Frankenstein’s Monster was the main antagonist and antihero of the 1994 film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, based off of the novel of the same name written by Mary Shelley. The Monster was portrayed by Robert De Niro.
About[]
During his time in Ingolstadt city, Victor Frankenstein wanted to prove that science didn't prove the finality of death and it was possible to resurrect a deceased body. His ideas, based on the works of discredited alchemists, were considered blasphemous and outdated by the professors and majority of the students. Victor Frankenstein was fanatic in his ideas, and only two people, his friend Henry Clerval and Professor Waldman, stood by him. Professor Waldman Introduced Frankenstein and Clearval to his own research in medicine, including controversial surgerical procedures, Chinese acupuncture, pharmacology, and especially galvanism, showing off an experiment where he manipulates an severed ape's hand to move with electrical currents. The experiment goes awry and has to be shut down when the ape hand grabs Clearval's wrist and nearly breaks it with superhuman strength. Waldman reveals he had actually concocted reanimation experiments himself only for them to end in "abominations." However, Victor was certain his way would be a success, claiming that not only could they soon revive the dead, but that they could possibly create a whole new race of men, one stronger, healthier, and more moral. His studies suffered a setback when Waldman was stabbed to death by a paranoid vagrant while administering mandatory smallpox vaccines to the populace; despite his obsessive attempts, a distraught Victor was unable to revive his mentor. Stealing Waldman's notes, Victor becomes convinced that Waldman was on the right track, and had only failed because the required technology hadn't advanced enough. After a successful experiment to resurrect a dead frog, Victor assembled equipment including glass pipes, electrical conductors, and a tank of electric eels, and set about stealing from cemeteries, morgues and tombs, and used the hanged body Waldman's killer as the base for his patchwork creation. Frankenstein sliced into the dead man's head, and took Professor Waldman's brain for the creation as a twisted form of tribute to his mentor. He also took from "bits of thieves, bits of murderers" (as well as the leg of a bully and classmate of Victor's), giving the Monster a propensity towards violence as a solution towards problems. Victor worked feverishly to assemble his creation, keeping the flesh from rotting by pumping it with alchemical fluids. The work began to take a toll on him as he worked without proper rest or sleep, rejecting pleas from both Henry and Elizabeth to flee Ingolstadt as a cholera outbreak occurs.
One night, with Ingolstadt on the verge of quarrentine, Victor Frankenstein deliberately put his experiment into action. Through a combination of steam-powered generators, large galvanic batteries, electric eels, acupuncture, and a copper tub filled with heated amniotic fluid, he proceeded to inject the inert body with life. The experiment seemed to work, prompting him to yell "IT'S ALIVE!" but suddenly the Monster went limp. Assuming it was dead, Frankenstein walked away miserably, but suddenly his creation jerked awake. It began writhing, and soon smashed out of its tub. Frankenstein restrained the eight-foot tall creature and hoisted him on chains hanging from the ceiling. Due to it's poor coordination, disorientation, and initial inability to stand on it's own, Victor deems the creature deformed and a failed experiment. Suddenly realizing the perverse gravity of what he's done, Victor decides to destroy his creation and all his research.
That night, the Creature (as he was named, because Frankenstein had carelessly forgot to name him) approached the sleeping Victor, and startled him into awakening, and then the Creature smiled, being very friendly at first, but then grew shocked when Frankenstein beat him with a rifle and fled the apartment. The frightened, saddened, and confused Creature dressed himself in Victor's black cloak and hood, leaves the laboratory. Victor returned to the apartment with an ax, but upon discovering that the Creature was nowhere to be found, collapsed into his bed from sheer fatigue and mental strain.
Waking up the next day on the streets of Ingolstadt, Creature wanders towards a market stall smelling bread, and he got hungry. But a woman yelled at him to get away, and ripped off his hood. Horrified by his deformed and stitched appearance and thinking he had cholera, she beat him and drove him away. The whole street ganged up on the Creature, believing him to be a plague carrier, but the Creature put up a fight, displaying his superhuman strength by flinging several men around like ragdolls and roaring at the crowd. He fled by posing as a cholera victim on a corpse wagon, and wandered up a mountain river.
The Creature later found a poor family in the Alps, and while hiding in their pigsty learned that they were desperate for food, and he decided to use his strength for good; the Creature pulled up vegetables at night, seeing how they were too weak to do it and that the earth was frozen. The Creature then put the food on their table overnight. The delighted family thanked the "Good Spirit of the Forest" for giving them food, but the Creature had been spotted by the blind grandfather, who knew someone was helping them. Watching the family through a peephole, the Creature taught itself to speak, and then to read. Watching the happy interactions of the family, the Creature increasingly longed to join them, becoming more aware of his own lonliness. Finally the grandfather called the Creature into his house when the Creature killed the evil landlord, who threatened to kick them out. The Creature was welcomed by the grandfather who said "a man shouldn't have to hide in the shadows." The grandfather said that the Creature could trust him, and he felt the Creature's face, and wondered if he had no friends. The Creature said there were some people (the family) but they didn't know him. The grandfather then said why didn't he go to them but the Creature said "they are so beautiful and I am so ugly."
However, the son and his family, having heard the death scream of the landlord coming from the direction of the house, ran in and saw first the mangled corpse of the landlord, and then the Creature. Horrified and assuming that the Creature meant to do harm, they kicked the poor Creature out before fleeing at the first opportunity. He was left sobbing in the woods, but then suddenly found Frankenstein's journal; reading the notes, looking over the diagrams, and comparing them to his own scars, the Creature learned that someone had built him, someone named "Victor Frankenstein of Geneva." The Creature ran back to the cabin but found the family had run off. So, angered, he burned the cabin as swore his vengeance against his creator for bringing him into a world that hates and fears him.
Setting out to Geneva, the Monster soon found young William Frankenstein, Victor's brother, in the woods, and realizing he was related because he saw Victor's locket in Bill's hands, the Monster set off angrily after him, strangling him in the dark, seeing Victor's face as he crushed the life from the child. As a storm rolled in, the Creature took shelter in a barn, where he came across the sleeping form of Justine Moritz, a maid of the Frankenstein household who had gotten seperated from the search party for Willaim. The creature placed Frankenstein's locket on Justine's sleeping form and left.
Justine was found with the locket and became the prime suspect in William's murder. Before she could stand trial, she was hanged for the crime by an enraged lynch mob, with her mother, Victor, and Elizabeth watching, powerless to stop the lynching of their friend. A remorseful Victor was approached by the Monster in the dark, who said he would meet him on the mountain the next day on "the sea of ice". The Monster was lurking on the mountain glacier when Victor approached; the Monster ambushed and threw Victor into his icy cavern, where they conversed. Asked about the men the Monster was made from, Victor tried dismiss them as "materials, nothing more." The Monster rejected this answer, pointing out that he had a natural talent for flute-playing, speculating on which part of him that knowledge came from. Other skills, such as speaking and reading, the Monster revealed were more like memories than something learned for the first time. Victor was amazed he had made such an intelligent yet deadly creation, and he realized that he was at fault as the Monster pointed out that created a living being and left it to die, never once considering the possible consequences; he hadn't even given the Monster the basic dignity of a name. The Monster then demanded that Victor grant him his wish: to have a female like him to live as outcasts together. The Monster forced Victor into agreeing, implying that if he could not find love or companionship, then he would unleash his rage and not-inconsiderable capacity for violence on the rest of Victor's loved ones.
Victor had no choice but to accept, with the Creature agreeing to leave Frankenstein and his loved ones in peace if he complies. When he and Victor and him discussed what corpses to use, the Monster brings a fresh female body: far too fresh to have come from the grave, as a suspicious Victor notes. Victor soon learns that several local prostitutes have gone missing. When the Monster brings the body of Justine, Victor balks at desecrating the body of his late friend, to which the Monster said they were just "raw materials - your words." When Victor decides to break his promise, the Monster roared that if he was denied a wedding night, he would be at Victor's.
Victor tried to warn his bride Elizabeth, but she wouldn't listen; however they got marriedregardless. Victor's attempt to put as much distance between the Monster and them were thwarted by the incliment weather, which forcibly postponed their planned escape via ferry. True to form, the Monster showed up in the night, playing a flute to draw Victor away from his room. However, the Monster smashed through the room's skylight and grabbed Elizabeth's heart and yanked it out of her chest. Telling Victor he had fulfilled his promise, the Monster threw Elizabeth's body into a keroscene lamp and fled the premesis, evading gunshots.
The Monster was determined to have his bride, and when Victor resurrected Elizabeth as a grotesque composite of her badly-scarred head grafted to Justine's body, the Monster appeared and demanded his prize. However, Victor tried to convince her to be with him, and as she began to remember Victor, he and the Monster began to fight over her. Realizing the horror of her new existence, Elizabeth set herself on fire after communicating her self-disgust and sense of betrayal to Victor. Both Victor and the creature escape as the mansion burns down. The Monster then flees to the Arctic, with Victor close behind him, all the while it becoming clear that the Monster is leading him on this chase as a form of torment and punishment. Victor came upon Captain Walton's ship, frozen in the ice, and told the captain his tale, before dying of pneumonia and exposure.
The captain later found the monster in his cabin, weeping bitterly over the body of his creator. The Monster reveals that his vengence against Frankenstein has brought him niether satisfaction nor peace, and that with the death of his "father," he is now truly alone in the world. Walton allowed the Monster to attend Frankenstein's funeral, where the men said farewell to him as the Monster continued to lament the tragedy of his life. Suddenly the ice broke before they could lite the cremation pyre, and the sailors all ran to board the ship. Walton offered the Monster to come with them, but the Monster, claiming that he was "done with man," swam off to the ice pack, taking a lit torch with him. He reached Frankenstein's pyre, and as he stood over his deceased maker, he dropped the torch on onto the oil-soaked wood. Holding the body of Victor Frankenstein, the monster finally dies as the flames consumed him, and Victor's journal, leaving no trace that some other poor fool could possibly use to repeat the tragic mistakes of Frankenstein.
Appearance[]
This version of the Frankestein Monster was made using the body the killer of Professor Waldman, a paranoid one-legged vagabond who stabbed the Professor rather than be forced to take a smallpox vaccine, and was subsequently caught, tried, and hanged. The man in question was hardly what one would consider "handsome" to begin with, missing an eye, having a withered left arm, a missing right leg, and an unnamed skin disease that left a series of sores and blisters along his right cheek and jowels.
The Monster is around seven feet tall, with the left arm and right leg of dead men grafted to the body. The monster's bald head is heavily modified, with skin from donors grafted to the right cheek and right side of his lip, and the eyeball and skin around the left eye having to also be grafted in. He has suture scars from all these wounds, as well as from incisions on the scalp where his skullcap was removed to replace the brain with that of Professor Waldman. further incisions circled the base of the neck, connected to stitched incisions along the sternum and down the length of the spine. The Monster also has a mouth full of crooked, poorly-maintained teeth.
This patchwork mess of different flesh types, skin tones, stitches and scar tissue create a rather horrific and haunting visage which inspires disgust and horror in all who look upon him.
The Monster wears the dark hooded longcoat previously owned by Victor Frankenstein.
Abilities[]
Superhuman Strength[]
The Monster has enormous physical strength, able to lift and upend a large wagon full of people, and toss and manhandle grown men as if they were ragdolls. The Monster was able to also rip a field's worth of root vegetables free from frozen ground in order to help feed the family who's pigsty he'd been taking refuge in. This is heavily implied to be a result of the galvanism used in his creation, as previously-shown instances of galvanic experiments, including a severed monkey hand and a resurrected frog, displayed astounding physical strength well beyond what they were capable in life.
Superhuman Agility[]
The Monster has proven to be remarkably fast and agile for a human of his size, able to move gracefully on an icy glacier and climb up the side of a multi-story building like an ape.
Superhuman Constitution[]
The Monster has proven remarkably resiliant, able to endure enourmous pain and physical discomfort, up to enduring Arctic weather wearing nothing but his signature longcoat. The Monster has a remarkably robust immune system, remaining perfectly healthy despite extended close proximity to cholera-infected corpses, subsisting on food scraps meant for pigs, and spending multiple nights in an unsanitary pigsty without his surgical wounds showing any signs of infection.
Revanent Memory Recall[]
The Monster rapidly learned how to speak, read, and learn the ways of man through mere observation, as well as displaying an instictive aptitude for playing the flute. The Monster likens this to "not so much thing learned, as things... remembered," which Victor Frankenstein speculates as being "trace memories in the brain". The Monster has a propensity towards violence as a solution to adversarial problems, which the Monster himself fears may be due to him being comprised of "bad people."