9 Movie Mad Scientists That Might Have Been Onto Something

It is said that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by the experiments with electricity and dead bodies that she is said to have witnessed as a member of many intellectual circles. 

The first edition of the novel was published in 1818, very shortly after the experiments of Giovanni Aldini in 1803, who wired the body of an executed criminal up to a 120 volt battery via the ear and rectum, and took him on a merry little jaunt around Europe. The electrified cadaver twitched and danced, even opening his eyes to stare accusingly at the alarmed spectators (you would too if someone had shoved an electrode up your arse).

Whilst it looked for all the world as though the corpse was about to get up and show everybody his tap dance, it is largely accepted by the scientific community that it's probably not possible to sew body parts together and reanimate it.

However, there's a fine line between Frankenstein's monster, and human transplant. Particularly when the transplant involves putting someone's head on a different body. In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of noise from the slightly wackier end of the scientific community regarding the possibility of a head transplant (or should that be a body transplant?). 

Past experiments have dabbled into transplanting the heads of monkeys onto different bodies, with limited success, so, who knows, perhaps one day you'll be able to go into hospital with one body and come out with another, complete with Frankenstein's Monster style neck bolts.