Frankenstein, 1931

"It's alive!" screams Colin Clive in the lightning-streaked laboratory, as he watches the twitching fingers of his patchwork toy — Boris Karloff, in the role that made him famous. A fable of science run amok, this take on the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley novel retains its glamour and power, its poignance and deranged wit. James Whale, who also enriched the genre with The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man, continued the Shelley narrative in a more lavish, puckish sequel, the 1935 Bride of the Frankenstein. Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (1998) was a fanciful bio-pic of this homosexual director.