It fun to think that a lot of movies, like Wizard of Oz and Frankenstein, are actually remakes. The silent film era mined popular books and plays for stories the same way studios harvest Marvel Comics or Stephen King novels.

And Mary Shelley potentially copied from another story from before hers.

Potentially? Which story?

They're not remakes, they're just different adaptions of the same story.

He probably also said he wrote it

What's the difference?

As a side note, Thomas Edison is the reason Hollywood is as far away from New Jersey as possible.

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I suppose the way to look at it would be, if The Wizard of Oz was to be remade the new film would have to go by the '39 movie specifically, songs and all.

Whereas if you're making another adaptation, you're going by the book so it will be a lot different and not a musical.

I think I explained that well.

I came here to make a similar comment, but you did it iso much better. 👏👏👏

Some were re-adaptations of books, but there were also a lot of straight-up remakes at the time too. Remakes have been a common feature of Hollywood productions pretty much from the start.

Is the monster awoken using AC voltage, the most dangerous type of voltage?

would be the lightest of the AC / DC battle demonstrations...

clearly she didn't understand American Humor...

I think it is interesting that Shelley was influenced to write Frankenstein because at the time, a volcano named Tambora in Indonesia had been erupting for a couple of years which caused blocked out sunlight and lowered averages surface temperatures globally. It was gloomy and crops were failing so this all influenced her story.

Ben Hur. Dracula etc. also started as plays and silent movies

The weather there is another big reason why it took root, you can shoot outdoors all year long in southern california.

One of the more interesting things about his 'Frankenstein' is in how he did the 'birth' of the creature/ monster.

He build the final version, then burned/ melted it and filmed that process. In the film, he just ran the footage of it melting in reverse, so it looks like it's building. If you look at the film itself, you can see that the fire is also going in 'reverse.' It's really neat.

She was present with Lord Byron and several others during a reading of a recently translated (German Gothic novel) Fantasmagoriana.

Byron then challenged the attendees to write a better ghost novel. Resulting in Frankenstein and Vampyr.

Both lean heavily into pre-existing concepts, local legends and fairy tales. Neither were 'original' concepts.

In fact, Shelley just took a pre-existing local legend from a castle in Germany. The castles name? You guessed it, Frankenstein (Burg).

The local legend (around 100s of years prior to Shelley's work) was of a local alchemist, Johann Dippel, trying to create an elixir of life. He experimented on human corpses to create a monster. Sounding familiar?

Shelley was known to have visited the area on a trip up the Rhine.

Ok, so Shelley ripped the idea off a local legend. Does this matter? Not really. While it's untrue to say it was an 'original' concept.. that doesn't detract from the rest of the skill and effort involved. And most stories are born out of pre-existing legends/myths.. so it's nothing new.

I mean it always was kind of suspicious she wrote it so quickly

that's super cool.

I would also like to take a moment to plug the incredibly offbeat and funny film "Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein" starring David Harbour.

well worth a watch if you are into offbeat stuff and/or theatre

True; but most stories are taken from somewhere else. Original thought is incredibly rare.

For example, much of Tolkien's LOTR was from old anglo-Saxon legends and myths. In fact the 'cursed ring' idea came from a very real 'cursed ring' (called the Silvianus Ring) a ring belonging to a british-Roman, and subsequently stolen. The owner, Silvianus, crrated a curse (written on a stone tablet, which still exists) to bring poor health and madness to whoever wears it, until it is returned.

Lots of parts of Tolkien's works can be traced to old myths and legends (primarily anglo-saxon as mentioned) he reshaped them and stitched them all together.

Shelley was ultimately 'set homework' by Byron via his challenge, and she wanted to win.. she needed a story quickly.

Another guest at the party with Byron was JW Polidori.. who wrote the 'Vampyre'. This was once again a pre-existing story re-hashed (as was dracula etc etc).

Shelley comes into a lot of criticism (perhaps because she's a female?) - the only thing that she is incorrectly credited with, is the first horror/gothic novel. Gothic/horror stories had existed for 100s of years prior to Shelley's book - there are countless examples, including the book that Byron read to them all that evening.

>Other rumours about Dippel appear to be modern inventions, too. For example, that which said he performed experiments with cadavers, in which he attempted to transfer the soul of one cadaver into another. Soul-transference with cadavers was a common experiment among alchemists at the time and was a theory that Dippel supported in his writings, thus making it possible that Dippel pursued similar objectives,[4] but there is no direct evidence to link him to these specific acts. There is also no evidence to the rumour that he was driven out of town when word of his activities reached the ears of the townspeople — though he was often banned from countries, notably Sweden and Russia, for his controversial theological positions. He also eventually had to flee to Giessen after killing a man in a duel

Sez Wikipedia.

Swedenborg made reference to Dippel's 'heinous' experiments, and strange practices in addition to their fued over religious ideology - although he never explicitly mentioned what those were.. using cadavers was common place at the time, so it must have been something more substantial to warrant the reaction.

But equally legends and myths all evolve over time, often from a foundation of truth. The Bible/Jesus is an example of this.. people add (and alter) the stories over time and add new bits. So modern additions based more on rumour than fact are to be expected.

And it's on youtube. Or somewhere online; I remember watching it a bit ago.

It was called the Year Without a Summer. Wikipedia link.