Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
Movie: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Synopsis follows.
Educational objectives: 1. Identify gothic elements in Romantic era literature as evidenced in the
movie version of the literary gothic novel by Shelley, Frankenstein.
2. Identify social prejudice as it manifested in 19th-century England and in 20th-century America.
3. Evaluate themes of man’s quest to control life versus the benefit of allowing nature to prevail.
Evaluate the concept of “monster” from the viewpoint of multiple social worlds, including pre-industrialized
England, pre-WWII America, and post-modern America.
The movie clearly shows the gothic elements that are iconic to the genre: fire, stormy night,
supernatural events, mystery, hidden knowledge, grisly death, soaring architecture, helpless females in terror,
caves, malformed creatures, and the list goes on. The fun comes from each student announcing a gothic
element as it appears while the movie progresses. Also “edutaining” are the captivating special effects of the
monster’s creation and birth, his murder of Elizabeth, the way an experimental frog kicks hard enough to break
its petri dish at an unexpected moment, etc. The movie presents the intellectual arguments that inform the
novel, presents the use of complex British syntax, and presents the society of the time in compelling ways that
all allow the high school student to grasp the historical background social context quickly. The literary device
of gothic elements and the birth of the genre is quickly understood and made explicit. Then the teacher’s job is
much easier to engage the logic and intellect in the philosophical examination of prejudice and social satire
that mirrors complex life today.
A second movie, Young Frankenstein, or excerpts thereof, shows through satire the various
assumptions society has about the story, the use of gothic elements in cinema, and about “monstrous” types in
everyday life. It’s definitely worth a critical viewing as a followup to the emotionally affecting dramatic
version.. I have also included the video questions I have students answer during the viewing, which helps
engage not only their right hemispheric cognition, but also makes explicit the facts about the story, so that they
can access these for further discussion, later in the evaluative segment of the lesson.
Movie #1 – clip and synopsis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-aCcHvhqFc
Dr. Frankenstein creates a simple creature from various body parts. The creature turns into a
monster when Dr. Frankenstein rejects him. Sticking close to the original novel, Kenneth Branagh, as
Victor Frankenstein, guides us through the story of man’s quest for knowledge and his creature's search
for his "father." Robert De Niro plays the Frankenstein monster as Mary Shelley had intended it to be
played. This movie follows the story almost exactly and is one of the few accurate portrayals of the
monster in film.
Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, is soon interrupted by seas full of
impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn
sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to
health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created.
We see Victor’s happy early years, the arrival of his adopted sister Elizabeth, the birth of his little
brother, his experiments in electricity. When Victor’s mother dies in childbirth, Victor becomes
consumed with preventing death. He enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and
chemistry and other heretical teachings on the origins of life, specifically the experiment on vermicelli
worms by an uncle of Charles Darwin.
We see the first smallpox vaccinations being given to dirty, superstitious population of a debtor’s
prison, where Victor buys amniotic fluid and body parts from executed prisoners and spends months
feverishly, in the secrecy of his apartment, bringing acreature to life. When he looks at the monstrosity
that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. The monster runs away, and Victor falls into a
feverish illness, sickened by his horrific deed. His fiancée Elizabeth arrives to bring him home.
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
Meanwhile, the monster, played by De Niro, goes into the woods, finds shelter and a bit of
companionship with an old blind farmer and tries to help the farmer’s poor family. The monster is seen
and driven off, and the murder of the old farmer is mistakenly blamed on him. Desperate and lonely, the
monster decides to take revenge for his miserable life on the one who gave him birth, the man whose
diary the monster finds in the coat he grabbed.
The monster learns who Victor is and first kills Victor’s little brother Willie. Arriving in Geneva,
Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household,
has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor
grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the
death of two innocent loved ones.
Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day,
crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William
but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a
desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a
monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion.
Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is
eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor
works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his
actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin.
Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster,
enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night.
Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s
warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth
away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the
monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. We see the monster attack Elizabeth and
rip out her heart and hold it up for Victor to see as Victor lurches into the room a second too late. Victor
returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later and works feverishly to bring Elizabeth
back to life. The female monster that results becomes the object of a tug of war between the monster and
Victor, who both want to possess her. She sets herself on fire, instead, and destroys Victor’s ancestral
home as well. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge,
and he soon departs to begin his quest.
Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches
up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap
between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up. Victor, already ill
when the two men meet, worsens and dies. When Walton returns to take away the body, the monster is
weeping over Victor, telling Walton that Victor was his father. We see a funeral pyre on the misty ice,
and the scene’s last frame is of the monster’s face full of suffering, hatred, remorse and, yes, triumph,
surrounded by the flames from the torch he cast upon the pyre. He too can end his suffering in death.
Walton then summons his shipmates and abandons his compulsive quest for the pole and heads for home.
– Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/summary.html
Movie #2 – clip and synopsis of Young Frankenstein, by Mel Brooks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5AG0Tqh3A
Young Frankenstein (satire)
This movie of 1974, one of the most successful parodies of the horror film genre, was co-written
by director Mel Brooks and star Gene Wilder, who plays a brain surgeon and descendant of Victor
Frankenstein, Frederick Frankenstein pronounced Frahnkensteen). It draws on the entire tradition
of Frankenstein movies, but especially on the first three Universal movies starring
Karloff: Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and The Son of Frankenstein (1939).
Frankenstein, a brain surgeon who scoffs at the activities of his famous ancestor, travels to Transylvania,
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
and there discovers the secret of creating life. Brooks used Kenneth Strickfaden's original electrical
equipment from the 1931 Universal Frankenstein. The cast included Wilder, Peter Boyle (the Monster),
Marty Feldman (Igor, pronouncedEye-gor), Cloris Leachman, Terri Garr (in one of her first major roles),
and Kenneth Mars.
Video Questions f or
Frankenstein: a Modern Prometheus
Identif y the f ollowing characters by w hat they w ant most:
Robert Walton
Victor Frankenstein
Alphonse Frankenstein
William Frankenstein
Justine Morit z
Henry Clerval
Elizabeth Frankenstein
Dr. Waldman
Dr. Krempe
1. What is the narrator discussing at t he opening of the f ilm?
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
2. How does Walton meet Victor Frankenstei n?
3. What does Victor mean w hen he says, “You share my madness?”
4. According to the f ilm, how does Victor’s m other die?
5. What does Victor promise?
6. What is the nature of Victor’s experiment ?
7. What gif t does Victor receive f rom his mother upon graduation?
8. Why doesn’t Eli zabet h join Victor in Ingol stadt?
9. What does Victor argue w ith the prof essor about?
10. What did the Chinese believe w as the key t o lif e?
11. What does Waldman show Victor and Henry Clerval?
12. What reason does Waldman give f or w hy he abandoned his research?
13. What even f urther inspires Victor in his search to control lif e?
14. How does Victor learn how to create lif e?
15. What w arning does Clerval give?
16. How does Victor respond?
17. What causes Eli zabet h to become concerned about Victor?
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
18. Where does Victor get the brain?
19. What is Victor’s f irst sign of success?
20. What does Victor resolve to do t he day af ter the experiment?
21. What w ords f rom the prof essor haunt Vict or?
22. How do the tow nspeople react?
23. Af ter speaking w ith Clerval, Victor assumes w hat about the creature?
24. Where does it hide af ter leaving tow n?
25. What are the cottagers upset about?
26. What does t he creature do f or them?
27. What assumptions are made about this?
28. How does the creature learn to speak?
29. How does the creature end up inside w ith the old man?
30. Who attacks w hom and w hy?
31. How does the creature learn the truth about his conception?
32. How does he respond?
33. Why does the creature pursue William?
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
34. Who gets blamed?
35. What does t he creature tell Victor in f ront of his home?
36. What does t he creature blame Victor f or?
37. Why does Victor delay his w edding f or a month?
38. Why does Victor eventually ref use the creature’s request?
39. Who is w ith Alphonse (Victor’s f ather) as he dies?
40. On the w edding night , Victor know s the creature is near how ?
41. What does Victor decide to do as a response to the murder?
42. What does Elizabeth do once sh e reali zes w hat she’s become ?
43. What happens af ter Victor f inishes telling his story to Walton?
44. What does Walton see w hen he returns to the cabin?
45. How does the creature respond w hen asked w hy he w eeps?
46. Why does the creature steal the torch?
47. What is the crea t ure’s f ate?
48. How does this inf luence Walton?
Kristin Morris
EdTech 597 Spring 2012
Edutainment Movie Synopsis and Objective
49. List 10 Gothic elements according to their place in the story:
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Ideas to discuss:
The monster’s eloquence and persuasiveness has what effect on the viewer?
Why do you think most film versions of the story present the monster as mute or inarticulate?
How do Victor and the monster become more similar as the novel goes on?
What causes their relationship with each other to develop?
What fatal flaw causes Victor’s tragic fate?
What is the underlying cause of his suffering?
Give 5 ways the movie presents scientific knowledge as dangerous and destructive?
For the satire, Young Frankenstein, list 10 of the many social stigma or prejudices that you notice being
spotlighted, and give us the detail that makes this funny.
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