Life, Death, and “Lisa Frankenstein”: How the Horror-Comedy Film Pays Homage to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
by Rhonda Watts
When I first saw the trailer for Lisa Frankenstein, there were many elements of it that immediately caught my interest. The title is obviously a reference to the novel Frankenstein, one of my favorite books, and the story appeared to be at least loosely inspired by the novel: a teen girl encounters a reanimated corpse and apparent hijinks ensue. If a movie has hijinks I’m on board. (The title also reminds me of the artist Lisa Frank, whose designs adorned many a notebook, backpack, and pencil case I used in elementary school.)
Lisa Frankenstein was directed by Zelda Williams in her feature-length directorial debut, and written by Diablo Cody, who also wrote the generation-defining films Juno and Jennifer’s Body, further heightening my interest in the movie. The 1980s setting, sarcastic comedic tone, and blend of horror and romance were also compelling elements for me. While I expected that the Frankenstein reference in the title would be just a cursory nod to the Mary Shelley novel with only a surface-level similarity in the premise, I was pleasantly surprised to find a deeper spiritual kinship between the novel and the film. Themes of the interconnectedness of life, death, and self-determination, social isolation and aberrancy, and Gothic and Romanticist sensibilities are all elements that Lisa Frankenstein shares with its namesake, as well as some fun “Easter eggs,” in nods to popular cultural depictions of Frankenstein.
Lisa and Victor and Elizabeth and Mary
The heroine of Lisa Frankenstein is Lisa Swallows (played by Kathryn Newton), a high school senior whose mother was murdered several years prior and who is still experiencing the traumatic effects. In costuming and style, she seems to be modeled after Veronica from the 1988 film Heathers; however, viewing Lisa Frankenstein as a spiritual retelling of its namesake novel, Lisa as a character combines elements of Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Lavenza, and a bit of Mary Shelley herself.
Like Victor, for Lisa, her mother’s death is the first taste of grief she’s experienced. Victor’s mother’s death is much less violent and traumatizing than Lisa’s, but his reflection on the process of his grief is fitting of the state we find Lisa in at the beginning of the film: “The length of time arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished” (Shelley, 32). Several characters express the opinion that Lisa is too absorbed with wallowing in grief over her mother’s death, refusing to partake in socially acceptable attitudes and actions. These characters include Lisa’s new stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino), whom we eventually learn is ultimately looking for an excuse to send Lisa away, and her much more sympathetic new stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano), who takes a gentler approach in trying to include Lisa in the social life of their high school’s popular crowd.
Lisa and Taffy’s relationship at first glance seems to fit into the classic, even cliched, outsider protagonist/popular mean girl dynamic so common in teen movies. But Taffy proves to be a genuinely kind character who actually wants to help Lisa. Though she eventually does something that Lisa sees as a deep betrayal, their unique kind of closeness forms the emotional heart of the movie. Their relationship reminds me, personally, of Victor’s with Elizabeth Lavenza in Frankenstein; somewhat familial, though not exactly, but important in helping to ground the tortured protagonists in the world of the living. Elizabeth takes on a mothering role after Victor’s mother’s death, as on her deathbed she entreats, “Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to your younger cousins” (Shelley, 31). Similarly, Taffy takes Lisa under her wing, encouraging her to participate in social functions and offering emotional support for Lisa’s bouts of depression. Taffy’s betrayal of Lisa can be (and is, by me!) read as a parallel to Elizabeth’s death at the hands of the Creature in Frankenstein, an emotional death to their relationship that is seemingly irreparable.
Taffy could be said to be Lisa’s Elizabeth, but Lisa herself also embodies some elements of Elizabeth Lavenza’s character. I don’t know if this is intentional or a coincidence, but the name Lisa was originally a nickname for Elizabeth. Like Elizabeth in Frankenstein, Lisa is taken in by a new family after a tragic event leaves her basically orphaned; Lisa’s father is still alive, but is emotionally absent from his daughter’s life, still suppressing the grief of his wife’s death. Elizabeth as a character is seemingly not very developed, mostly because the reader only sees her through Victor’s perspective, and he does not apparently view her as a complex human being with agency, but rather as a possession or an extension of his own being. It is ultimately the toxicity of the men in her life that leads to Elizabeth Lavenza’s tragic end.
In Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa begins the story as a more or less passive character, much like Elizabeth Lavenza. She doesn’t intentionally cause the Creature’s reanimation, though she is clearly fascinated with the bust in his likeness atop his gravestone. An experience in a tanning bed gives her an electric shock, which appears to be connected to a supernatural lightning storm, which strikes the Creature’s grave and presumably brings him to life. Lisa may be the cause of the Creature’s reanimation, but it is through a series of accidents and coincidences rather than Lisa’s intentional action. In their early interactions, it is the Creature (played by Cole Sprouse) who initiates communication, even though he can’t really speak, and who begins the process of killing or maiming living people to acquire replacement body parts for those he has lost in his decomposition. The first of these victims is Lisa’s stepmother Janet, who in a fit of rage threatens to send Lisa to a mental institution; the Creature hits her over the head from behind and takes her ear to replace the one he’s missing. This moment of violence seems to wake Lisa up and inspire her to take more decisive action.
Lisa’s newfound motivation inspires her to take the lead on subsequent murders she and the Creature carry out. One of their victims is Doug, a classmate of Lisa’s who attempted to sexually assault her at a party. Lisa and the Creature take Doug’s hand for the Creature’s use, the one with which Doug had touched Lisa, symbolically reclaiming Lisa’s sexual agency. A few scenes later, this thread continues when the Creature finds a vibrator in Lisa’s closet, which she initially tells him is a back massager. He offers to use it on her, and this dialog is exchanged:
LISA: Oh, thank you. That’s helping.
CREATURE: [grunts]
LISA: My Aunt Shelley gave it to me for Christmas. She said it might improve my personality. [sighs] You want me to do you?
CREATURE: [silence]
LISA: Do you, um… do you feel anything in your body? (Cody, 2024)
Many viewers have picked up on the reference to “My Aunt Shelley” as a clear nod to Mary Shelley. But rather than being an isolated name-drop, the framing of this reference to the author is integral to its deeper purpose in the film. Aunt Shelley gave Lisa a vibrator, an obvious symbol of sexual pleasure and liberation, and though Lisa isn’t fully ready to embrace her own sexual liberation just yet (evidenced by her reluctance to tell the Creature the device’s true purpose), this scene depicts her beginning to reclaim her sexual agency. Her habit at the start of the film, before the Creature is reanimated, of lingering at his gravesite, romantically fantasizing about joining him in the afterlife, has aesthetic echoes of one of the most widely-circulated stories about Mary Shelley: the legend of her losing her virginity to Percy Shelley on top of her mother’s grave. It’s also while in the same graveyard where the Creature was previously buried that Lisa suggests the two of them have sex. The Mary Shelley legend may not be entirely a myth, and it’s clearly part of the cultural mythos around Shelley that Lisa Frankenstein draws upon.
Pop Culture Depictions of Frankenstein and Lisa Frankenstein
Mary Shelley knew within her lifetime that she had created an iconic cultural myth in Victor Frankenstein and his Creature. As Betty Bennett points out, “there was ample evidence that the scientist and the Creature held a permanent grip on society’s imagination, permeating all levels of the culture, including newspapers, parliamentary debate, theatrical productions, inexpensive or pirated reprints, and translations” (Bennett, 3). By the late 19th century, the Creature character was so ingrained in the culture that most people would have known the image even if they were not familiar with the source material; an October, 1899 issue of local South Dakota paper the Madison Daily Leader proclaimed, “Everybody, or nearly everybody, has heard of the novel ‘Frankenstein,’ though it is not probable that many persons read it nowadays.” In the early to mid-20th century, the character of Frankenstein had begun to be conflated with the character of the Creature; for many people the Creature was Frankenstein.
Eighty years after Shelley’s death, the Creature as portrayed by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film adaptation joined an official canon of classic horror movie monsters alongside Karloff’s Mummy and Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. In Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa’s bedroom walls are decorated with a poster of Karloff’s The Mummy, as well as one for Creature From the Black Lagoon, placing the film’s meta perceptions of Frankenstein’s Creature at least partially within the context of these 20th-century cultural icons. The imagery of Karloff’s Frankenstein is also echoed in a dream sequence in Lisa Frankenstein. During a substance-induced hallucinatory dream, and while the abnormal thunderstorm raging outside sends a lightning strike to a corpse in the graveyard, reanimating it with a mysterious power, Lisa envisions herself in a pastiche of a 1930s black-and-white film, with costuming and hairstyling reminiscent of the titular character in 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.
Though there is a strong association in Lisa Frankenstein with this mid-20th-century popular image of Frankenstein (or the Creature, depending on how you look at it), there is also imagery more closely related to Shelley’s original work. The Creature of Lisa Frankenstein is without speech, like Karloff’s version, and unlike the character as written in the novel. But his appearance is more in line with Shelley’s description:
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful… His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing. (Shelley, 45)
As the story goes on and the Creature interacts more and more with Lisa and the world of the living, his appearance becomes more human and life-like, his complexion taking on a more healthy-looking hue. His gravestone reveals that he died in 1837, so his hairstyle is likely reflective of the fashions of the time, but it’s also unignorable that his styling is reminiscent of circa-1989 Robert Smith, frontman of the band The Cure, which is referenced in a memorable dialog exchange in Lisa Frankenstein:
LISA: I have The Cure!
CREATURE: [questioning grunt]
LISA: Oh, no... it’s not that kind of cure. It’s like, it’s a band. They can’t make you better. I mean, they can. But like, emotionally.
CREATURE: [stares] (Cody, 2024)
The Cure, and Robert Smith as a songwriter, are known for their melancholy, imagery-filled, poetic lyrics and neo-goth aesthetic. It’s commonly believed that Shelley modeled Victor Frankenstein at least partly after Lord Byron, and if anyone in late-1980s pop culture embodied a similar Byronic image, it would be Robert Smith.
Romanticism and the Gothic Sensibility of Lisa Frankenstein
References to The Cure and other contemporary bands, as well as TV shows, films, and other pop culture of the late 1980s, help ground Lisa Frankenstein in its temporal setting. The costuming and styling also serve to situate the characters in the 1980s, and, as all good film costuming does, as insight into the characters’ personalities and values before they even say a word. Taffy’s cheerleader uniform and heavily-shoulder-padded electric blue jumpsuit communicate her high status within the high school and her adherence to the latest 1989 fashion trends. Lisa, in contrast, with her succession of black lace outfits, fingerless gloves, dark eye makeup, and teased hair, showcases the aesthetic of the goth subculture.
The goth movement began sometime in the late 1970s to early 1980s, pioneered by musicians such as Siouxsie Sioux, who is widely recognized as one of the originators of the subculture, as well as Bauhaus, Joy Division, and The Cure. The title of Bauhaus’ 1979 single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” made overt the influence of classic horror films on the subculture. In addition to mid-century horror movies, the goths of the 1980s, as the label clearly suggests, also drew upon gothic literature. The imagery in works by the likes of Ann Radcliffe, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, John Polidori, and of course Mary Shelley found its way into the music and art produced by 1980s goths, as well as their personal aesthetics. With this connection to the 18th and 19th-century gothic, it’s fitting that Lisa would be drawn to the goth subculture. Lisa’s fascination with the grotesque and her romanticization of death, as well as her rejection of modern society, are all characteristic of the conventions of gothic literature. Her explanation to the Creature for her frequent visits to his grave before his reanimation illustrates her alignment with gothic and romanticist sensibilities:
LISA: Well, why are you here?
CREATURE: [moans]
LISA: Okay, I get it. I get it. When I said I wished I was with you, I didn’t mean that. I meant I wished I was in the ground, dead. Because life sucks and people are jerkoffs. I didn’t mean that I wanted to be… with you. You know… in person.
CREATURE: [groans]
LISA: Oh, oh, I’m sorry. No, no, no, don’t cry. Don’t cry.
CREATURE: [whimpers]
LISA: Your tears… they smell so bad. (Cody, 2024)
Through her relationship and eventual romance with the Creature, Lisa fulfills the characteristic arc of a gothic heroine, typically identified by tragic circumstances, a journey from innocence to experience, and an exploration of specifically feminine horrors within the domestic sphere. But while a typical Radcliffe heroine, no matter how active she is during her story, will end her journey with a passive rescue from danger by a male love interest, followed by marriage and a return to domestic safety, Lisa’s story ends very differently. Knowing that the authorities suspect her for several of the murders she and the Creature have carried out, and that there is likely no way to escape, she returns to the tanning bed which caused her initial electric shock that led to the Creature’s reanimation. Within the coffin-like confines of the tanning bed, Lisa instructs the Creature to turn it to its highest setting.
In the final shot of the film, Lisa lies on a bench in bright daylight, her head in the Creature’s lap, who is now fully alive and human in appearance. Lisa, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, giving her a vague resemblance to Boris Karloff’s mummy, listens as the Creature reads Percy Shelley’s poem “To Mary.” Just before the credits roll, he reads:
Mary dear, come to me soon,
I am not well whilst thou art far;
As sunset to the sphered moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear, that you were here;
The Castle echo whispers ‘Here!
Rhonda Watts is a writer and content creator whose work has appeared in Literary Hub, Book Riot, and Temple of Geek. She talks regularly about popular culture, media, and literature on her TikTok channel, RhondaToksAboutBooks, and her podcast, Pop DNA. She’s also currently working on her debut nonfiction book, which is now on submission with her agent.
Rhonda holds an MA in Mass Media Communications and a BA in English Literature. Her literary interests include romantic era poetry, 18th century gothic romance, fantasy fiction as mythology, and the love of her life, Jane Austen. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Rhonda now lives in Greenville, SC, with her partner and a fort she built out of her books.
Website: https://rhondablogsaboutbooks.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/rhondawithabook
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhondawithabook/
Works Cited
Bennett, Betty. “‘Not This Time, Victor!’ Mary Shelley’s Reversioning of Elizabeth, from
Frankenstein to Falkner.” Mary Shelley in Her Times. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000.
Cody, Diablo. Lisa Frankenstein. Scraps from the Loft [transcript].
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/lisa-frankenstein-transcript/
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: the 1818 Text. New York, Penguin, 2018.
Further Reading
Sadie Dean, “Character Informing the Narrative: A Conversation with ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ Screenwriter Diablo Cody,” Script Magazine https://scriptmag.com/interviews-features/character-informing-the-narrative-a-conversation-with-lisa-frankenstein-screenwriter-diablo-cody
Zelda Williams’ “Top Five,” The Academy’s Guide to Movies https://www.academyframe.com/what-to-watch/post/zelda-williams-top-5-exclusive
Olivia Rutigliano, “Did Mary Shelley actually lose her virginity to Percy on top of her mother’s grave?,” Literary Hub https://lithub.com/did-mary-shelley-actually-lose-her-virginity-to-percy-on-top-of-her-mothers-grave/
Simon Reynolds, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 https://z-lib.io/book/15788820
James Manning, “Robert Smith: ‘One day my hair will fall out and I won’t look gothic any more,’” Time Out https://www.timeout.com/music/robert-smith-one-day-my-hair-will-fall-out-and-i-wont-look-gothic-any-more
