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Spoilers (2)
Robert De Niro studied stroke victims to get a purchase on speech that is struggling to emerge.
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The amniotic fluid in which the Creature was brought to life was really boiling gelatin. During filming, Robert De Niro and Kenneth Branagh slipped and fell in the stuff so much that a huge split appeared in De Niro's prosthetic suit, which had to be avoided by the cameras.
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Fay Ripley filmed a small role, she was bitten by Robert De Niro, but her scenes never made the final cut.
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Kenneth Branagh apparently banned the term "Monster" from the set. He insisted that everyone refer to DeNiro's character the way he was identified in the credits, as "The Sharp-Featured Man".
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Kenneth Branagh originally wanted Emma Thompson for the role of Elizabeth. However she had been offered the lead in Carrington and Branagh agreed that this would be a better part for her.
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Kate Winslet auditioned for the role of Elizabeth in Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein. Helena Bonham Carter was selected for the role, but Branagh was so impressed by Winslet that he offered her the part of Ophelia in Hamlet. Bonham Carter played Ophelia in 'Franco Zefferelli''s 1990 version of Hamlet.
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Producer Francis Ford Coppola had originally planned to direct the film himself as a companion piece to Dracula, but eventually stepped back to let Kenneth Branagh direct. Coppola later regretted his decision after a number of disagreements with Branagh during filming.
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After viewing a rough cut, Francis Ford Coppola insisted on cutting the first half hour of the film. When director Kenneth Branagh refused, Coppola publicly denounced the film.
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It was during the filming of this movie that Kenneth Branagh, then married to Emma Thompson, fell in love with Helena Bonham Carter.
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Kenneth Branagh, John Cleese, and Robert Hardy all appeared together again in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Hardy also appeared in three of the subsequent films, the last of which, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, also featured Helena Bonham Carter.
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Spoilers
This film contains several references to previous Frankenstein films:
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- The Creature is brought to life in a metallic vat, as in Thomas Edison's Frankenstein.
- Victor cuts an executed criminal from a hangman's noose and uses the body for his experiments, as in James Whale's Frankenstein.
- Another homage to Whale's Frankenstein: The Creature is reanimated with electrical charges. This is an invention of Hollywood; the book is silent on how Victor creates the Creature.
- Another homage to Whale's Frankenstein: Once the Creature comes to life, Victor triumphantly shouts, "It's alive!".
- The Creature's first spoken word is "friend." This is also the Creature's most frequently-used word when he learns to speak in Whale's Bride of Frankenstein.
- Victor uses the brain of a brilliant scientist/mentor for his Creature, as in Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein. Justine Moritz's role is also expanded and is made to fall in love with Victor in both films.
- Victor's mentor, who paves the road for his experiments, brings a severed arm back to life and shows it to Victor, as in Frankenstein: The True Story.
- The Creature hides in some cottagers' pigsty and secretly learns to speak and read from observing them through a peephole. In the book, the cottagers are foreign refugees. In this film, the cottagers are simply local townsfolk. This variation on the novel was first used in Calvin Floyd's Terror of Frankenstein.
- A cholera epidemic sweeps through Ingolstadt, leaving Victor to believe that the Creature died from disease. Frankenstein (starring Randy Quaid) also features a cholera epidemic under very similar circumstances, even though it is not present in the novel.
Kenneth Branagh did an uncredited rewrite on the script. One of his additions was the scene where the reanimated Elizabeth sets herself on fire.
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