Like most Frankenstein<\/em> adaptations<\/a> that purport to honor Shelley\u2019s work (including Guillermo del Toro\u2019s new version, streaming this week on Netflix), The True Story<\/em> takes significant liberties with its source material. But (like del Toro\u2019s film) The True Story<\/em> values Shelley\u2019s thematic insights and existential dilemmas, and it pays tribute to her by asking some of the same expansive questions about the meaning of life, in a thoughtful and affecting take on an enduring literary classic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially aired in two parts on NBC and released theatrically overseas in a shortened single two-hour cut, The True Story<\/em> is a sprawling, slightly episodic epic that spans the origins of two creatures, representing both the original Frankenstein\u2019s monster and the monster\u2019s bride. In the full three-hour version, the monster\u2019s creation doesn\u2019t occur for nearly an hour, but director Jack Smight and screenwriters Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood draw the audience in right away, with a melancholy period drama about a haunted young physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following Mason\u2019s introduction, the movie properly begins with its Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting) witnessing the drowning death of his younger brother William, which spurs his lifelong obsession with conquering death. That\u2019s typical for the character, but this Victor is more of a brooding romantic than a mad genius, and in both cases the process for bringing a monster to life comes from other characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, that\u2019s Victor\u2019s hospital colleague Henry Clerval (David McCallum), who embodies the callous brutishness often attributed to Victor in other depictions. Clerval doesn\u2019t hesitate to smuggle a severed arm home in his medical bag, and Victor is briefly horrified by Clerval\u2019s procedure for reanimating dead tissue, which he demonstrates on a beetle and then on the detached arm. That arm, writhing on its own even long after it\u2019s been cast aside in favor of more ambitious experiments, is a symbol of the scientists\u2019 arrogance and neglect, until Victor casually destroys it by dousing it in acid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By that point, he\u2019s fully embraced Clerval\u2019s project and taken it over himself, following Clerval\u2019s sudden death. Smight stages two distinct and equally dazzling creation sequences, beginning with Victor\u2019s awakening of the Creature (Michael Sarrazin), using solar energy rather than the traditional electricity. Befitting his romantic nature, Victor\u2019s first words to the Creature are \u201cYou are beautiful,\u201d and he\u2019s not wrong: Unlike most portrayals of the Creature, this one starts out looking like a gorgeous young man, and there\u2019s an obvious homoerotic subtext to Victor\u2019s appreciation of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the novel\u2019s Victor immediately rejects his handiwork, here Victor is elated with the results, at least at first. He takes the Creature to the opera, where a middle-aged widow openly lusts after the wide-eyed na\u00eff. Victor takes pride in the Creature\u2019s beauty more so than in his limited capacity for speech and understanding. That capacity grows over time, but Victor\u2019s appreciation sours once the Creature begins to decay, developing a Boris Karloff-style heavy brow that ruins his delicate appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like a spurned lover, Victor eventually moves on, coming under the tutelage of another driven, probably mad scientist, Mason\u2019s Dr. Polidori. Polidori is even more diabolical than Clerval, and he blackmails Victor into helping him create a female creature, whom he dubs Prima (Jane Seymour). Prima\u2019s birth occurs during a psychedelic sequence involving various colorful chemicals, like she\u2019s being brought to life inside a lava lamp. While Victor\u2019s Creature has a childlike innocence, Prima\u2019s childishness is more mischievous, and Seymour enlivens the second half of the movie with her sly, devious performance. It\u2019s a striking departure from previous depictions of the Bride, giving her more agency and passion in a way that frightens her patriarchal creators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although The True Story<\/em> has shifted far afield from Shelley by then, the Creature remains a lurking presence, festering further and becoming increasingly bent on revenge, even as he retains a certain tender feeling for Victor. That love\/hate relationship is at the center of The True Story<\/em>, and the movie continually returns to the inextricable bond between Victor and the Creature, as other allies and antagonists come and go. Whiting plays Victor as petulant and moody, more of a Romantic poet like Shelley\u2019s husband Percy than a man of science. Sarrazin\u2019s Creature takes after his creator, although his Romanticism curdles into vengeance, and he seethes with jealousy over Prima\u2019s entrance into proper society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The True Story<\/em>\u2019s lengthy running time gives it the feel of a grand tragedy, concluding in the Arctic landscape that opens Shelley\u2019s novel. The hubris of Victor and his fellow scientists has fallen away, and there\u2019s a poetic quality to the final moments between Victor and the Creature. It may not follow the exact plot points of Shelley\u2019s novel, but The True Story<\/em> captures more of her contemplative, lyrical perspective than nearly any other Frankenstein<\/em> adaptation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two-hour cut of \u201cFrankenstein: The True Story\u201d is streaming on<\/em> Amazon Prime Video<\/em><\/a>, and the full three-hour cut is available on DVD and Blu-ray.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/frankenstein2-1024x768.jpg\")
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