The Curse of Frankenstein is on TCM tonight, part of their Halloween programming, and that made me think of another horrifying movie: the upcoming The Curse of Frank N. Stein.
Yes, Francis Nathaniel Stein, known as Frank Stein, is always ridiculed by everyone he meets when they first hear his name. It’s always the same lame jokes again and again from every new person he meets, for his entire life, and this is the curse he lives with, and all because of his name. Oh, the horror!
People laugh, giggle, stare, sneer, gape, and roll their eyes every time he says his name. They say: “Frank Stein? Are you Frank N. Stein?” He must say yes, because he is, in fact, Frank N. Stein, according to his driver’s license and passport. And then people joke about his parents making him from dead bodies rather than the usual method, and everyone walks around in that silly Glenn Strange Frankenstein monster walk, with their arms outstretched and their legs stiff, and they ask him is he’s ever met the Wolf Man, or if there’s a “Bride of Frank N. Stein”, and our hero must endure this same inane reaction by rote each and every time he meets a new person for his whole existence, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Indeed this is the curse of Frank N. Stein.
Will he get fed up someday and learn enough about science to create a monster to get revenge for him? Only time will tell, until you go see The Curse of Frank N. Stein, coming soon to a theater near you!
(BTW: I remember seeing an interview with the late lamented actor Christopher Lee {one of my all-time favorites} where he said he thought The Wicker Man was perhaps the best horror movie he’d ever made, but that the most important movie he’d ever made was when he played the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in Jinnah. Well, no disrespect intended to Jinnah or his biopic, but I think the most important movie Christopher Lee ever made was The Curse of Frankenstein, because it was the unlikely smash hit that started the big Hammer horror phenomenon and the British horror movie renaissance that lasted for over two decades. It really was one of the most extraordinary events in the entire history of cinema when the tiny Hammer Films exploded into supernova and rejuvenated the whole film industry in England, and Italy, and other countries throughout the world. It’s kind of like what Blumhouse has been doing lately for horror in Hollywood, but on a more far-reaching scale.)
