their room. They begin a torrent love scene complete with mild nudity and ripping clothing when Victor hears a flute playing (the monster learned to play the flute) and dashes out of the room with his gun. The moment he leaves the room the monster is on top of Elizabeth pinning her to the bed. When Victor realizes what happens he dashes in to the room and watches as the monster reaches into Elizabeth’s chest and pulls her beating heart from it. In the book an exhausted Victor enters the room and finds Elizabeth strangled and faints at the sight. Brannaugh’s bizarre addition to the text does not stop with the gory death of Elizabeth. Frankenstein grabs Elizabeth up into his arms and proceeds to take her back to his house where his lab has been set up. The whole reanimation scene is recreated and the new Elizabeth (her head attached to Justine Moritz’s torso) is brought to life. An ecstatic Victor grabs her up into his arms once again, and dances around the room with her asking her to say his name. The monster enters believing this is his new companion and the two fight over her. She realizes what she has become, grabs a kerosene lamp and drops it on her head engulfing her, and the whole house in flames. This scene is remarkably overdone and totally ridiculous. Shelley never intended to have Elizabeth come back to life, this event is a total Hollywood creation; it has everything modern-day box office hits need: sex, violence, blood and suspense. It is easy to see why a movie can never accurately recreate the intentions of the author, especially in today’s film industry. Movies must sell, and in order for that to happen they must have some sort of intensity. Although Kenneth Brannaugh created a viable version of Frankenstein, he was not able to convey Mary Shelley’s intentions as the text did. Brannaugh was wholly concerned with thrilling the audience instead of exposing the moral message emb...
