AllMovie

Filmmaker Adam Low presents a detailed history of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, from its conception on a stormy summer night nearly 200 years ago, when Lord Byron coaxed Shelly and friends to come up with a tale that would make his blood run cold, to director Danny Boyle's Olivier Award-winning stage production at the National Theater. Interviews with Boyle and actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the play reveal how this classic tale still has the power to frighten two centuries after it was written, and a conversation with filmmaker John Waters reveals just why the misunderstood monster has maintained such longstanding appeal in the realms of literature, stage, and screen.