#dancurtis

Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)

★★ Watched 20 Oct 2025

Despite its audacious title, Frankenstein: The True Story might be one of the least faithful adaptations of Mary Shelley’s novel ever made. 

The irony of the title becomes clear almost immediately. This is less Frankenstein and more an unacknowledged precursor to The Incredible Melting Man (1977), as it follows a creature who starts off perfect and then slowly deteriorates throughout the film. If there are any Frankenstein aspects at all, they come from The Bride of Frankenstein. Many of the key story beats, such as the mentor figure, the female creation, even the blind hermit subplot, are here not because they’re in Shelley’s novel, but because they were in Bride. The creators clearly loved Whale’s films, but since they didn’t have the rights, they had to file the serial numbers off. Hence we get James Mason as Polidori, a thinly veiled Dr. Pretorius stand-in, named after The Vampyre author John Polidori, who, fittingly, was present at the Villa Diodati where Shelley conceived her story.

One of its most significant contributions to Frankenstein’s cinematic lineage is the Bride, presented here as a fully developed character for the first time. She’s created with the head of Agatha, the blind man’s daughter, and becomes Polidori’s ward. A poised, elegant woman he intends to use to infiltrate high society. She’s not the ghastly, iconic Bride we know, but a “femme fatale” figure (played by Jane Seymour, no less). Her storyline is undercut by melodrama, but her death scene, where the Creature pulls her head from her body, at least offers an echo of the story’s tragic heart.

Victor Frankenstein is barely the ambitious scientist Shelley envisioned. In this version, the idea of creating life doesn’t even come from him. It’s Polidori who plants the seed, and it’s Henry Clerval, reimagined here as an unhinged proto–mad scientist, who actually builds the first creature with Victor acting as his assistant. When Clerval dies, Victor harvests his brain for the Creature, who later flickers between his own identity and Clerval’s memories. Essentially, Victor becomes Igor in his own story.

Wherever redeeming aspects Frankenstein: The True Story possesses are is in its supporting cast, stacked with British character actors and familiar faces from across pop culture. You’ve got Sapphire and Steel’s David McCallum, Doctor Who’s Tom Baker, and a small army of Orson Welles veterans including Agnes Moorehead, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson. Their presence adds some theatrical flair to what is otherwise overwrought pulp.

The film also earns a bit of historical credit: it’s the first adaptation to include the Arctic material, though stripped of its framing device. The finale, where the Creature (now half-Clerval) reunites with Victor, and the two joyfully embrace as an avalanche buries them alive, forgets the novel's themes.

Dan Curtis’ Frankenstein (1973) is one of the rare adaptations that manages to stay mostly faithful to Mary Shelley’s novel while still working as an accessible piece of 1970s television. Like the 1968 Mystery and Imagination version, it condenses time and space for practical reasons. The supporting characters once again travel to Germany rather than Victor and the Creature makes multiple return trips to Geneva. But the spirit of Shelley’s story is here, intact and alive.

It also keeps the now-standard assistant trope from the Universal films, though this time the assistants are new creations rather than the usual hunchbacked caricatures. One even donates his heart to Victor’s experiment as he’s dying, an original twist that adds an undercurrent of genuine tragedy to the act of creation.

As for other changes, the Justine subplot is omitted, and Victor’s friend Henry Clerval is the one to discover him building the Creature’s mate. De Lacey’s daughter, Agatha (now blind instead of him), replaces her father as the Creature’s point of contact with humanity. In a thoughtful touch, Felix’s new wife Safie (often omitted in other versions) is retained but changed from Turkish to Spanish. It’s small details like these that show a real awareness of Shelley’s text, even when the production is simplifying things.

This version also does everything Guillermo Del Toro’s 2025 film tries to do but doesn’t pull off. Most notably in its handling of the Creature’s sympathy. The Creature is compassionate, curious, and tragic without losing his danger. The moment he accidentally kills William—silencing him too forcefully rather than murdering him in revenge—perfectly balances pathos and horror, evoking Karloff’s iconic scene with the little girl in the 1931 original. It’s one of the smartest and most emotionally honest changes to the story in any screen version.

Elizabeth, too, is far more developed than usual. She’s not just Victor’s fiancée but a woman who sees his obsession destroying him, and who is ready to leave him because of it. Her eventual death is all the more tragic because it was completely avoidable, making Victor’s downfall feel earned.

Victor himself is drawn with rare complexity. He’s arrogant, yes, but also conflicted. He genuinely wants to help his creation, even after the Creature kills his assistant. He wrestles with the moral weight of whether to destroy or redeem what he’s made, and that tension gives the story real moral power. By the end, when he dies and the Creature weeps over his corpse, the film earns its emotion. The final image, that of the Creature purposefully mimicking the popular conception of “The Monster,” lumbering with arms outstretched and growling to provoke soldiers into shooting him, is haunting and ingenious. It turns the “Frankenstein monster” stereotype into an act of suicide by performance, the Creature choosing death by embodying the myth others have made of him.

Like most of Curtis’ productions, this Frankenstein is modestly staged but richly atmospheric. Shot on videotape rather than film, and set to a patchwork of Robert Cobert’s reused Dark Shadows music, it feels less like a feature film and more like an especially ambitious episode of that program, which isn’t a bad thing. The Gothic tone, emotional melodrama, and mournful music perfectly suit Shelley’s tragic material.

If there was any TV movie that made more of an impression on me as a kid it would have to be 1972′s horrifying THE NIGHT STALKER.