Since the beginning of time, man has sought the ability to
create life by means other than hot, hot sex. Those who have achieved this goal
have generally been named Frankenstein, and their experiments have mostly resulted
in monsters (advantage: hot, hot sex). But sometimes these creations aren’t
evil, they’re just bizarre — here are almost a dozen who put the “mad” in “mad
science.”
Before we start, let me clarify what constitutes a
Frankenstein monster for this list: it must be made of parts of deceased flesh
and it must be made through science, and it cannot involve robotics. No cyborgs
or clones allowed.
1) Edward
Scissorhands
Let’s begin with the odder of Tim Burton’s two Franken-movies. Vincent Price creates himself a young companion but dies before
he can give Edward proper hands. How he had enough time to outfit Edward with
dozens of scissor-fingers he can operate manually but not regular hands is a
bit of a mystery, as is what if anything Price planned to do about Edward’s
unfortunate hair (because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t finished either). Either
way, according to the movie Edward has spent the last 60 years in total
isolation in the ruins of the scientist’s creepy house, so he has bigger
problems to worry about.
2) Thomas Wayne, Castle of the Bat
One of DC’s most insane Elseworld comics (which is saying
something). After his parents are killed by a thug, 19th century Bruce Wayne
decides to become a doctor like his father, determined to restore his parents
to life. He starts by creating a Bat-hound, i.e. a dog with sonar built in.
Eventually he recreates his dad Thomas, using his original brain, which was
preserved and given to Bruce’s university. For various reasons, Bruce puts his
dad’s reanimated body in a Batman costume, and Thomas goes out and starts
beating up criminals and trying to solve his murder. And he also starts turning into a giant anthropomorphic bat, because why not.
3) Frankie Stein, Monster High
Creating a teenage girl out of corpses sounds like the
recipe for an arrest for necrophiliac sex offender conviction, but luckily, Monster High cartoon star and
purchasable doll Miss Frankie Stein was created by her two happily married
parents because they wanted a child. Here’s what I think is weird: I can get
not wanting to deal with diapers and potty-training, but why go straight to the
teenage girl? Why immediately head into the hassle of hormones and drama and
boys? The Steins might not have created their daughter for their sex games, but
there’s still something sinister going on here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoDGH3Q7FmE
4) Venturestein, The Venture Bros.
This former minion of the Monarch was killed by Brock during
one of his rampages. Dr. Venture’s initial plan is to use him as menial labor,
but quickly decides to sell him to the military as an expendable soldier — one
that can be packed with explosives and told to self-destruct. Venturestein is
sent to a South American dictatorship but refuses his orders, learns Marxist
doctrine, and travels around to all the labs of mad scientists hiding in South
America, collecting their monsters and forming their own “Abomi-Nation.” It’s
not in the 50 of weirdest things to happen on The Venture Bros.
5) Fran Madaraki, Franken Fran
Created by the scientist Dr. Madaraki — you might be able to
tell by the two enormous bolts on the side of her head — Fran is an excellent
scientist in her own right with the ability to raise the dead and create new
creatures out of dead flesh and tissue. However, she doesn’t really have any
aesthetic sense, so she tends to create horrible, Xenobite-esque monstrosities
that she has no idea are visual abominations, which is kind of a bummer when
you come to her looking for a little cosmetic surgery.
6) Boltz, My Babysitter’s a Vampire
In this episode of the Canadian kids series titled
“Jockenstein,” Coach Steinerhas takes a pile of limbs and body parts to create
the greatest high school hockey player in… wherever the hell My Babysitter’s a
Vampire is supposed to be set. Grave-robbing and stealing dead people’s limbs —
not to mention attempting to steal the brain of main character Ethan — seems
like a lot of work just to win the state hockey championship, but to each his
own.
7) Deucalion, Dean
Koontz’s Frankenstein Series
Dean Koontz’s five-volume Frankenstein books series is kind of insane. So, it starts out like
the original novel, Doc creates the monster, monster kills his wife, they hate
each other. But in this book, Dr. Frankenstein puts a bomb in the monster’s
head, which doesn’t kill it, just scars half of his face. Both survive for
hundreds of years, but while the monster starts pretentiously calling himself
Deucalion (Prometheus’ son in Greek mythology) and looking for redemption, Dr.
F decides his “new race” of synthetic people should replace all the old ones
and basically tries to kill the human race. Deucalion, of course, tries to stop
him with some local New Orleans cops, because he was programmed not to hurt his
creator (back in the 1800s). Oh, and Deucalion can teleport and make small
things like coins disappear, because he’s so smart, you see.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x151uy9
8) Frankenstein’s Monster,
Super Friends
Honestly, when the Super Friends met Frankenstein and his
monster in “The Super
Friends Meet Frankenstein,” the monster is quite traditional, with green skin,
flat head, and bolts on his neck. What makes this monster so unusual is that
Dr. Frankenstein strikes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the monster with
lightning simultaneously, which gives the monster all of their powers — by
which I mean the monster gets Superman’s outfit, Batman’s cowl and Wonder
Woman’s lasso, by which I mean the lightning makes duplicates. Also, I assume
the lightning gives the monster a fat bank account, because I have no idea what
other powers he could have received from Batman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohrHdMo86DM
9) Frankenstein, Frankenstein Conquers the World
To be fair, the Frankenstein of the American-Japanese movie
co-production wasn’t built as much as Nazis found the Frankenstein monsters
heart in World War II and shipped it to their pals the Japanese, where
scientists studied it at Hiroshima until America dropped the bomb on them. This
caused the monster’s heart to turn into a young boy who lived in the
radioactive ruins, until he’s found in the ’60s, given protein, and turns into
a giant, brutish monster, which is pretty lucky because another giant monster
named Barugon pops up at about the same time, and Frankenstein (that’s what the
movie calls him, chill) is around to fight it.
10) The Monster, The Frankenstein Papers
Fred Saberhagen’s novel picks up where Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein ends, as the monster starts a world tour that involves him meeting
Benjamin Franklin and having sex. It may not seem weird until you get to the
final chapter, which was written aboard a flying saucer because the monster was
actually an alien with amnesia that Dr. Frankenstein somehow how thought he had
raised from the dead. So yeah, I’d say that’s pretty weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j9PJUY6mw8
11) Shaggy, “Mad
Professor” by Insane Clown Posse
You might have thought that the duo known as the Insane
Clown Posse were begotten by an angry god trying to punish us for our sins, but
apparently not. According to this video — and I use that term very loosely,
Violent J was a clown-faced murderer/masturbator/scientist who wanted a “homie”
and thus assembled his partner Shaggy out of the parts he collected his
victims. WARNING: Do not watch the above music video unless you need a new
definition for the word “wretchedness.”
