A curio

Sometimes a movie buff can find the odd cinematic curio just by looking around on the internet.  The Internet Archive is a perfect example of where to find such curios that may not be available in the shops and can be viewed online.

A few months ago I came across an extremely short film version of Frankenstein produced by Edison.  It has some wonderful trick photography in which the creature is created and is a brilliant example of early cinematic art in this respect.  It is a little hard to see at times as there hasn’t been any restoration work done on the print but it is fascinating to watch nonetheless.

This Frankenstein adaptation shows a great deal of ambition for its time and can now be viewed in any one of three ways - as the original silent feature (with coloured tinted sections), with new added sound effects added (with coloured tinted sections that differ slightly from the original) or with a new rock soundtrack by Nico Boeston (in plain old black and white).

You can view the original version at http://archive.org/details/Frankenstein1910

The version with added sound effects can be seen at http://archive.org/details/EdisonsFrankenstein1910WithSoundEffects

The Nico Boeston version can be seen here - http://archive.org/details/EdisonsFrankensteinnicoBoestonSoundtrack