Whatever you want to call him, there’s no doubting that Frankenstein’s Creature is one of the most iconic creations of all time, and yet it’s hard to say what the definitive image of the Creature should be. If you turn to Mary Shelley’s original novel, the Creature within is an eloquent, intelligent being, who genuinely cares for the people he considers his family, but is also full of rage and loneliness, and is capable of acts of great evil, such as the murder of Frankenstein’s young son and wife. He is described in the book as being eight feet tall, with translucent yellow skin, watery eyes, black hair and white teeth. However, when it comes to Frankenstein’s Creature on screen, there have been so many different, wildly varying versions, both in terms of the physicality of the Creature and the way in which he is portrayed as a character, that picking the five best is a tough challenge.

Yes, when you mention Frankenstein’s Creature, the image which pops into most people’s heads is that of Boris Karloff in the classic Universal Frankenstein films of the nineteen-thirties, a fact reflected in the public vote for this week, which Karloff walked (or lumbered) away with by a mile. But Karloff’s is only one interpretation of a character who has been portrayed in almost any way you care to think of. What follows here, moreso than last week’s column on Doctor Frankenstein himself, is, rather than anything claiming to be the definitive top five, merely a choice selection of five Creatures, each completely different from the last, from the funny, to the sympathetic, to the calculating, to the monstrous, to the downright bizarre.

If you read last weeks column, then many of these choices won’t come as any great surprise, but I think there may be one entry here which you won’t have seen coming.

Also, special mentions to some of the actors who were considered for the list, but didn’t quite make the cut. Dave Prowse’s turn from The Horror of Frankenstein was strongly considered for a good long while, though I surprised myself by never really giving Lon Chaney Jr or Bela Lugosi, who both played the Creature at one point or another for Universal, a shot at the top five, as their performances as the Creature, especially for two such highly regarded actors of the genre, were ultimately quite disappointing.

So, who is on the list? There’s an easy way to find out.

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