Throughout the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, studios like Universal and Hammer had produced several adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

So much so that by the end of the 70s and into the 1980s,

Frankenstein movie started to Peter out. And in 1985, Stuart Gordon wanted to make his own

Frankenstein movie, complaining at the lack of them being made at the time, particularly

compared to vampire movies and Dracula adaptations. So, he decided to adapt

H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West Reanimator, a story which was itself based on Mary Shelley's

Frankenstein. And over subsequent decades, there were many more sci-fi horror films that

weren't direct Frankenstein adaptations,

but were clearly loving homages to Shelley's original text.

One of the best examples of this was in 2019, when indie horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden

made a tender, haunting and nuanced monster movie about two men creating a human being in a lab,

set in contemporary New York, which in many ways is one of the best Frankenstein adaptations

of the 21st century.

Join me as we continue exploring the evolution of man-made monsters, and we discuss two

contemporary spins on the Frankenstein story, Stuart Gordon's reanimator and Larry Fessenden's

depraved.

Welcome back to the evolution of horror.

My name is Mike Munzer, and as ever, I am your host.

In this podcast, we explore and dissect the history and the evolution of the horror genre, one subgenre at a time.

We are currently in the middle of our 11th series exploring the evolution of man-made monsters. And this is part 20. In this week's episode, as that intro suggested,

we are going to be discussing Reanimator from 1985. And as a little bonus accompaniment to that,

we're going to discuss another lesser-known movie that my guest suggested we cover alongside

...