Frankenstein Movies That Aren't Actually About Frankenstein

The relationship between Edward Scissorhands and the Inventor shows clear similarities between Victor Frankenstein and his creation. When the Inventor, played by horror auteur Vincent Price, perishes unexpectedly, Edward leaves the only home he's ever known and descends into the strange reality of suburban life.

While the man with scissors for hands acclimates better than expected with the help of the Boggs family, he's still othered by many of the town's inhabitants. In a climatic final scene, it's clear that the naive and misunderstood Edward will not be able to survive in the human world around him.

Screenwriter Caroline Thompson noted her love for Mary Shelley's monster in an interview with Variety about Edward Scissorhands. "Growing up, I was always moved by the sad ones, like Frankenstein and The Hunchback of Notre Dame," she said. "I remain moved by those stories. I think of every script I’ve written as a sort of sad horror movie."

The hermetic CEO of Blue Book, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), invites company programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) to his home, where Bateman reveals a secret: He has created an AI robot named Ava. The purpose of the visit is to see if, based on Smith's assessments, Ava can pass the Turing test. Smith is tasked with figuring out if Ava is capable of possessing genuine consciousness, or if she can just fake it convincingly.

This science fiction film makes Frankenstein's monster a technical possibility. Ava, played with poise and humility by Alicia Vikander, feels constrained by Bateman as she gains more awareness and knowledge of the world around her. In a harrowing and gruesome series of events, the creation turns on her creator, employing Smith and another robot to ensure her escape.

Ava's disdain for Batemen mirrors the scorn Frankenstein's monster feels toward Victor Frankenstein. Before ending his life, Ava asks her architect, "Isn't it strange, to create something that hates you?"

The HBO series Westworld is adapted from a 1973 film of the same name, written and directed by Michael Crichton. In the film, the robotic hosts that populate the adult theme park's Western World, Medieval World, and Roman World start malfunctioning - with fatal outcomes for the park's guests. With this massive technical failure, the androids are no longer under control, and chaos ensues.

Westworld the television series and the movie both explore the commodification of technology, raising serious questions about how artificial life will be manufactured and used in the future. Guests to Delos, the umbrella name for all three parks, pay $1,000 a day to immerse themselves in historical eras they wouldn't be a part of otherwise, and the human-like androids are treated like toys.

Without rules or consequences, the guests are empowered to let their darkest urges out, and the truth about how humanity treats its inventions is illuminated with bleak clarity.

In this film from David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum portrays a socially awkward scientist named Seth who convinces a cute journalist, Ronnie (Geena Davis), to write about his groundbreaking invention: a pair of pods that teleport living creatures from one location to another.

Seth's tampering with physics and biology reaches its logical conclusion when he decides to teleport himself from one pod to the next, unaware of the fly that ventures into the pod with him. As Seth's health deteriorates and his body begins looking more and more like an insect's, he realizes his DNA mixed with the fly's while teleporting. Through Cronenberg's representative body horror patina, Seth undergoes a gruesome transformation into a deformed genetic anomaly.

Much like Victor Frankenstein, Seth discovers that meddling with the natural order of the universe doesn't work out so well for himself or his loved ones.

In an interview about his science fiction cult classic, screenwriter Edward Neumeier described RoboCop as "a Frankenstein movie" with an emphasis on the monster's journey. After Detroit police officer Alex Murphy is slain on duty, he is remade into a cyborg law enforcer owned by Omni Consumer Products (OCP).

RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoeven, provides timeless social commentary on corrupt capitalism, but the title character's transformation from a human being into an authoritarian machine gives this dystopian satire a melancholy twist. RoboCop's functionality is compromised as Murphy's memories resurface, and OCP's crooked intentions are emphasized as the action escalates. 

As RoboCop struggles to reconcile his past life as Murphy with his current one, it becomes clear this "machine" displays more humanity than the people who created it.

Stuart Gordon's campy approach to reanimating cadavers, a central theme of Frankenstein, reaches new, sarcastic dimensions in Re-Animator. This 1985 flick, based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, is about an eccentric medical student who cultivates a glowing, lime green reagent that, when injected into the deceased, brings them back to life.

The mad scientist trope has dark and comedic consequences here. Herbert West, played by Jeffrey Combs, finds that his reagent doesn't revive cadavers as much turn them into beastly zombies. When his research backfires, his mania takes precedent over his own safety and survival. West pulls his roommate Dan and his girlfriend Megan into the action, ultimately leading the couple into a horrific mess.