My favorite classic novel may be 'The Invisible Man.' It's smart and genuinely funny. Otherwise, my favorite character is probably Frankenstein's Monster/Frankenstein the Monster.
When I was a kid, I used to sneak down the stairs when my folks were listening to 'The Witch's Tale' and 'Inner Sanctum' on the radio. I went to see 'Frankenstein' in the movie theater and got the pants scared off of me.
When I was a kid, going to Universal Studios, which was all I wanted to do, all the time, there was a show that was all the monsters, and I loved that show. I was obsessed with Dracula. I was obsessed with Frankenstein. I was obsessed with the Wolfman.
You see those guys wearing baggy pants, descendants of the parachute pants, wearing an odd, weird Frankenstein haircut. It all comes out of Peter Lorre.
'Frankenstein' was all about the idea that, through electricity and the destruction of night, man creating light and darkness, we took on god-like powers and then abused them like gods, and we are only men. That's a story about man making a man in his own image. The inversion of natural order.
Villains used to always die in the end. Even the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula - you'd kill them with a stake. Now the nightmare guy comes back.
'Robopocalypse' joins a proud tradition of techno-apocalyptic tales, stretching from high-flying Icarus, to Frankenstein's monster, and to many a giant radioactive creature who has crashed the streets of Tokyo. And then, of course, there's the Terminator.
Zombies, vampires, Frankenstein's monster, robots, Wolfman - all of this stuff was really popular in the '50s. Robots are the only one of those make-believe monsters that have become real. They are really in our lives in a meaningful way. That's pretty fascinating to me.
Some have said that 'Frankenstein' is a story of a bad parenting giving rise to a troubled child.
'Frankenstein' is a work rich in possible meanings, so the horror-show interpretation is as valid as any.
