Open Culture dug up this wonderful gem from the Internet Archive's massive film collection. It's the very first adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and it happens to have been filmed at Edison's studios. Silent, grainy, and twelve-minutes long, this is certainly old and weird, so it's comforting that Frankenstein's monster looks like one of the Geico cavemen Walking Dead zombies.
100 years ago, J. Searle Dawley wrote and directed Frankenstein. It took him three days to shoot the short, 12-minute film (when most films were actually shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shelley's literary creation was adapted to film. And, somewhat notably, Thomas Edison had a hand (albeit it an indirect one) in making the film. The first Frankenstein was shot at Edison Studios, the production company owned by the famous inventor.
Read the full story at Open Culture.
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