idea for a modernized Frankenstein's monster movie

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by mike, age 8

Anyway, I was thinking about this earlier. I saw someone with a traumatic brain injury today and it got me thinking about Frankenstein's monster. Not because the poor fellow has a huge dent in his head but what if Dr. Frankenstein didn't have the expertise to work on a human brain and properly connect it to the rest of the body - the subject might be similar to that of someone living in an institution with a severe brain injury.

My idea would involve what's already been said but have the "wiring" such that the subject has motor control and is ambulatory. He doesn't have much control over his movements and is exceptionally stong and can shake off a broken arm. He has some very basic feelings maybe like an infant of 6 months old. In combination with his strength, his basic feelings and his lack of fine motor control, he winds up killing someone, let's say a doctor or a caregiver.

The townsfolk are made aware of the subject's actions and the town is outraged based on the fact that cadavers are being used to create a whole 'nother person and that he killed someone in a very gruesome way. They form a lynch mob and hunt him down (how he gets lose is anybody's guess). The subject is afraid and hides. He does around defending himself through is hulk-like strength but is eventually captured.

What happened from there is unknown because that's when the 8mm footage reel ran out.

I could never quite understand why Dr. Frankenstein would bother sewing different bodies together when it would be much simpler to get an intact fresh cadaver for the experiment.

After all the purpose of the experiement was to bring a body to life not to test his sewing skills.

Maybe he wanted the 'body' to be as functional as possible?
Thus he took loads of dead bodies where he cut off the strongest parts.
(Body A has a strong right-forearm so he uses that but tosses the rest of the body as it's weak.)

However weak a forearm is it is still going to be stronger left intact with its body than if it is severed and attached to another body.

The trauma of such an operation would cause extreme weakness.

This is one of the many major flaws, certainly of the films (I've not read the book); the idea that the creature would 'awake' from such a major series of surgical operations with super human strength is preposterous.

uh-kay...

I think someone here put it as "ret*d strength"

"Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus". This is a reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern man into dangerous areas of knowledge."
From Wikipedia

I had assumed the monster was suppose to represent a combination of men. Hence the many parts vs the just grabbing one body and working with that. That he got his brain from another source lends itself to the above description better. There's probably more to her train of thought. But sometimes I just like to read a book or watch a movie at face value and the hell with any pseudo babble.

In the era in which the "Frankenstein" novel was written there was a general underlying feeling that living things were of a different basic quality than inorganic matter and that still persists to a large degree amongst religiously inclined people that divide the powers of God and man into permitted and forbidden areas. Some of this probably stems from the story of Adam and Eve who tried to gain forbidden knowledge by eating apples which might have been the concept behind the name of the Apple computer. The reference to Prometheus indicates the story of the punishment of those who would defy the Gods is relevant. And there is also incorporated the Murphy law business of "If anything can go wrong it will". The King Kong emotion also gets in there as the created "monster" is basically a powerful innocent mistreated by the crowd and therefor becomes driven by revenge.

Today, as we begin to be able to disassemble and reassemble many of the basic components of life to make combinations with no precedent in nature there is again, amongst religious and superstitious people, the feeling that humanity is entering areas forbidden by the gods.

I find it rather interesting that most people tend to equate our modern apple with the fruit mentioned in the bible. The author is unlikely to have known such a fruit and is more likely (so many scholars believe) to be talking about the pomegranite.

If you accept this the reference makes much more sense as the fruit of the knowledge (as in carnal knowledge or so called 'original sin') of good and evil.

The pomegranite makes an excellent symbol for the act of procreation being, as it is, packed with seeds.

The 'innocence' of the creature in the story is also interesting being characterised by an almost autistic-like logic. For example he throws the little girl into the water not out of evil or malice but out of a belief that she would float like the flowers she was tossing.

Up to that point he had no experience to suggest that some objects would sink and others float.