It was written by Christopher Isherwood, whose Berlin stories became CABARET, working with Don Bachardy, the man he shared his life with. Like the Berlin stories it shows deep sympathy for the marginalized and explores opposing tensions of beauty and decay, pity and revulsion.

FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY (1973) plays less like a monster feature than a tale of love and abandonment. It also carries one of the most misleading subtitles in horror. The two-part NBC event strays from Mary Shelley in nearly every detail, but retains its own unique power.

Here the creature steps out of the laboratory so beautiful that society opens its doors to him. Then the flesh begins to fail, the features start to slide, and the people who once admired him look away.

Bringing the film to life is an electric cast of luminaries, including Michael Sarrazin, Zeffirelli’s Romeo Leonard Whiting, James Mason as a silken Dr. Polidori, David McCallum, a very young Jane Seymour as a second and colder creature, along with John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker.

Frankenstein: The True Story is a lush, moody, passionate horror in the Hammer tradition and was an acknowledged inspiration for Del Toro's Frankenstein (2025).