Bride of Frankenstein by Anthony Bowman

I’m not entirely sure when I first saw any of Universal Pictures’ classic black-and-white monster movies. I was aware of the characters of the Frankenstein Monster and his Bride well before I saw either of their films, but then again, I have been fascinated by all monsters for as long as I can remember, and Frankenstein’s Monster in particular has always been my favorite. As a short, chubby kid, both physically and socially awkward, the Frankenstein Monster was somehow just like me, and yet also seemed to represent everything I was not. Like me, he didn’t seem to have full dexterity when it came to physically locomoting his strange body. He may have been imposingly tall, something I would never be, but just like me, he certainly was never going to get picked first for the basketball team. And even though his size and appearance gave him the aspect of an intimidating force to be reckoned with, he was still in many ways a scared child, just like me. But even more importantly, Frankenstein just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. His only desire in the world was to find someone like him, someone who would like him. In every depiction of the Monster, from his brief appearances on animated series and Halloween specials, interacting with various popular child-friendly cartoon characters, to his starring roles in a variety of strange old films I would watch with my grandma on late-night television, Frankenstein’s Monster always seemed doomed to an unsuccessful yet never-ending search for companionship. 

I was a little more lucky than the Monster in that I did have a few friends and a mostly positive relationship with my family, but at the same time, I always felt a little bit like an outsider. As an undiagnosed autistic kid, I didn’t always understand the motivations and actions of people around me, and likewise, it often felt like other people didn’t exactly understand me either. I have an early memory of being at a sleepover and overhearing my friend’s older brother joking with their parents, mocking me for my obsession with “creatures.” This was maybe the first time I felt like I was weird for liking the things I liked, that maybe I would be better off keeping my real self to myself, rather than sharing my passions with the world.

A few years later, entering adolescence, I found myself dealing with all sorts of new troubles that only solidified my sympathetic connection to the Frankenstein Monster. I was relentlessly picked on in junior high for being “queer.” I was desperately trying to figure out who I was and started trying to express myself with strange clothing choices, mismatched shoes, excessive jewelry, and painted fingernails. Once, I was sent to the hospital after a pair of bullies body-slammed me onto the hardwood gym floor, breaking my collarbone. It would be decades before I finally realized that in spite of their cruelty, my bullies were right. I was queer. (Still am.) How did they figure it out before me? 

By the time I got to high school, I had started to figure out how to mask better. I made friends with some other nerdy outsiders who did not find monster movies a worthy intellectual pursuit. And so I spent nearly a decade trying to set aside my love for monsters and creatures of all varieties. Even among outsiders, I seemed to only fit in with an exceptional amount of effort.

My teenage years were also marked by painful internal turmoil as I started to question the religious teachings that had been such a huge part of my upbringing. I’d spent countless hours in church, but I still never quite understood what my family and friends meant when they described God speaking to them. Was God connecting to my family and all of my church friends, but not to me? Was I some sort of abandoned mistake, rejected by my creator? Even more than ever, I felt like the Frankenstein Monster would understand what I was going through. 

After college, I found myself distanced from my family and my long-time friend group. Suddenly left to my own devices and in desperate need of a new friend, I reached back to an early source of comfort, spending a lot of my free time revisiting all my favorite old monster movies and finding new ones I never saw as a child. And I watched them all cuddled up on the couch with a newly adopted cat, Frank.

Since then, my rekindled love for the Frankenstein Monster and all things monstrous has been a constant companion through a number of big life events, including job changes, interstate moves, marriage, various familial health scares, coming to terms with my own strained relationship to gender, an adult diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, divorce, and plenty more. And sometime during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic, I realized that I needed an outlet to explore my lifelong hyperfixation; I needed to interrogate my thoughts and feelings about my old friend, the Frankenstein Monster. I decided to start a podcast dedicated exclusively to talking about the Monster, and eventually found a friend excited to join me in the endeavor. Thus, The Frankencast came to life, rising from the crackling, lightning-filled recesses of my mind, a monster in its own right, but a monster that taught me so much about myself and gave me a safe space to explore my fascinations in a way that never made me feel like I needed to hold back or mask. This new outlet gave me confidence and pride in my work. Once again, my good friend the Frankenstein Monster had given me a gift. One that I didn’t even fully understand, one that I didn’t exactly know that I needed, but one that has completely changed my life all the same.