Shocking in its day and still a genuinely creepy experience, director James Whale’s primitive yet enthralling interpretation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of a man playing god, can also stake a claim as being the most influential genre movie ever made.

This iconic work of horror cinema follows the obsessed scientist Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) as he attempts to create life by assembling a creature from the body parts of the deceased. Aided by his loyal misshapen assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye), Frankenstein in the midst of an electrical storm succeeds in giving his monster (Boris Karloff) life. Confused and traumatised, the monster escapes into the countryside and begins to wreak havoc, terrorising the local community, forcing Dr Frankenstein to go in search of the elusive being and confront his tormented creation.

Few images from the last century are so universal as to be a part of the social unconscious. But show anybody a flat-top head, a pair of bolts in the neck, and a skin tone ranging from grey to green, and they'll say "Frankenstein". And whilst such a description didn't come directly from Mary Shelley's novel, James Whale's and Boris Karloff’s interpretation of Shelley’s monster is the one that endures. Their own personal creation of cultural godhood - and it's not hard to see why.

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