FRANKENSTEIN (1818)

A Galvanized Corpse. Illustration published by H.R. Robinson in 1836.

Frankenweenie (2012, Tim Burton)

01/04/2024

Frankenweenie is a 2012 animated film directed by Tim Burton.

The film is the stop motion adaptation of the short film of the same name made by Burton himself in 1984, clearly inspired by the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

The film was nominated for the 2013 Academy Awards as best animated film.

In 1971 Victor Frankenstein, a boy passionate about cinematography and science, lives in the monotonous town of New Holland with his parents Edward and Susan and his little dog Sparky. Victor's talents are observed at school by his classmates: the neighbor Elsa Van Helsinge (niece of the sour Mayor Bergermeister), the hunchbacked boy Edgar, the obese and naive Bob, the pretentious Japanese boy Toshiaki, the sinister Nassor and a very strange blonde girl called Weird Girl, who owns a cat called "Mr. Whiskers". Victor, however, has little contact with them, being too busy with Sparky: Victor's father then encourages his son to join the baseball team to make new friends and to practice a sport; at the game, Victor manages to hit a splendid home run but Sparky, chasing the ball down the street, is hit by a car and dies before Victor's eyes.

But then, inspired by the galvanic experiments of the science teacher Mr. Rzykruski, Victor digs up the little dog from the pet cemetery and takes him to his improvised laboratory in the attic; he manages to revive the dog using the electricity of lightning. The following day, however, Sparky leaves the attic to chase Mr. Whiskers, causing some damage in the neighborhood until he is noticed by Edgar, who asks Victor to teach him how to resurrect the dead and threatens him to reveal his secret to everyone if he doesn't. In order to keep Sparly's existence hidden, Victor agrees and the two revive a goldfish, which inexplicably becomes invisible.

Learning about Edgar's invisible fish, Toshiaki and Bob fear that they won't be able to win the science competition at the annual fair, and so Toshiaki tries to make Bob fly with a rudimentary jetpack improvised with bottles of fizzy drink, but fails and Bob falls from the roof, breaking his arm.

The group then decides to carry out resuscitations separately: Edgar prepares to resuscitate a dead rat found in the garbage, Nassor his mummified hamster "Colossus", Toshiaki his dead turtle Shelley, Bob an expired package of Sea Monkeys and Weird Girl a dead bat. After electrocuting the bodies, the kids involuntarily transform the dead animals into monsters due to their feelings of competition: Edgar's rat becomes a wererat, Shelley an enormous Gamera-like monster, Bob's Sea Monkeys become little monsters amphibians similar to Gremlins and Mr Whiskers, who held Weird Girl's bat in his mouth while it was electrified, a monstrous vampire cat.

After finding Sparky near his tombstone in the animal cemetery, Victor sees the monsters attacking the fair and runs to help his companions: the Sea Monkeys explode by eating very salty popcorn, Colossus is crushed by Shelley, while she and the Wererat turns back into a corpse after being electrocuted again. In the general chaos, Elsa's poodle, Persephone, is captured by Mr Whiskers and transported to the city windmill.

The citizens, feeling pity for the dog's death, decide to reward Sparky for his courage by connecting his electrodes to the batteries of their cars to revive him again.

Being a fic writer is fun, because you can plan out the most devastating and gut wrenching scenes possible. But it's also fun because your notes look like this and none of it is serious.

Giovanni Aldini – Scientist of the Day

Giovanni Aldini, an Italian physicist, died Jan. 17, 1834, at the age of 71.  

read more...

My brain is Luigi Galvani's frog leg experiment. You put electricity in and I rattle

From The Anecdotage of Glasgow, by Robert Alison, 1892. (See also: this alternative account of the incident.)

Dr. James Jeffrey's Ghastly Galvanic Experiment

At the Glasgow Circuit Court in October, 1819, a collier of the name of Matthew Clydesdale was condemned to death for murder, and the judge, in passing sentence, as was the custom, ordered that, after the execution, the body should be given to Dr. James Jeffrey, the lecturer on anatomy at the University, "to be publicly dissected and anatomised." The execution took place on the 4th of November following, and the body of the murderer was taken to the college dissecting theatre, where a large number of students and many of the general public were gathered to witness an experiment it was proposed to make upon it.

The intention was that a newly invented galvanic battery should be tried with the body, and the greatest interest had accordingly been excited. The corpse of the murderer was placed in a sitting posture in a chair, and the handles of the instrument put into the hands. Hardly had the battery been set working than the auditory observed the chest of the dead man heave, and he rose to his feet. Some of them swooned for fear, others cheered at what was deemed a triumph of science. But the professor, alarmed at the aspect of affairs, put his lancet in the throat of the murderer, and he dropped back into his seat. For a long time the community discussed the question, whether or not the man was really dead when the battery was applied? Most probably he was not. For in those days, death on the scaffold was slow—there was no long drop to break the spinal cord,—it was simply a case of strangulation.

I was reading the Wikipedia page for fans of taylor swift and their “industrial impact” and now I have a crazy idea that will most certainly not work

Frankenstein - from Mary Shelley to the movies!

Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein in the early 19th century and it's gone through some big changes at the hands of the movies

In the year 1818, a female author Mary Shelley published a novel that would prove to be one of the landmarks of the horror genre for the next two hundred years. Frankenstein was the terrifying account of a Swiss doctor by that name who creates a monster made of human body parts harvested in cemeteries and dissecting rooms. Shelley’s novel was an instant success and soon became a theatre play…

View On WordPress

Frankenstein - from Mary Shelley to the movies!

Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein in the early 19th century and it's gone through some big changes at the hands of the movies

In the year 1818, a female author Mary Shelley published a novel that would prove to be one of the landmarks of the horror genre for the next two hundred years. Frankenstein was the terrifying account of a Swiss doctor by that name who creates a monster made of human body parts harvested in cemeteries and dissecting rooms. Shelley’s novel was an instant success and soon became a theatre play…

View On WordPress

Illustration of the experiments by Luigi Galvani, 1792.

Wizard with a Gun OC

Paradiso are so funny because half of them are pathetic and the other half is psychotic. Alighieri and Lewis are actively mourning their lives meanwhile Fenelon and Milton are playing fuck marry kill with world leaders, and it's not hypothetical. Then there's Bunyan, who doesn't give a shit either way.

Ignacio Rodríguez Galván, tr. by Samuel Beckett, from "Space is Azure,"

The Fourth Doctor by Bill Galvan