Since the rise of cable TV in the 1980s, it has become traditional to binge on horror films in October, which include the classic Universal monster pictures that began in the 1930s and the Hammer films of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. These movies rely heavily on the characters of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, and ever since we've conflated the two. They've even appeared in movies together occasionally. Still, they couldn't be more different.
Bram Stoker published the novel Dracula in 1897 after extensive research on traditional European folklore. His vampire character had deep roots in tales of corpses rising from the dead to attack the living. The vampire called Dracula was both powerful and evil, leading to a story of true horror.
The novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was written by Mary Shelley in 1816, the year without a summer, during a horror writing challenge. It was then fleshed out, so to speak, and published in 1818. The characters in Frankenstein were loosely based on actual scientific experiments of the time, and the story is considered by some to be the first science fiction novel. Frankenstein's monster indeed rose from the dead, but is a victim rather than an evil protagonist. The horror in the story comes from the monster's existential dilemma, as he is a manufactured man and has no place in the world.
Yet Dracula and Frankenstein's monster are both part of the horror film industry that arose together when we started to go to the theater to see movies, so they are forever linked. To usher in October, Cracked takes the opportunity to stage a cage match of sorts. First they compared the two monsters, using information from the novels and pictures from the movies. Then they harness some imagination to see how they would fight each other. Who wins? See the matchup and the results in a pictofacts post at Cracked.
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