When it comes to the cast of iconic horror movie monsters out there, most of the monsters are on key with their literary or folklore inspired counterpart. Dracula in film is extremely close to the version Bram Stoker created back in 1897. While Dracula acts like the perfect gentleman on the outside, he is a sinister, scheming beast on the inside who wants nothing more than to play with his intended bloody meals. The Wolfman both in film and in multiple legends is a scary man-wolf that appears solely on full moon nights. In this state, both versions of The Wolfman lose their humanity to deathly animalistic tendencies and hunt the innocent human lambs unfortunately prowling by its presence. Even The Invisible Man in film has very few differences to his version created by the talented writer H.G. Wells. Both versions of the character are cursed with accidental invisibility, a curse to many worse than death itself. They can only be seen through the baggy clothing they wear and the truck load amount of wrappings around their faces.

For the most part, horror films have stayed quite close to the original source material when it comes to its slew of iconic monsters. That is, except one. Mary Shelley's interpretation of the monster created by Victor Frankenstein is vastly different from the movie in more aspects than just its very character.

The monster in novel was unusually tall, yellowing in the skin, and supposed to appear so unnaturally animalistic to most that they fear him through appearances alone. However, the monster in the classic horror movies has a greenish skin tone, the now iconic screws on the sides of its neck, and stitches strewn throughout its body.

Then there is the level of intelligence both of Victor Frankenstein's monsters display in their respective source material. In Mary Shelley's original novel, the monster had an intelligence that was either equal to or above his creator's. He gained this vast knowledge through observation and vast literary sources available for him to read. In the movies though, the monster is completely brain dead, acting entirely on instinct alone. In some versions, this has to do with the brain in question implanted into his head being rotten or just plain dumb luck.

Finally, there is the way each reanimated monster presents itself as an antagonist. Mary Shelley's monster is feared for his strategic mind, playing a revenge-fueled cat and mouse game with his creator. He wants to get even for being born under cruel circumstances, and believes the source of his pain to be Victor Frankenstein. Meanwhile, the movie versions have the monster just rampage the town for a little bit. Almost always, the reasoning is due to the creature's instinctual fear of fire, giving the creature a dinosaur sized panic attack.

With all of this information presented, one universal conclusion can be made about the monster's interpretation in film; it draws almost nothing from the original novel. What is worse about the situation though is that Mary Shelley's intention on writing her novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus is completely disrespected. When writing the novel, Shelley's main intention to the reader was to warn them about messing with the laws of nature, a subject matter more relevant today than it was back in 1818. By tampering with technology that breaks the natural cycle of things, our carbon footprint has been at worse levels than ever before in history. The movies' interpretation of the monster disregards this original message, replacing it with fodder for the horror movie industry. It is a disgrace to the material that only a select few readers are aware of, since the movie has become so engrained into the populace.

It is a outright cliché to the horror genre that the movie version of Victor Frankenstein's monster is accepted as the interpretation seen by a majority of the public. The true version lies in Mary Shelley's novel with potential to create an interesting psychological horror element to any movie it touches. In truth, the monster is not just a brain dead green man. He is in fact a metaphor for messing with the natural cycle and to an extent the dangers of revenge clouding reason. Why is it that this version of the monster is the one everyone forgets about?

I outright ask all of you guys to please see the true version of the monster as the one Mary Shelley created over two hundred prior. Try reading the original novel in your free time and see for yourselves why I am arguing for this. People need to know more about the novel version of the monster and use him in their works to further explore the monster lore in horror literature. It is a misinterpretation that needs to be shut down!