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Put Some Life Into Frankenstein Day

Looking for a way to add a little frightful fun to the second-to-last night in August? Suit up in a Frankenstein costume and help celebrate a monster of a day – Frankenstein Day. Frankenstein Day, designated as the 30th of August, is meant to pay tribute to the birth date of author Mary Wollenstone Shelley who wrote this infamous story. “Frankenstein.”  Born August 30, 1818, Shelley wrote the book that practically spawned the entire genre of horror entertainment when she was just 18 years old.

As you may already know, the fictional Dr. Victor Frankenstein was fascinated with science and through his research uncovered the secret to imbuing inanimate objects with the living. After considering the feasibility of bringing a corpse back to life, Dr. Frankenstein assembled a hodgepodge of human body parts and pieced together a larger-than-life creation in the form of a man. However, shortly after making the man, he loses the beauty of his dream and is filled with disgust and horror at his creation – Frankenstein’s monster. Of course, the monster is lonely and sad, not understanding life as a true human and much tragedy follows.

When you think if a Frankenstein costume, the image that comes to mind is the hulking silhouette created in the 1931 Universal Studios movie where Boris Karloff plays the monster. Even though the flick is set in black-and-white, the look for a monster of Frankenstein costume features a tattered and too-small dark suit with broad shoulders and a face cast with a sickly greenish hue. Also signature to the face of Frankenstein’s monster were a thick forehead, sunken eyes, silver bolts sticking out both sides of his neck and sloppy scars from railroad-track style surgical stitching.

While Frankenstein costumes make sense for celebrating Frankenstein Day, the other obvious venue for these theatrical threads is on Halloween. There are quite a few variations of the best Halloween costumes for frightful fun with the horror genre. You can even create your own realistic Frankenstein costume with a hand-me-down suit, green face paint, special effects kits for designing the face scars.  Don’t forget the signature walk of this big guy who lumbers through the hallways with heavy steps, locked knees and outstretched arms.  He’s alive!