10 Offbeat And Frequently Silly Frankenstein Films

6. Frankenweenie (1984)

Victor Frankenstein is a young boy who makes movies starring his dog Sparky - a bull terrier. Unfortunately Sparky gets knocked down and killed. After learning about electrical pulses contracting muscles in school, Victor gets the idea of bringing Sparky back to life with electricity. He puts together complicated machines that send a bolt of lightning through Sparky, thus reanimating him. Victor is overcome with joy at the resurrection of Sparky but his neighbours are disgusted at and scared of Sparky. Sparky runs away and Victor is in hot pursuit. They end up at a miniature golf course and they hide under the windmill. Victor's neighbours are in even more hot pursuit and they set fire to the windmill by accident. Victor gets knocked out and gets saved from the flames by Sparky, who promptly gets crushed by the windmill. The neighbours realise Sparky was a good 'un after all and revive him with spark plugs from their car. Everyone celebrates and Sparky finds a poodle girlfriend with a hairdo like the Bride of Frankenstein. This is Tim Burton's debut feature: he had worked as a cartoonist and Disney were horrified by this short film, thinking it was too macabre for kids (and Something Wicked This Way Comes wasn't scary? Nobody told me). It is actually an elaborate and affectionate homage to the James Whale movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Frankenweenie was a great harbinger of things to come from Tim Burton. Maybe Disney was scared that kids who watched the movie would dig up dead pets and stick electrical wires into them. Burton of course remade the piece in 2012 as a longer feature film which again pays tribute to lots of old horror films and freed from Disney restraints, it is a bit more macabre, but I think the original deserves to be acknowledged as a lovely adaptation of a story that Burton clearly has real affection for. A very respectful, funny and charming take on the Frankenstein legend.