yeah.

Caroline:

Like, they do not look like brothers. Which I, I wrote this line down, which I was thinking about as you were talking about Mary Shelley's life. Like he was the breeze. I was the storm cloud. I that line so much. I thought it said so much with so few words. A thing I don't do. I could relate to that. I definitely feel like with my sibling, like I am the storm cloud and he's the breeze, I Just felt like it was a very beautiful and relatable

Anne:

Well, I think that reflects Guillermo del Toro's life that he viewed himself as kind of the weird, introverted, literary kid, and then his brother was athletic and the favorite of his father. So he's probably reflecting that lived experience. Apparently Guillermo del Toro, like West Craven, creates a good atmosphere on set from what I've read.

Caroline:

Well, that is nice to hear.'cause certainly a lot has come out over the last decade or so on not great set environments

Anne:

Yeah,

Caroline:

we love.

Anne:

He, he's, he's gone big on this. they built a mini tower for the castle explosion. They built the ship at least half of it, like one side. You don't see both sides. And the advantage of this building of the sets is that you're not hiding the stage. You can use these wide shots that make it really feel grand.

Caroline:

The use of color too. I kept being like, whoa, that dress is so red. That dress is so green, you know? What does that mean? I wish I knew more.

Anne:

Yeah. I think it was to have a, a consistent color motif for these different characters. And you see the, I guess the bejeweled tones of the. Creation scenes really contrast well with like the starkness of the arctic scenes. Yeah. And I don't think they made that color of that dress back then, right? Like that, like really turquoise and magenta dress that Elizabeth is wearing at one point. Victor wears a lot of red, which I guess echoes the bloodiness of his mother's death of what he's doing. Yeah. Elizabeth seems to be mostly like greens and turquoises cause she's more natural and pure, like the insects she likes. If, if you watch that documentary, you can see that the mood boards that the art department made. I think my favorite part is okay, it's that scene where Elizabeth comes up from visiting the creature and victor's just brooding on the couch in that really shiny silk green dressing gown, like waiting to pick a fight with her. And there's moss growing all around him and it just looks like a painting. It reminded me of the book Mexican Gothic, which I want to cover very soon as well. And there's some symbolism, there's the circle visual motif. You see like the round window in the captain's quarters. Also the round window in the lab, the hole in the floor of the labs. You know, perhaps that's the circle of life that Victor is disrupting. There's a lot of light as well. The wordplay of like sun, SUN, sun and SON sun, and yeah, walking towards the light,

Caroline:

On those round windows, I just happen to be consuming a lot of stuff where there is round windows. I feel like

Anne:

like wicked.

Caroline:

no, I have not seen Wicked. I did see it on Broadway. I, I didn't love it. I am the only person on the planet, Anyway,

Anne:

Oh, you're not the only person on the planet who didn't like the second movie. I am one of those people.

Caroline:

I saw it on Broadway and I was like, I don't get it. I'm sorry. I know I'm the problem anyway, Dr. Strange has a round window Wednesday, there's a round window, star Wars, there's a round window. So I like asked my husband, who is an architect, I was like, how often are there giant round windows, like in a architectural setting? And he was like, like, never, like, you know, like it's very, very unusual. So I feel like every time I see it, it's definitely for symbolism pur purposes.'cause it's not practical.

Anne:

No, it's very grand and visually stunning. But yeah, you don't see that in your average McMansion, do you?

Caroline:

No.

Anne:

I'm not a film student. I don't know much about techniques and I did see some complaints about the lighting and some of the reviews I read, but I loved it the way it was lit. Del Toro it seems to be really proud of his single source lighting, like actual windows letting in the lighting. And I thought it was gorgeous. It reminded me of like a Vermeer painting with light streaming in through one window like that.

Caroline:

I watched it on my iPad, so the lighting

Anne:

no.

Caroline:

was not great. Yeah. So, I was constantly just like moving around my house while watching it, but

Anne:

should watch it on a proper TV at some point. I'm guessing this would be a really amazing movie for film students to analyze

Caroline:

Oh

Anne:

in terms of just production and film techniques, set design, you know, the care that went into this is mind boggling. Do you remember when Down Abbey left a plastic water bottle and a mantle?

Caroline:

I thought that was Game of Thrones

Anne:

Sure it was down Abbey. Uh, maybe, I don't know,

Caroline:

Wait.

Anne:

I don't think,

Caroline:

Starbucks cup and the other was a water bottle, I think. I think it happened

Anne:

maybe

Caroline:

than one set.

Anne:

more than one big period piece where these things would not exist.

Caroline:

An expensive to make peace, and moneymaking,

Anne:

I don't think Guillermo del Toro would've let that happen.

Caroline:

No.

Anne:

Did you have any favorite, scenes or imagery? Like, I've just mentioned the moss, with Victor sitting, waiting for Elizabeth, did you have any moments that really stood out to you?

Caroline:

I mean, I really loved her dresses. Every, her dresses were, just so stunning. between the hoop skirt aspect and the color of them, how vibrant they were, and it such a contrast to the way she carries herself too. Like her dress says look at me. I'm here. And her body says like, I'm not sure why I am here.

Anne:

Which ties in with her. Dying words. I loved the imagery of the creature climbing out of the ice after he falls down into the water. I thought that was really sunny. Just, I love all the arctic stuff one of my favorite historical mysteries, which was recently sort of figured out is the terror and the Abu going missing. And that was during that arctic age of exploration and they got frozen in and couldn't get out and everybody died. And they only recently, maybe in the past five to 10 years found the ship. in general.

Caroline:

it reminded me of Custom America.

Anne:

oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course it did. I'm wondering if there's another Avengers

Caroline:

Might

Anne:

that this reminds you of. There might be, yes.

Caroline:

Might be, yeah. Might be,

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

up whether Stanley was inspired by this

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

Candy. He did. He was

Anne:

And Ultron.

Caroline:

Oh yeah. Ultron

Anne:

Yeah. didn't think of Hulk, but I was thinking of Ultron. Yeah.

Caroline:

yeah, so Hulk is sort of a mix between Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein inspired

Anne:

cool.

Caroline:

The aspect that he can't die. Made me think about whenever the Hulk was trying end his own life, that he was like the other guy's fitted out or whatever, and that it's like impossible,

Anne:

This curse of immortality. Well, that is one of the main differences between the book and the novel. So there's quite a few changes. Uh, sorry. I said the book and the novel. The novel and the movie. so diehard fans of the novel have objected to some of these changes. I still think it communicates the spirit of the book really well, even if it's not a hundred percent faithful to every plot point. if you wanna catch up on it, I listened to this podcast, I've, I've listened to'em a number of times. It's an Australian comedian podcast, it's called Book Cheat. And they summarize classics so that like, you don't have to read them

Caroline:

Oh my God,

Anne:

answer off of each other.

Caroline:

podcast that is CliffNotes

Anne:

It's a Comic CliffNotes podcast. I remember I listened to the Lord, the BLI one, I think, and the whoever the comedian was on made me laugh. It's different comedians that come on, but I highly Recommend it. It's fun.

Caroline:

I'm kind of mad at you that you're telling me about this podcast now.

Anne:

Okay. Sorry.

Caroline:

in a fight.

Anne:

Okay. Book cheat. Go listen.

Caroline:

I brought it

Anne:

You can, um,

Caroline:

Don't, don't you worry.

Anne:

so I actually think some of the changes are better. Don't come at me book nerds, but it's not a perfect novel. Sometimes I think we talked about this with a Christmas carol, that we have this reverence for the classics that, you know, isn't always merited. And a lot of this book is like, huh, why are you talking about that? And an editor might have been like, Mary Honey, cut that. Change that, that doesn't make sense. You know, for example, the monster who's been wandering through the forest kind of comes into a town, this is in the book and discovers a child playing, and guess who that child is? It's William Frankenstein and he's like, oh, I hate that Frankenstein guy, and he murders the kid. Right? Like, what a coincidence. You know? And it's, so that's one of the big changes is that William is an adult man not a baby, which makes the monster much more monstrous that he just comes across this child and murders him and then he frames the, the maid, I think, or the nanny. So a lot of these changes are about making Victor less sympathetic and the creature more sympathetic. So it's less complex, I guess, but I kind of liked it better.

Caroline:

who is Elizabeth gonna marry then if William's a baby in the book?

Anne:

Elizabeth is gonna marry Victor in the book, so she basically, well, I dunno. I mean, there he's,

Caroline:

1800 standards.

Anne:

right, so he, Elizabeth is, Victor's like

Caroline:

Betrothed.

Anne:

adopted sister and she's always just been like, adopted, for him, right? So it was kind of like, oh, here's this girl for you. so he grew up with her as sister, sister, cousin, future wife. That was kind of always the understanding. It's weird.

Caroline:

Wow. That is such a weird connection to toys because

Anne:

Oh, okay.

Caroline:

spoiler

Anne:

watched toys.

Caroline:

you haven't seen Toys, the 1992 Robin Williams movie. But, he has a sister in that movie, she's actually a robot that the dad who's a toy maker made when Robin Williams mom died to be like a companion.

Anne:

That's like Megan, the robot horror movie, Megan, she is a toy created for the child because her parents died then she goes bad. That's another Frankenstein story just realized.

Caroline:

Or another toy

Anne:

Does, the toy in toys go bad?

Caroline:

No, but

Anne:

Okay, because it's not a horror movie.

Caroline:

for the sake of the man. I bet toys doesn't pass. The Bechtel Pesta.

Anne:

No. well, I think Elizabeth is given more to do here, which is good. I still don't think she's given quite enough to do. I have some cri still some criticism, but, in the book, basically the scene does happen where the creature asks Victor, make me a companion. And in the book, Victor agrees. He's like, you know what? Fair? I'll do that. And he goes off to do it. And then he realizes that this is a horrible idea and he changes his mind and he tears the future woman companion apart. And that's when the creature says, I will be with you on your wedding night. And then he goes and kills Elizabeth, on purpose. Premeditated. So again, much more monstrous.

Caroline:

that happens in the Al Pacino version because my husband was telling me about that. I guess Al Pacino is in a version of this

Anne:

No. Robert De Niro.

Caroline:

Yeah, Al Pacino would be weird.

Anne:

Yes. I was like, there's an Pacino version.

Caroline:

Oh, yes.

Anne:

You are getting your Italian mobsters mixed up.

Caroline:

I'm the first person ever to mix those guys up. I'm sure

Anne:

Was there a ADA version? Tony Soprano?

Caroline:

there should have been

Anne:

He should be. He would be a good Frankenstein.

Caroline:

would

Anne:

It would've been

Caroline:

rest in

Anne:

late. Yeah.

Caroline:

of them.

Anne:

Hmm. so I guess this idea of the, the, the monster in the book still has humanity, he does more monstrous things, but he's capable of thought. He doesn't want to, he is very clearly made into a monster, but then the things he does are more abhorrent. we gotta give Mary Shelley like so much credit for this, because I feel like this is probably one of the first examples of a monster not just being pure evil and having that complexity and acknowledging that monsters can be made as opposed to just, we are good. It's bad.

Caroline:

Are you saying that a woman achieved a first and that she's underappreciated for that? That doesn't happen.

Anne:

And you know, people tried to give credit to her husband.

Caroline:

Of course they

Anne:

oh, he must have written it. Bullshit. Okay, now I'm mad not at you. We're not fighting except about book.

Caroline:

Yeah. We are fighting, but

Anne:

Uh, okay. Not about that. I'm mad at the world, not you. okay. Another difference is that in the book, as soon as he succeeds in animating the creature, like the second Victor sees him looming over the bed, he's out. And in the movie he's like, oh yeah, like I did it. and then it's a more of a slow, disenchantment and move towards regret. because it's harder than he expect. And I, again, I like that because it never made sense to me in the book. It was like, wait, you don't even give this thing a chance, like you're immediately going to leave. So I like that it gives us this petulant, impatient, abusive victor who didn't get what he wanted. the other main difference, and I think a lot of people think the lightning laboratory scene. Is how Mary Shelley wrote it because it's in the 1931 movie. Like even if you haven't seen it, you probably have that It's alive. It's a live moment in your head and in the book it's, it's just like, oh, I figured it out. There's no lightning, there's no, raising the body. she does talk about, collecting parts from charnel houses and things like that. But, in this, I like the way they made it like a project to be managed, you know, as opposed to either nothing, which is in the book, just like I figured it out. A lone mad scientist with an assistant in the 1931 version and then just like this massive project. one thing I don't understand is how any of this works. It reminds me of the Princess bride torture device in the pit of despair where it's like all these knobs and things happening, and, but why would that make anyone feel pain?

Caroline:

Yeah. I, I totally agree, but I also don't understand a lot about the way the curl, wor, sorry, current world, the world currently that I exist in. I don't understand the way a lot of things work either. So I was just sort of like, this is a science thing and I don't understand it. I mean, I also know it's fiction, so that helps.

Anne:

That's how I felt reading, the Martian and Project Hail Mary. Like there's a lot of science in there and I'm just like, like gloss over that trust that he knows what he's talking about.

Caroline:

Yeah. A chemistry occurs.

Anne:

Yeah. That's a wine and crime, right? The

Caroline:

I'm whi and crime. it's actually, Elizabeth something, the blood science, there's, they're quoting her the way she's, uh. Explaining her blood test?

Anne:

I thought they just made that up.

Caroline:

No,

Anne:

hear you say that,

Caroline:

no.

Anne:

Okay. The other big change, I think is there's no blowing up of the tower because he just leaves, which I liked. That moment where he changes his mind to go back. I feel like that spectacle is pretty cool. And the last minute change of heart is more tragic. There's some other homages to 1931, the lightning, the dark and stormy night, the creature's hands. There's a lot of hand acting, going on. The interest in something floating in the 1931 movie, the Monster comes across a little girl and she's throwing flowers into the water And then he's like, oh, flowers are beautiful. You are a beautiful thing. And he tosses the little girl into the water and she drowns. So he didn't mean it. He's childlike. I think that floating leaf is an homage to the 1931 movie.

Caroline:

Well, it's interesting the whole, he didn't mean it, it was childlike. I feel like the same thing can be said the way that cruel in the book. as you, you described like, those sound like the behaviors of a person who's frontal lobe is not fully developed, so they don't understand that their actions have permanent consequences. And just like a, a child who bites or hits another child when they get angry, not gonna be an adult necessarily who would punch a person when they get angry.

Anne:

Perhaps the murder of the little boy William, but the murder of Elizabeth is very premeditated.

Caroline:

okay.

Anne:

so I would say by that point, like he knows what he's doing. Again, he has been harmed, but he's still making a very cruel choice to hurt someone who's not involved in this. she didn't do anything. He, she never encounters him until he murders her. also the use of fire in the 1931 movie, the villagers chase him down. So it was kind of exploring mob violence and he, I was really surprised by how sad I felt watching the fear of the creature. Burning to death in this windmill like thing and screaming and fear, it's pretty powerful for like a 1931 movie that doesn't have really any bells and whistles that we have today. yeah, I think those are the main things about the book, movie, original movie Differences. So let's talk about character. What did you think about Victor's father?

Caroline:

Oh yeah. What was he from?

Anne:

Game of Thrones? He's

Caroline:

yeah,

Anne:

Lannister

Caroline:

I forgot to look him up. I was immediately when I saw the blind man, which we'll get to, I was immediately like children in the corridor anyway. yeah, I mean, what a dick, like when he was making his pregnant wife eat

Anne:

ugh, that was so gross.

Caroline:

I had pregnancies where I craved meat. but you also like. There are things that repulse you for no reason whatsoever. And being forced eat is just oof awful to watch.

Anne:

Rosemary and Rosemary's baby craved raw meat, that was her choice.

Caroline:

Yes, exactly. It was her choice. yeah. I didn't like the dad.

Anne:

Charles Dance, Tywin Lannister. He's really good at being a bad dad. He's like the same character.

Caroline:

with disgust. It was weird to see him like love a son. I was like, eh,

Anne:

Yeah. That doesn't Doesn't feel genuine. feel

Caroline:

Not buying

Anne:

Uh, yeah. Well, I guess this is, you know what Guillermo Del Toro probably felt like he experienced growing up that he has some trauma from his own father son relationship. I thought it was kind of ironic that he was beating Victor for getting medical facts wrong when he's wrong. He's like, tell me about the four humors. It's like, no, that's not right.

Caroline:

He also mentions the tricuspid valve, and I know the word tricuspid from Little Shop of Horrors, which I think this is like the second or the third

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

I

Anne:

Drink for little shop hearts. Yeah. well, let's talk about Victor. I love Oscar Isaac.

Caroline:

me too. Me

Anne:

I know you do.

Caroline:

Yeah,

Anne:

I'm less forgiving of the new, newer Star Wars trilogy than you are, but I still, I love him in the Force Awakens. I think he's fantastic.

Caroline:

the chemistry that he and Finn and Ray have, he and Finn in particular, but the, the little trio is one of the things that is redeemable about the newer movies.

Anne:

Yeah, so he plays Victor Frankenstein as a much more despicable character than in the novel. And, perhaps the character in the novel should be viewed as just as despicable, but he's telling his story more. So maybe he's presenting himself in a better light as an unreliable narrator. but yeah, I find Victor pretty much a hundred percent narcissistic petulant, Manchild ass.

Caroline:

Totally. I mean, he had one, I think he was the one who said perhaps God is inept. And

Anne:

Yes.

Caroline:

know, I felt that I appreciated that line, don't come at me listeners. but when he said, I said, drop it and, the monster, the creature doesn't, do what he says and then he punishes him. He's always like, I didn't do this. You did this.

Anne:

So.

Caroline:

like, no, no, no, you did this. that's gaslighting, I believe, can't say more than one word on the fricking day he's born.

Anne:

I know, he does say another word.

Caroline:

Yeah,

Anne:

Elizabeth, and then he's jealous. say one word and I won't kill you, and he still lights that match. He's definitely giving a beauty and the beast guest on. I think when Elizabeth kind of chooses the creature

Caroline:

yeah.

Anne:

and he shoots at it, I saw a hot take that perhaps Victor wanted to kill Elizabeth because she didn't choose him. What do you think?

Caroline:

wouldn't,

Anne:

that bad?

Caroline:

I, I believe he's that bad for sure. I was shocked that he apologized at the end. I did not think he would do that.

Anne:

I don't forgive him. Even if the creature does, I know you've said before, you don't believe in the adage that forgiveness is necessary to move on.

Caroline:

no. But in this instance, I probably would say I forgave someone and just be lying because they're about to die anyway. So what does it matter? I don't need them to suffer in their last moments for the sake of whatever they did to me. But it doesn't mean they're forgiven.

Anne:

yeah. I mean,

Caroline:

person.

Anne:

You'll give them that feeling of forgiveness, even if you're like. Fuck you.

Caroline:

Yeah, exactly. Like, I forgive you too. And then they're dead and I'm like, fuck her. You know, like, I don't know.

Anne:

There's one scene where he's showing off his thing to Elizabeth and William and I feel like it really evoked imagery of the slave trade, right? He's calling him it. He's in change. He's kind of slapping at him and turning him around. It's so dehumanizing. and I think it's really important when he says, I have created something truly horrible in you, or something like that. And he's like, no, not something. Someone,

Caroline:

Right. were so many good lines like that, the usage of it versus being a person,

Anne:

something someone.

Caroline:

Something someone, yeah.

Anne:

So his fatal flaw is obviously hubris. He thinks he can conquer death. I keep quoting pet cemetery. Sometimes dead is better. So lots of literature is teaching us not to play God. There's that shots fired God is inept moment. His dad reminds him at one point. No one can conquer death when he's criticizing the dad for not being able to save the mom. But obviously the consequences are not great by trying to take this power.

Caroline:

I feel very lucky that Death Becomes Her was like a favorite film of mine a child because it made me never want to conquer death. It made me feel like very aware of dangers. Not that it, it's a true story, your story, but you know, it just sort of very young instilled in me like, being living and breathing doesn't mean you're living.

Anne:

I think there's a lot of media that explores the curse of immortality, often vampire stuff, Like what we do in the shadows, Nadia and, uh, Gregor, right? Like she keeps having to lose her lover

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

Anne:

she outlives him and, uh, Aragorn and who's lived Tyler's character in Lord of the Rings.

Caroline:

Oh yeah. I don't

Anne:

So

Caroline:

name.

Anne:

it doesn't matter, last week we discussed the horror of the inevitability of death, That, Scrooge is facing and for example, lander in this wants immortality and Victor seeking to control mortality, but the creatures cursed with it. So the one who doesn't want it. Has it. He calls life merciless at one point he says, there's but one remedy to all pain, death, a gift you two had denied me. And there's a lot of references to death, like the Memento Maori painting that Harlan has set up with that nude, model. And both the creature and Elizabeth have skull holding moments, which is obviously referencing Hamlet. And to be or not to be, but the choice to be or not to be is taken from him. He has no choice but to live on, which is a horror

Caroline:

it's interesting, like even the structure, that they begin at the end. And I always love that happens, when time is messed with, not in terms of time travel, but in terms of storytelling as a device. I don't remember what episode it was where we talked about like whether it's better to have your plan or not have your plan in the beginning. Like we talked about the British series, how they usually

Anne:

plotters and pants.

Caroline:

Yeah. I feel like this, concept of like, like a story isn't told until it's ended, and so like having something really have its meaning or its purpose, or its legacy if you will, it has to end for that to happen, So even in the, in the way that she chose to tell the story, it's reinforcing the message of the story,

Anne:

I do have some minor criticism of that as a plot device or as a framing device I don't mind it here, but so as someone who's trying to get a book published, you have to have your first 10 pages, be awesome. And so I think you see that in a lot of books where it starts with the end because you gotta start with action. Otherwise the agents or editors are like, whatever, this is boring. And so there's no room for just like normal, chronological storytelling because the, I guess, low attention span reader or viewer needs to know there's gonna be action. so I didn't mind it here, but I do object to the overuse of that device, particularly in books because I think it's, it's to appeal to this. Yeah. It, it just speaks to how hard it is to get something published. Okay. So we were talking about Victor. oh, one other thing about Victor, he drinks milk.

Caroline:

Red flag.

Anne:

you see Inglorious bastards?

Caroline:

Oh yes. Well, it's on my recommendations actually. Obviously, because of Christophe Waltz.

Anne:

so Christophe wts that first scene, which is one of the tensest scenes in a movie I've ever seen in my life where he is drinking milk, I was like, oh my God, is he referencing Hans Landa, like as he was drinking milk? But I looked it up. Apparently there's a lot of milk drinking villains like Alex and a Clockwork Orange, the Bad Guy, and No Country for Old Men. I found this list, but those are the ones that stood out to me that I knew

Caroline:

There's milk drinking. Good guys. It's just gotta be blue.

Anne:

who, who's a milk drinking Good guy,

Caroline:

It's a

Anne:

Luke Skywalker and his weird milk. Is that what you're talking about? Okay.

Caroline:

It If it's blue,

Anne:

It was,

Caroline:

it's a good guy.

Anne:

well, yeah. I wonder how many good guys drink milk in movies besides Luke. Anyway.

Caroline:

Do you think that's why the milk, the milk lobby, needed to do the gut milk campaign combat all the bad guys?

Anne:

yeah, what would they have been combating? A Clockwork Orange. I don't think many of these things came out though before the got milk ads. Maybe we need a resurgence of gut milk ads.

Caroline:

came out before.

Anne:

Yeah. So they, they could have been reacting to that, but I think it's significantly before,

Caroline:

Yeah. Yeah. Too much before. What a weird thing,

Anne:

Anyway. moments where. I sympathized with Victor was when Harlan asks him to like put his brain in the body, right at the moment and like, messes up with the plans. And he's like, no. Like, whatcha thinking? That was my moment where I was like, okay, I see you Victor. I guess the only other defensive Victor is that yeah, he's a sad little boy has been abused. Dead mother

Caroline:

right?

Anne:

controlling father.

Caroline:

whatever.

Anne:

Not, not an excuse though.

Caroline:

No.

Anne:

Alright, well let's talk about the creature played by Jacob Alote, who's originally from Brisbane where I live. Boys he tall and handsome.

Caroline:

Even as a, as a creature. I don't really wanna

Anne:

Even as a creature, I think creature is the preferred term for this particular movie. but it's monster generally in other

Caroline:

And

Anne:

works of media about Frankenstein. I don't think so.

Caroline:

Because when he was talking about Man Diaz, I was thinking oh, is his name Ozzy man?

Anne:

it would've been nice if the old man gave him a name,

Caroline:

right.

Anne:

if he did, they didn't show it.

Caroline:

He called him the spirit wood spirit. Spirit of the woods.

Anne:

Spirit of the forest.

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

The stuff with the old man was so sweet. But let, let's talk a little bit more about just Jacob a Lord d so his physicality, his height, such a presence. I, he like moves the ship like Jean Val Jean, when I thought that was pretty cool.

Caroline:

Very cool.

Anne:

I know you're an Andrew Garfield fan, but I'm glad he dropped out. Did you know he was slated for this role?

Caroline:

No, I didn't. That breaks my heart. love him. He's on my

Anne:

I know you do. I. I know, but I feel like he's so sweet. Like his face is so sweet and I don't know, I think Jacob has a face that can be haughty and mean. I don't see Andrew Garfield capable of that kind of face. You know, Jacob Lord is more evil, handsome.

Caroline:

did you see his real face though much? I mean, a makeup artist can work with a sweet face on a creature like this. You know, I was

Anne:

I don't know.

Caroline:

once, and my nose was not actually that big.

Anne:

You do have such a sweet face. Um, well, yeah. Hours of makeup. He, oh Lord. He talks about being like a monastic experience, like 10, 11 hours to put the makeup on. I, so like, how long did they film? If it took him 10, 11 hours to put the makeup on? Did they just film for like two days straight to make it worth it? I don't know.

Caroline:

I think that

Anne:

Um,

Caroline:

when I hear things like that.

Anne:

the fact that he was not phased, I, I guess he didn't even ask about the makeup when Del Toro, interviewed him and he was like, this is my guy

Caroline:

Hmm.

Anne:

and his eyes that he can act a lot with his eyes. Have you seen Euphoria or Saltburn, which are some of his previous big things. And Elvis. He was the Elvis.

Caroline:

No, I've not seen anything. I have not watched euphoria because I just feel like it'll be too hard emotionally to watch. But I've

Anne:

It's hard. Emotionally, I, I watched the one season of it and then I went like to class the next day, like shellshocked and was like, please tell me it's not like this to my year 10 students. Like,

Caroline:

I

Anne:

please.

Caroline:

all of my kids to be like in college by the time I watch it.

Anne:

Yeah. Well, such a different interpretation of this creature. I think most of us instantly picture the Boris Carla version with the bolts in the neck. And interestingly enough, I have this one student in my class who is deaf. So I've been learning, you know, I've studied sign language in the past, and I learned that the sign for Frankenstein is kind of just like referring to the bolts in the neck. And, yeah, so that's how iconic it is. Like that's the sign. yeah, he and I always, he loved,

Caroline:

Do you

Anne:

yeah, I looked it up in a SL as well.

Caroline:

Wow.

Anne:

like either pointing to the net, the bolts or like going like this or something. Well, you can't see this is, but yeah. like it refers to the two bolts.

Caroline:

is a

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

for a podcast.

Anne:

Yes. Not a visual medium. Um, yeah. yeah, so I, I loved this vision of him. That it's such a departure from the Carlo version because you, I feel like if you went too similar, it wouldn't work. And he's like marble, like a bluish tint and greenish tint at times. I just love the way a Lord he plays it. I'm sure Andrew Garfield could have done it too, I guess, but are we fighting again?

Caroline:

we're not. You're right because his eyes are too sweet and you really can't change eyes.

Anne:

You can't change us. Yeah,

Caroline:

else in the

Anne:

he's just too sweet.

Caroline:

you could change, but the shape of his eyes, they are too. Like,, Nutty. What's the nut shape? I'm

Anne:

Nutty

Caroline:

Acorn.

Anne:

shape

Caroline:

Almond Acorn without the top. is the right one.

Anne:

Very weird You have acorn with a top shaped eyes. Well, a lordy plays it with such childlike vulnerability. Apparently he studied infant development to perfect his portrayal and like how babies are fascinated by their hands and the way he plays with the chains and the leaves and the way he kind of crawls along watching the leaf. I thought it was really beautiful.

Caroline:

That is a cool thing that actors do that I don't think I ever realized, even though I went to acting camp, a lot of it is doing these observational aspects. In the, how did this get made about cats that they went to, like a cat imitation school

Anne:

That's.

Caroline:

like that. Like, you

Anne:

Imitation school.

Caroline:

some crazy specialty like that, but like there's stuff like that out there for actors, so

Anne:

Okay. Cat imitation school.

Caroline:

that type of prep as well. It's not just like coming up with your backstory and your mannerisms and all that,

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

too,

Anne:

But at the same time, he's really capable of being menacing

Caroline:

Hmm.

Anne:

yeah, as we've talked about, he's this innocent until he's corrupted by Victor's cruelty and neglect. I mean, one thing I feel like I never really felt unsafe with this creature. Like I was a little tense. When Elizabeth comes down and there's the glove scene, I was like, oh, is this gonna go tell me about the rabbits George of mice and men, because he doesn't know his own strength. Is he gonna harm her in some way? But it, he's still very sweet and gentle in that moment.

Caroline:

In that scene, when she notices, he's cut, he's cut. Like where is cut.

Anne:

Yes. Yeah. Stigmata right.

Caroline:

Yeah. I, I, you

Anne:

And the hand.

Caroline:

i's not a thing we just cut in my church.

Anne:

there's crucifixion imagery, which ties in with the idea of resurrection. And that also ties into our Tuskegee episode with Body Snatchers, who were called Resurrection Men. Yeah. He's a child of a charnel house. Yeah. He's just so lonely. All he wants is a companion, a friend. And when he pats himself on the head with the old man, I think it broke my heart.

Caroline:

I think it's around the time that he sees the deer get shot, which made me think of my cousin Vinny. But he mentions. They'll hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

And that,

Anne:

relevant.

Caroline:

Yes. Very relevant. How bubbly, that the creature encountered this family and then this man, I mean, it's essential for the story, but I feel bad about

Anne:

and all that happens. I just, I loved that whole section. it's very like Cinderella sleeping, be friends with the mice, like little rats or mice or whatever on his shoulders it's like a reprieve from the horror of everything else, and then obviously it all falls apart. I think it's the heart of the story of only he'd survived. He's the one who kind of prompts the creature to forgive and let it fade. I noticed the, the emphasis on the word fade, like Elizabeth talks about fading. The old man talks about letting the harm fade. And at the end, I think Victor, somebody in the final scene, there's a, another fade quote. and just all the, the nice little details as he's teaching the little girl to read, he holds up cards that say a boy and an eye, and he's behind with the eye. So just some great details there

Caroline:

There were a lot of moments throughout where I was like, really this timing? At this moment, that it's so heartbreaking for

Anne:

Yeah. That the family comes home as the wolves have just attacked. If they had come home like 10 minutes earlier, they would've seen him killed, or even two minutes earlier, they would've seen him kill the wolves So, he had this chance if the grandfather could have said, no, no, no, this guy's okay. He had a chance at a family.

Caroline:

Well, and same with when Elizabeth dies, if everyone hadn't entered the room at that moment, they would know who's really responsible.

Anne:

Yeah. also I, I was a little mad at the captain of the ship because he knows, He knows that this creature is capable of humanity. And I understand the sailors might be a bit resistant to him, like joining their crew because he murdered a bunch of them. But, he should have been like, why don't you stay with us? I will introduce you to society when we get back So I was mad at the captain for not giving him a chance there.

Caroline:

His character only had room for one arc, that was not focusing on the sunk cost fallacy, which I think we've done that straight through the whole podcast.

Anne:

yes. It's It's an important message.

Caroline:

Yeah,

Anne:

you said you made a connection to Stranger Things when we were talking about this before and I, I feel like I know what it is and I wanna see what you've said.

Caroline:

okay, so the first thing, actually, there was like a chime, in the scene that we talked about where she's eating the thing with the blood. a chime, was also, I thought, a circular window in Stranger Things.

Anne:

maybe in the attic scene when Jason gets,

Caroline:

What, what did you think

Anne:

Okay.

Caroline:

it was?

Anne:

I thought, I thought it was gonna be when the old man calls him a friend and he like repeats friend. And you know how 11 talks about friend a lot in the early seasons. So that was my like, oh, I wonder if that's what it was.

Caroline:

No, it was definitely like a visual or a sound effect, like it was a

Anne:

Okay.

Caroline:

accessory aspect.

Anne:

yeah, he also leans into cheeks, like if somebody puts their hand on the cheek, he leans in

Caroline:

Mm.

Anne:

it's, it's gorgeous.

Caroline:

My

Anne:

And

Caroline:

that.

Anne:

One of my favorite aspects of the creature is the way he can do so much with the one word victor,

Caroline:

Mm.

Anne:

Like that first time he points to himself and he is like, oh, am I Victor? And then he says it with, hope seeking connection and then he's screaming it in rage at one point and then in pain and fear as the tower is burning. So it's one word and he's acting so much with it. 11 in Stranger things, the way she says papa in different ways. It's the same thing.

Caroline:

that actually is something I did know that actors do because my brother was an acting at the college he went to, I'm a lot younger than him, I think we've mentioned that before. And I shadowed him in an acting class And they each got on pieces of paper, words that they had to like express in every sort of way they could imagine. You would express that one word,

Anne:

Oh Lord. He did it well with Victor.

Caroline:

Like these pretzels are making me thirsty.

Anne:

Okay. Exactly like that. You're doing George, right? Is that George takes it to the extreme. Where is, is Elaine more like these pretzels are making me thirsty?

Caroline:

yeah. Well, that sounded like her. I can't, I can only remember how George did it, and just the as a whole, just being so good.

Anne:

It's a great scene and really shows what some actors can do with one line and how they do it differently. Fun. Well, let's talk about Elizabeth. Mia Goth, she has become quite the darling of the horror world. She's in this recent trilogy, Pearl X and Maxine, and is really good in that. I'm guessing you haven't seen them.

Caroline:

No,

Anne:

Did you notice that she played Victor's mother too?

Caroline:

no.

Anne:

I didn't know either. I found out after the fact, did not recognize her. I mean, obviously you can do a lot of, a lot with makeup, but that's her.

Caroline:

Wow. Creepy

Anne:

Mm-hmm.

Caroline:

because

Anne:

So of a

Caroline:

her baby, then

Anne:

Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe that's why Victor likes her so much, right? Like it's a bit Freudian Oedipal. Yeah.

Caroline:

Well, the colorful dresses or whatever made that clear to me, but I didn't even know. I, I mean, I guess because I was looking at the dresses so much, I didn't notice

Anne:

Not looking at that face. Well, they do really change her face because I've, I've watched it twice now, and the first time I didn't know, and the second time I was like studying the face and still it's like, okay, I can see it in the eyes. But they did a thorough job with the prosthetics or makeup or whatever. So she's, I I understand why you wouldn't notice. No, I'm not, I'm not taking that on board.

Caroline:

No, no,

Anne:

I'm a hundred percent on Jacob all Lorde.

Caroline:

no, but it reinforces like you can change everything about the face, but not the

Anne:

Oh, okay. Okay. I thought you were saying it reinforces that Andrew Garfield could have done it. And I was like, I object.

Caroline:

Yeah, no.

Anne:

could have done it. I just think Jacob all Lorde did a fantastic job. So she's a woman of her time. Lacking choice. She says, choice is the seed of the soul. She's the trapped butterfly, but she also is involved in trapping the butterflies.

Caroline:

it's hard. To comment on not fully able to understand all the implications of choosing not to be aristocracy, for example. But yeah, I had written down her, lecture about choice,

Anne:

definitely giving Rose from Titanic.

Caroline:

yes. And also, sense and sensibility and the newer iteration of little women, Yeah. There's a lot out there that discusses this aspect of our history in a way that I don't think we heard growing up.

Anne:

she's an improvement on book Elizabeth, who's just there to be married and killed.

Caroline:

Hmm.

Anne:

also an improvement on 1931 movie Elizabeth. So she's not necessarily just there to scream and faint. I like that she's kind of a weirdo, right? It's not too popular to be the girl into bugs at any time in history.

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

and so she's kind of disenchanted with the world and

Caroline:

And war

Anne:

and war Yes. Strong anti-war message from her.

Caroline:

I loved it. And it's still accurate, I felt like it was a very poignant and forever true

Anne:

Yeah. And Harland is a weapons dealer, so all that cash that is funding this project is off the gruesome deaths of young men as Elizabeth points out, and then used to pursue his own selfish goal of everlasting life. he's profiting in things that kill others while thinking he deserves to live forever. and he's very dismissive of her. He's clearly heard her make this speech before, Because he's like, I'm gonna go off and have my brandy or whatever as she starts to talk about it.

Caroline:

Knowing that that's her family, I guess I would also be like, why are you sitting here off the blood money that this thing you oppose has provided you? But again,

Anne:

guess that is always a hard decision to make.

Caroline:

I say that with current day which I know are different.

Anne:

Like, what is she gonna do?

Caroline:

Right.

Anne:

there's not a lot of options. as rose's mom says, like, do you want to see me working as a seamstress? Which it's, that would be a really bad job, like 12 hour days, factories, burned down, throughout history. So like a seamstress doesn't sound so bad by our standards, but in that time in history, pretty shitty.

Caroline:

totally.

Anne:

Yeah, it's a great quote. Men are dying for them in a decidedly un elevated way, face down in the mud, choking on blood, screaming in pain. Men that were fathers, brothers or sons to someone out there. Men that were fed, cleaned and nursed and schooled into this world by their mothers, only to fall on a battlefield far away from those that provoke these tragedies. Those men remain at home untouched by the blood or bayonet their skin, un pierced, their blankets warm and clean. So this establishes her as very empathetic, which is reinforced in her treatment of the creature.

Caroline:

And I just wanna note, like our societal concept of violence is graphic and explicit in this way. But I also think we talked about echoes of this who is accountable in Tuskegee. this is the same truth that exists in white collar crime. It might not be death, but it is suffering, and it is servitude in systems that have forced labor. And you know, like there's, there's ways that, nonviolence is violent.

Anne:

It only, it seems that direct violence is what's punished,

Caroline:

Exactly, and not

Anne:

which I think is something we'll discuss.

Caroline:

the direct violence,

Anne:

Yeah. she's also a bit of a Ian Malcolm, Dr. Ian Malcolm, the moral compass asking, should you be doing this? Have you thought about what you're doing? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. So I like Elizabeth. I like that they gave her more of a personality than Mary Shelley gave her. But I do have some criticism. I think it's not enough. What do you think?

Caroline:

I agree.

Anne:

I read somewhere that this was originally going to be a trilogy and that she might have had her own movie and been the one that gets perhaps reincarnated or almost brought back to life. As I said in the book. Victor does promise his creature a companion, but then backs out. So it would've been, I think, really powerful to have him reanimate Elizabeth and then change his mind and end up destroying her. That would've been a really good rage inducing scene, but it's already a two and a half hour movie. Right. one other comment on Elizabeth, that hair, it's a really long hair.

Caroline:

Yeah. That's not all real,

Anne:

No,

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

be. But imagine the split ends, if it were. all right. let's talk a little bit more about William. He's just desperate for love from his big brother, seems to be trying to impress him in that whole, his job as the project manager of the experiment. Just sort of there to be in the way for Elizabeth, I guess,

Caroline:

Like, you can choose between this super deep suffering guy and this very basic has been good for me, guy, tropes that we've experienced, like in the notebook, the boring rich guy is also like really good. there's an opportunity to be like, sometimes things don't work out just because they don't, not because being a genuinely nice person who happens to have been well off in their life makes you not worthy of love. You.

Anne:

Patrick Dempsey in Sweet Home, Alabama.

Caroline:

Which I

Anne:

He's not bad.

Caroline:

I haven't seen that.

Anne:

That's, that's one of my husband's favorites. It comes on in our house with some frequency, so

Caroline:

it, I'm sure I would. But yeah, I

Anne:

I think he would,

Caroline:

when it's like, you don't need to be like brooding, Lord Byron, the collective works in my Porsche. You know, like you could be just a nice person

Anne:

yeah,

Caroline:

interesting and maybe hasn't had trauma and like, good for you then, you know,

Anne:

yeah. Yeah. Brooding can be tough to be around after the initial sexual thrill.

Caroline:

is often I would

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

versus can be.

Anne:

Well, and plus Victor's, so he's so narcissistic about it. she's apprised to be one. I think it, at one point he says, what about my pain? What you have denied my heart? Something along those lines he feels very entitled to her and I'm glad she turns him down.

Caroline:

a hundred percent.

Anne:

Any other awesome scenes we've talked about the leaf scene. I love that. Else that you really liked?

Caroline:

Uh, not that we haven't already talked about.

Anne:

oh, we didn't really talk about Harlan. Do we have anything else to say about him? do.

Caroline:

That Christophe Waltz?

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

Uh, I mean, he's a douche too.

Anne:

Yeah. Great villain.

Caroline:

great villain. If you need a villain. Kristoph Waltz is your guy. He does it so beautifully. he was great.

Anne:

I loved his power move after he goes to the toilet and he's like, flush that for me.

Caroline:

Oh yeah. It reminded me of our spotlight conversation when, when he's like, oh, I got

Anne:

I, yes. Power move

Caroline:

Yeah. Power move.

Anne:

now. When I saw that hole. And the tower floor. I was like, someone's gonna fall through that. Don't put a hole in the floor of your story tower unless someone's going down.

Caroline:

It is so funny. You're like like my husband. He's always like, where are the railings?

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

everywhere in the Star Wars galaxy long ago. Far, far away. Nobody has railings anywhere, any structure.

Anne:

well these are the sort of things an architect has to consider. Right.

Caroline:

Right.

Anne:

What is the scariest, most disturbing part for you?

Caroline:

That humans will hunt you and kill you just for being who you are. The reason that I'm interested in true crime as well. It's sort of this fascination with that extreme aspect and why and how does that happen? It's so horrible that like, let's figure out why to make it stop.

Anne:

Make it stop. Yeah. Well, I don't know if that's possible.

Caroline:

No,

Anne:

I think for me the sawing of bodies was pretty gross. I think the scene that broke my heart the most was when the family comes home and blames him for killing the old man, the face whip when the dad whips him on the face. Like that was shocking and horrible. And yeah, maybe the grosses scene might just be when he lifts up Harlan's body after he is fallen through and his brain's like drip out. That was pretty nasty.

Caroline:

you couldn't ask me to list many scenes were horrifying for me.

Anne:

Okay. Sorry. You'll get desensitized eventually. Like me. All right. deeper horrors beneath the surface. I think, that we are not born to be monsters the creature wouldn't have been. Murderous E victor hadn't been abusive. And you know, I like that the creature turns, victor's abuse back on him when he breaks his nose. it's, it's icky to watch. But I love that line. If you are not to award me love, then I will indulge in rage. He didn't wanna indulge in rage it also reminded me of, Wesley's threat to humperdink to the pain

Caroline:

Mm.

Anne:

your ears you keep so that every shrie of every child that's seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. My God, what is that thing, you know, that the monster wants to cause Victor pain to make him into the monster that he made him to be.

Caroline:

For me, the deepest tour is being trapped. In a torturous situation, like, he can't die. Where is he now? it's so horrific to be like, I just want it to be over and you can't, not that I'm advocating ending anybody's life, but our lives all end. And then what is he gonna do for the rest of eternity?

Anne:

So,

Caroline:

he continues to lose people?

Anne:

Loneliness, rejection,

Caroline:

yeah.

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

That's part of that immortality. Like you can never feel more alone. I mean, I'm, I am very fortunate that I married someone who I've known as long as I have, my husband and I met in high school, and it, makes me feel very secure being like, this person has known this many iterations of me. that would be impossible for someone who lives generations beyond their peer species or whatever,

Anne:

And you have the added issue in this case of not looking like Liv Tyler, you know, so the automatic, Gaelen, is that her name?

Caroline:

I win, I win.

Anne:

Alwin.

Caroline:

R win. R win.

Anne:

Arwin. he looks monstrous. So people's initial reaction is to reject him

Caroline:

Right?

Anne:

react in fear. well, that's one of my questions. I feel like the dynamite would've worked, right? Like if you can sever the body parts, surely it can't keep going. Like, are they gonna crawl back to each other

Caroline:

okay, so the one thing I will say is I do understand very, basically from science, that energy, be stopped. It just transfers, right? if you stop inputting energy into your body, that energy that you expend existing is going to die. You know, like there's no battery to him

Anne:

So it's just kind of the cycle that keeps going. So if you break the connection, like if you cut off his head, surely he's gonna die. Right? I feel like haven't tried hard enough.

Caroline:

They haven't tried the head. Yeah. Always go for the head. as we learned

Anne:

Right.

Caroline:

the MCO, but, also if you don't eat, if you don't your body with the nutrients it requires to exist, it's gonna decay on its own.

Anne:

there's no immortality of the creature in the book, That's it. It in the end it goes off to kill itself. It's like, I'm gonna go off and build this pyre for myself,

Caroline:

Okay.

Anne:

Victor Laval, who's this horror?

Caroline:

go.

Anne:

Yeah. maybe that's where the fire that we see so much in different, versions of this comes from that he is intending to kill himself by fire. But Victor Laval he's a, a horror novelist, and he wrote a graphic novel that I've started reading, but I haven't gotten too into it about imagining that it's basically been in the arctic this whole time. And it's still around

Caroline:

Captain

Anne:

exactly like Captain America. the first part I read is he's like stopping wailing ships from like, killing whales. So that's what

Caroline:

directing the orcas to sink the yachts?

Anne:

oh, maybe, yeah, maybe that's what he's been up to this whole time. If you found a way to live a life that brings satisfaction, you know, saving the Arctic is a, is a worthy pursuit.

Caroline:

Absolutely.

Anne:

All right. Well, other deeper horrors is, child abuse, intergenerational trauma. Also reminded me of Carrie White's mom. You know, we have a responsibility for what we bring into the world and the pain we cause. And Victor does not take that responsibility. Also losing control of technology, arguably, this is an allegory for so many technologies that we've lost control of, whether it's the tech bros today and the lack of ethics and the carelessness for the fallout. You know, the way Victor just tosses the bodies out, I feel like today that's happening with, freaking screens in primary school classrooms and ai and potentially genetic modification like these are monsters that we have lost or will lose control of. And of course, Ultron, The treatment of bodies after death, the way we dehumanize those, which ties into Tuskegee, Birkin Hare, the resurrection, who were digging up people and killing them in the early 19th century. We see this with the way Victor is assessing men awaiting execution and picking through bodies on the battlefield. By the way, I love that that battlefield horse frozen

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

Anne:

know how that would happen, but, I thought it, it, it was visually very stunning.

Caroline:

Yeah, I've seen like a frozen rat TikTok, but not a horse. I think that would take a lot.

Anne:

Yeah. So like freeze in movement, that's, that's pretty cold. And I guess the way the powerful treat, the powerless, for example in the French Revolution, like treating peasants like dirt created something that came back to bite them, And one thing that I wanna point out about the novel, and I remember being really surprised by it when I read it, was that the monster talks about the fate of Native Americans. He says, I heard of the Discovery of America and wept with safety, whose other character over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants. And I thought that was so interesting that Mary Shelley had it on her mind that the indigenous people of America were getting treated like shit and had her monster feel bad for them. So she's kind of equating this creature with them in some way.

Caroline:

Amazing,

Anne:

what an amazing social con conscious that she would've had to even just know about that. Oh, by the way, last week you

Caroline:

Yellow wallpaper lady. It's possible.

Anne:

by the way, I briefly looked up. I didn't look into it very much, but you asked last week what Charles Dickens would've thought about colonialism. And although it doesn't really come up in his books because they're very, like his urban environment, uh, not good. Right? So I did a quick look before, but like, you know, his writings are very much, I guess not generous in that respect. and so I've found this in 1968, Dick Gregory, a civil rights activist, wrote the Shadow that scares me, and he uses Frankenstein to explore white responsibility for creating the conditions of violence. I think that just ties into the legacy of colonialism and the conflicts we have today. Like, you can only push people so far before they fight back. And, you know, the way the language of monstrosity is used to dehumanize people like Michael Brown,

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

Anne:

it looked like a demon, is what Darren Wilson said of him. So I think there's themes in this that tie into what's going on around the world and what probably always will. So like Victor rejected,

Caroline:

Tuskegee.

Anne:

yeah. Victor rejected one creation. But what if a society rejects a demographic, like a whole group of people, how will they react?

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

What if, yeah. When a society, alright. Criticism, not gonna hear a ton of criticism from me because I chose this because I like it, but I. Do have a few things. I feel like Elizabeth's love for the creature wasn't developed enough for me to believe it.

Caroline:

Agree.

Anne:

know, we see her going down like once or twice. I would've liked the Impli even if they didn't have to show the scenes, the implication that she's been there for a while and she's going down there regularly, I think that could have been made clearer and then I would've believed the way she feels. I think she feels romantic love for him.

Caroline:

I agree.

Anne:

What other criticism do you have that we haven't already discussed?

Caroline:

No, n a lot. I mean, I. To be fair, this is my actual introduction into this legendary story, so don't have a ton.

Anne:

I have heard some people say this is like the twilight ification of Frankenstein by making a lordy play him so appealingly. And that he is much more monstrous in the novel. I don't buy it, but that is a criticism I have heard. I liked it.

Caroline:

sorry, find Edward to be monstrous in every

Anne:

Yeah,

Caroline:

I

Anne:

that's a good point. Yeah.

Caroline:

the comparison.

Anne:

Or just making him like beautiful. Whereas

Caroline:

I wouldn't call that twilight, I'd call that Hollywood.

Anne:

yeah, sliding down the water, escape the water tunnel to escape the fire felt a bit silly to me. I don't know, just like tonally outta place, uh, it's long,

Caroline:

it is

Anne:

you know, it took me three nights to watch

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

can't stay up.

Caroline:

I think I did it across three days as well. Three

Anne:

Yeah.

Caroline:

nights. Yeah.

Anne:

The wolf, CGI was not great. Reminded me of the day after tomorrow with the bad wolves and that, which is not good,

Caroline:

terrible. Get the practical, you know, I don't know.

Anne:

yeah, I think they probably spent so much of their budget on building sets and like a whole boat and massive labs and everything, and towers that they skimped on the wolf, CGI, and you know, they didn't need to have that many wolves. They could have animated two or three wolves instead of like eight and still gotten the same effect. my only other problem was I, I did feel like there were few moments where it was kind of ham fisted. Like when William's dying words are, you are the monster, right? would you say that,

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

and he uses the word conflagration. Conflagration. And I was like, what does that mean?

Caroline:

What does that

Anne:

who talks like that? I looked it up. It's a large fire, a destructive fire. And I know why he included that. Only after looking it up, because the creature's, final words and the novel are soon I shall die. And what I now feel be no longer felt soon, these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall send my funeral pile triumphantly and exalt in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that con flag, gration will fade away. My ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace. Or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus farewell. So that's the end. So he kind of took the creature's final words and gave some of them to William.

Caroline:

Nobody says all that when they're dying.

Anne:

Well, this is the monster.

Caroline:

I,

Anne:

like, I'm gonna go die now.

Caroline:

but still he is also very young for that vocabulary I don't

Anne:

That is one of the criticisms of the book is the way the Monster talks is like a university educated philosopher.

Caroline:

Isn't there that one celebrity whose last words were like, fuck this shit, or something like that.

Anne:

That makes sense.

Caroline:

yeah, I

Anne:

Okay.

Caroline:

look it up.

Anne:

Uh, questions. What's that green stuff? It's like ectoplasm, like, like what is this stuff? It looks like something Homer would be juggling at his job, at the power plant. Plutonium canisters or something. Okay. And my other question Why don't these people ever go in their shed, The family, they've got the shed

Caroline:

Yeah.

Anne:

go in. Like, I feel like he's so obviously there, there aren't that many places to hide. yeah. And how is he self-healing? Again, that was not in the book. I have trouble understanding the angel scenes. You know, when the red angel appears in a dream to Victor, I'm kind of like, what's going on there? I guess it's like the dichotomy between angel and demon thinking he's doing good, but he's actually doing evil. I don't know. I wanted to look into that and that's not something I managed to do. Any other questions? Okay. What do we learn from this? What do we take away? What are, how do we survive better?

Caroline:

One thing I thought, sorry. What I learned, I guess, is what I Googled, I was looking up what Frankenstein means,'cause I think I mentioned in one earlier episode, I was interested in like baby names and what they mean anyway. Frankenstein means conqueror. so I thought that was very relevant for that scientist to have as a name. the,

Anne:

death.

Caroline:

or attempts to, conquer all, I guess. but Ozzy Man Diaz, The meaning, I guess, is the futility of power and hubris and arrogance. That parable ex, described at the end is something I had never heard of. So I learned the stuff that I was like, oh, I wonder what deeper meaning behind that is.

Anne:

I feel like I studied Ozzy mania in high school, but I remember nothing.

Caroline:

definitely didn't.

Anne:

I guess my takeaways, I, I understand if you saw an eight foot tall sewn together creature coming at you, that you would be scared, but I guess don't judge a book by its cover. back to Stranger Things season four, the way Jason classifies Eddie as a freak, The way we classify people by when we don't know. Them and view someone as a monster and how wrong that is, and that we need to understand each other's humanity. If you bring life into this world, take care of it. Don't buy a puppy on Christmas unless you're gonna actually do the right thing by it. Consider what comes after creation and don't dismiss teenage girls. Mary Shelley. What a legend. Alright, what's your palate? Cleanser.

Caroline:

Okay, so I think I mentioned at an earlier episode that my family and I, primarily me they want to, they join me we're, I'm watching all the Star Wars properties in timeline order. so that includes all the series, including the cartoons. Anyway, we made it to the OG Star Wars movies this weekend. And speaking of the, embarrassing CGI, it is upsetting you can't just watch the original versions and you have to watch the remastered versions

Anne:

But I, I hate, I hate, I hate those stupid things that George Lucas put back in there. It makes me so mad, Every time we watch Star Wars, my husband is like, you're complaining about that again.

Caroline:

that

Anne:

So I can't, I can't not.

Caroline:

the Hut walking and, and Hans Solo and the whole scene is like should have been cut by an editor to your earlier point about this book and Dickens, like if there were editors being like, you don't need this'cause you already said that. Anyway, that scene is useless and it all it does is destroy the lore behind Java by making him walk around and looking like a cartoon. Anyway, that said, they're great movies and I did see that in honor of their 50th anniversary. They will be releasing in theaters, at least in America. At select theaters, you can go and watch the original release version in the theater. So we're definitely gonna do that Anyway, that is my cleanser. And it also is relatable in terms of how they treat droids

Anne:

Mm-hmm.

Caroline:

in that galaxy, being othered in a way that was totally not necessary and has constantly reiterated how unnecessary and not fair it is.

Anne:

Which is also explored in Westworld.

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

Anne:

All right. What's our homework?

Caroline:

in The spirit of, being hunt down in one way or another by who you are, did watch the new Netflix documentary on Eileen Waro. It's called Eileen Queen of the Serial Killers, I think it's a very good commentary on lot of the stuff we've talked about already here and very relatable. So that is our homework.

Anne:

And just to learn more about her, I think I saw the movie Monster, like when it came out, but that's pretty much all I know. And maybe the occasional True crime podcast that has mentioned her, but

Caroline:

I have actually never watched a like adaptation of her only true crime coverage. So I wonder how enraged I'll be by a dramatization

Anne:

Are you gonna watch it

Caroline:

maybe.

Anne:

I might try to, if I have time. I don't know. It's hard because I have, my, my parents are visiting they don't necessarily wanna watch, serial killer stuff. Alright. what recommendations do you have

Caroline:

Okay, I have a lot this time. Obviously, little Shop of Horrors, my cousin Vinny. I mentioned a lot of Marvel stuff. I do really think there's a lot of these messages in Marvel as well. Marvel has the whole Captain America tie in with Nazis, and Nazi has the Christophe Waltz tie, so I'm a

Anne:

and the Arctic? Yeah.

Caroline:

Yeah. And the Arctic and all that stuff. So, Inglorious Bastards, Indiana Jones, sound of Music. These are all, great Nazi fighting Nazis or fighting people who hunt you down and kill you just for being who you are. I also mentioned death becomes her, that I watched as a child that made me appreciate the value of this one life we all have. I also really. Related to an appreciated Elizabeth's vibe of being weird and feeling not for this world, And I always felt like a weird girl and not in a cute manic pixie dream way that nobody actually is, but like, in an authentically weird way. Um, so I always loved, Alice in Wonderland as a, as a young child. I always loved the, we're all mad here, reference. And then also, Lydia Dietz in Beal Juice. I myself am strange and unusual. I always related to that, so appreciate that. and then as well, the one scene when I actually liked Victor, they're dancing or whatever, after he's faked to be the priest and confessional. it reminded me of the newest little women movie with Timothy Chalamet, that, that I love. It has a cute dance scene at that party in the beginning, when Joe and Lori meet. It also has a great speech about choice, which I think we talked about earlier.

Anne:

I like Titanic.

Caroline:

Yes. I also wanted to mention Dr. Death just for. Psychotic doctors.

Anne:

okay. Continuing our Mad scientist streak.

Caroline:

Any season of the podcast, they're all very good.

Anne:

As I said, if you don't feel like reading or rereading, Frankenstein book sheet is the podcast I mentioned. you could try another Epistolary novel. We didn't mention that. This is told through letters in the book. The captain is writing home to his sister. But Carrie, which we cover, I believe on episode 10 of our podcast and Dracula, are both epistolary novels that you might wanna check out. There's a short story called The Monkey's Paw, which is another sort of gothic tale about the horrors of trying to. Subvert death and play God. I think it kind of leads to the final destination movies. The best podcast that I listened to about this was called Library Talks. It wasn't about the movie, but it was just about the novel and its legacy. It introduced me to Victor Laval and the graphic novel he's written and all that stuff about civil rights. And I just thought it was really an interesting take on it that I hadn't heard before. So that was called Library Talks, and I wanna try that out in the future. for Bad Wolves, yellow Jackets, and one of my extreme weather disaster comfort movies the day after tomorrow. And that also has people freezing in place because the weather's so cold, like the horse must have done in that battle for putting a body back together. Silence of the Lambs and Iron Man, that thing kind of reminded me of Iron Man. And then just for Losing control of your creation, there's Jurassic Park, Terminator, Megan, I think Oppenheimer is kind of a real life version of this for a Frankenstein story that we haven't brought up yet. Edward Scissor hands. This creature that is viewed as a freak and used and abused and judged. And then just, you know, there's all these Guillermo Del Toro movies that I would like to watch, like Crimson Peak, Pinocchio Hellboy Blade Two is Guillermo Del Toro, shape of Water and Pans Labyrinth, which I love and really wanna rewatch. That's it for me. Thank you for listening. Please do all the things podcasters ask you to do, like and subscribe. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or threads, write a review on iTunes. You can email us at Drawn to Darkness pod@gmail.com. And most importantly, tell a like-minded friend who is also drawn to darkness. If like Shirley Jackson, you delight in what you fear. Join us in two weeks here at Drawn To Darkness. Special shout out to Nancy Ano who painted our cover art. You can find her on Instagram at Nancy ano and to Harry Kidd for our intro and outro music. You can find him on Instagram at Harry J. Kidd and on Spotify.

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