Frankenstein Remembered
When you think of the Frankenstein movies, names like Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mary Shelley and James Whale come to mind. But have you ever heard of Kenneth Strickfaden? Long ignored in the annals of horror movie fame, Strickfaden is the man whose electrical designs made Frankenstein the movie that it is. He was called “Dr. Frankenstein’s electrician” and was directly responsible for all of the electrical effects used in the monster creation scene. He also created all the electrical effects for the slew of other Frankenstein sequels. He was even a stunt double for Boris Karloff, who was deathly afraid of electricity.
Strickfaden was meticulous about his special effects, concocting various laboratory equipment, as well as securing the use of a Tesla Coil built by the legendary scientist Nikola Tesla himself. Rest assured, all the electricity in the film was real, and the equipment he used to produce them became known, in fandom, as “Strickfadens.”
He was responsible for all those dazzling electrical devices Frankenstein and Fritz, in various movies, clutched, clung to, and recoiled from. Strickfaden also coordinated the memorable lightening bolts that shot across the lab. Without the aid of Tesla’s coil, those fantastic discharges would be impossible to create.
It should be noted that Tesla coils are a resonant transformer created by Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla around 1891. These coils make very high voltage, low current and high frequency alternating current electricity. The electrical discharges produced those lighting-like plasma filaments that were used in the film. Believe it or not during the early 1900s Tesla coils were used to apply high frequency current directly to the body in what was then considered therapy!
Kenneth Strickfaden was celebrated as an innovative special effects genius, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. He worked on movies from “Frankenstein” to “The Wizard of Oz” to “The Mask of Fu Man Chu.” In his later years, he worked on various television series, including “The Munsters.” With more than 100 motion pictures to his credit, he still managed to give 1500 traveling science demonstrations and lectures across the U.S. and Canada. He remains one of the nearly forgotten heroes of early film and television, where the lightening bolts were real, the laboratory equipment dangerous, and stuntmen walked into electricity storms.
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