Frankenstein on screen
"We belong dead": Boris Karloff as the creature in "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935).
Published in 1818, Mary Shelley's gothic novel "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus," about a doctor who reanimates dead tissue and brings a collection of body parts to life, has inspired scores of film and TV adaptations - horrific and comic - on its themes of life, creation, and how the powers of science can be misused.
Scroll through our gallery to view a few of the more famous or notorious examples.
Charles Stanton Ogle
The first film adaptation of "Frankenstein" was produced by Thomas Edison's company in 1910. Motion Picture World magazine assured exhibitors that the novel's "actually repulsive situations ... have been carefully eliminated in its visualized form, so that there is no possibility of its shocking any portion of an audience."
Consequently there would be no shocking for decades, as the Edison film was long lost, and only recently rescued and restored.
Boris Karloff
James Whale's film version of "Frankenstein" (1931) featured Boris Karloff as the monster. His elegant, almost pantomimic performance, underneath the gruesome makeup designed by Jack Pierce, would make Karloff's rendition of Shelley's creature the touchstone against which all future performances were measured.
Boris Karloff
The monster (Boris Karloff) meets a little girl and enjoys an idyllic moment of tossing flowers into a lake, in "Frankenstein" (1931). TV airings of the film would later snip the end of the scene, when the monster innocently tosses the girl into the lake, drowning her.
Boris Karloff
Henry Frankenstein and the sinister Doctor Pretorius create a mate for Karloff's creature, in the rhapsodic sequel "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935). Elsa Lancaster, who appeared in the film's prologue as Mary Shelley narrating her own tale, made a memorable impression as the monster's bride.
Bela Lugosi
The actors at Universal seemed to run relay races in playing Frankenstein's monster. Bela Lugosi (who played Ygor in 1942's "Ghost of Frankenstein" opposite Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster) stepped into Karloff's shoes for "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943), co-starring Chaney as the Wolf Man.
Glenn Strange
Instead of playing Frankenstein's monster, Boris Karloff played an evil scientist himself, in "House of Frankenstein" (1944). Glenn Strange played the creature.
Glenn Strange
Glenn Strange repeated the role of Frankenstein's monster in the horror-comedy "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948).
Christopher Lee
Hammer's "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) starred Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the creature. It would be the first of a string of Frankenstein titles from Hammer, most with Cushing as the scientist working on a long retinue of reanimated monsters.
Gary Conway
A teenager (Gary Conway) dies in an accident but is brought back to life by Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell), in "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" (1957). As the doctor says, "Speak. I know you have a civil tongue in your head because I sewed it back myself."
Kiwi Kingston
New Zealand wrestler Wiki Kingston portrayed the creature in "The Evil of Frankenstein" (1964). The style more closely resembled that of the original Universal film.
Robert Reilly
The space capsule of an android-astronaut (Robert Reilly) is shot down by Martians, resulting in scars, and much else that is ridiculous, in "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster" (1965). Did we say that our hero Frankenstein battles a space monster? He does!
Freddie Jones
Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) transplants the brain of an insane doctor into the director of the insane asylum (Freddie Jones), in "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" (1969).
David Prowse
Before he donned the mask of Darth Vader in "Star Wars," David Prowse wore the makeup of Frankenstein's creature in Hammer Films' "The Horror of Frankenstein" (1970, pictured) and "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell."
Peter Whiteman
The daughter of Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten) picks up where her father left off in the laboratory in "Lady Frankenstein" (1971).
John Bloom
Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) digs up Frankenstein's monster (John Bloom), and the two go on a killing spree, before - wouldn't you know - a woman comes between them, in "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" (1971). Pictured here playing an unlucky doctor about to meet his maker is none other than Forrest J. Ackerman, the fabled editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Michael Sarrazin
Out of the countless television adaptations of Mary Shelley's story, perhaps the best was the 1973 TV-movie "Frankenstein: The True Story." After Leonard Whiting took the wraps off Michael Sarrazin, the rather attractive creature would beguile society, though a flaw in the process of creation would lead to his disfigurement.
Peter Boyle
Mel Brooks' satire of the horror classics, "Young Frankenstein" (1974), featured Peter Boyle as the creature, whose gifts would include tap dancing to Irving Berlin tunes.
Clancy Brown
After Baron Frankenstein has built his creature (played by Clancy Brown, left), he does himself one better by creating a mate in the guise of Jennifer Beals in Franc Roddam's "The Bride" (1985).
Nick Brimble
Through time travel, a scientist from the future (John Hurt) meets up with Victor Frankenstein in 19th century Switzerland, and learns that the creature of lore (played by Nick Brimble) is real, in "Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound" (1990).
Robert De Niro
Following the success of Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," a big budget adaptation of "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" was filmed, directed by Kenneth Branagh, and starring Robert De Niro as the creature.
Aaron Eckhart
As Adam, the creation of Victor Frankenstein, Aaron Eckhart played an immortal demon hunter bent on saving the world in the 2014 action-horror film "I, Frankenstein."
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan