In my classic horror character series, I’ve written about a lot of monsters and undead creatures, some of whom are purely evil while others are misunderstood or driven to do horrible things. They often have a very horrific look to them and supernatural abilities that make them scary and dangerous, but in a lot of their stories, there is another villain hiding in plain sight: the mad scientist.
Mad scientists typically don’t make the classic monster group photo because they are often just regular humans who either turn mad or already are mad when their story begins, and they tend to set in motion a lot of chaos and conflict that leads to our monsters’, and their own, downfalls. Below I explore 8 great things about mad scientists.
The obsession with their work
One of the first scenes in the 1931 film Frankenstein shows Henry Frankenstein about to conduct his experiment to reanimate the dead body he and his assistant have exhumed from a freshly dug grave. This man is already in the thick of his obsession when we first meet him, and it already makes him unlikable and suspicious to the viewer.
In contrast, the opening of Mary Shelley’s novel of the same name begins at the end of Victor Frankenstein’s journey. In fact, the opening scene is so different from the film that I caught myself flipping back and forth between the opening pages and the cover to make sure I was reading the right book.
The story opens with some letters written by a man in the middle of an arctic voyage to his sister, telling her about how they found Victor and nursed him back to health where he regaled him and the rest of the crew with his remarkable story. Unlike a quick few lines of exposition to catch us up on Henry Frankenstein’s downfall, Victor Frankenstein’s story is then told from the beginning so that the reader gets to watch his enthusiasm for science turn into an obsession for success and greatness.
We often find mad scientists locked away in towers, laboratories, or even their own homes working day and night on the math, the acquiring of necessary materials, and the ultimate carrying out of this experiment. Their drive to see their experiments through can lead them to steal from, abuse, and even murder anyone who gets in their way.
Determination and intelligence are crucial for a scientist’s greatness, but they can also lead to extreme behaviors or measures. And ultimately, those closest to them tend to suffer the most from their downfalls.
Cutting and running
As much as mad scientists want to receive credit for their ideas and successes, when it comes to failure or being held accountable for their evil creations, they tend to run and hide and let others clean up their mess. When this happens, their creations come back to bite them, sometimes literally.
Coming back to the Frankenstein novel, one of the most famous scenes entails the night that the creature Frankenstein has created comes to life. Blinded by his determination to succeed, it’s not until the creature is born after two years of efforts that he sees its ugliness. And what does he do?
“I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”
Victor then goes into detail about the creature’s ugliness and how much it haunts him, leaving no room for sympathy or accountability, only victimization of how he basically scared himself with his own creation and how it affects him physically and psychologically. His inability to focus on anything other than himself creates space for the monster to retaliate by attacking members of Victor’s family.
When we watch scenes like this play out time and again with mad scientists, it fills us with disdain for these characters. The great power/great responsibility philosophy of the sci-fi world is constantly tested in the mad scientist character, and it’s what leads us to deduce that the character that we call the monster or creature, despite his own evil actions, cannot hold a candle to the behaviors of their creators who display no sense of morality, responsibility, or maturity in the powerful position that they have been given in life, and that makes them the true villain of the story.
Their initial good intentions
I love the opening to 2007’s I Am Legend which begins with Emma Thompson playing Dr. Alice Krippin, a cancer researcher who is being interviewed about her announcement that she has found a cure for the disease by reprogramming cancer cells into healthy cells. It’s an announcement that we all hope to hear one day. What we don’t hope to hear is the aftermath of that announcement in which the treatment becomes an apocalyptic killer that turns most of humanity into a type of zombie/vampire hybrid.
A lot of classic horror movies begin with scientists looking to better mankind. In the 1940 film The Ape, Boris Karloff plays a scientist hoping to cure polio because of a girl he knows who struggles with the disease. In a pre-polio world, this sounds far-fetched but completely admirable.
In 1958’s The Fly, Andre Delambre is just trying to create a transportation device to make travel quicker and more accessible. There’s nothing sinister in his intentions; he only wants to see his experiment through, and it’s just an unforeseen circumstance that turns him into a half-human, half-fly hybrid that he hides from everyone except for his adoring wife who tries, unsuccessfully, to help him undo what he has done to himself.
Good intentions mislead us into thinking that these characters are just trying to do the right thing. But when that obsessive nature comes into play, they resort to extreme measures to keep their experiment going or try to undo the mistakes they’ve made.
Great science comes from not giving up, but bad science comes from that need to speed up the process and make extreme decisions in their desperation to see it through. Watching those decisions play out and the choices they make can lead to a judgmental audience shaking their heads at them.
What’s interesting, though, is that these actions cause us to question what we would do in the same situation.
If we were turned into a monster, what would we do to fix it?
If a family member’s life was on the line, would we just let nature take its course or look for a solution in the limited time frame we have?
From a safe distance, most of us would say we’d do the right thing. Others might say, when it came to family, we’d do the extreme thing but make better choices than the mad scientists. But it’s not until we’re put in that position that we would know for sure how we would react.
The physical transformations
Whether it’s the dual personalities that emerge in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the mental toll that severe disfigurement takes on Darkman’s Peyton Westlake, or the half man, half-insect hybrid that shapes The Fly, sometimes these mad scientists become their own victims of their experiments.
There’s something admirable in a scientist deciding to test their own work on themselves. However, they are often unprepared for how those decisions will affect them.
Again, these situations lead us to question what consequences we would be willing to live with if faced with the same situation. A lot of times, it’s the mental toll that disfigurement takes that leads to their tragic ends. Some seek revenge on those who may have caused the change. Others simply cannot live with their own scientific failure. Just one split-second decision is sometimes the point of no return, and that makes their journeys fascinating to watch.
Of the classic Universal Monster title characters, The Invisible Man 1933, to me is the most sinister. He begins his movie already changed as the result of the experiment, and when he removes his bandages for the first time and reveals that there’s literally nothing to him, it’s not nearly as scary as the evil attitude that comes from him.
He’s completely manic, insulting, and instigating to those who are trying to capture him, and his newfound invisibility brings with it a sense of overconfidence, leaving everyone looking over their shoulders, afraid he’s standing right next to them without them even knowing it. It’s like having the school bully on the loose and waiting for you around every corner.
The equipment and locations
The classic Universal Monster Movies loved to utilize a European look. It made their stories feel like a dark fairytale where experiments were conducted in stone buildings on dark and stormy nights complete with Tesla coils and other giant equipment that felt like a laser light show.
As the years went on, horror movies with a scientific element tended to become more grounded. They were more intent on showing liquids bubbling in beakers and scientists looking through microscopes to create a more modern and realistic feel to their experiments.
Once we finish school, most of us rarely touch scientific equipment again. So, these props and settings are fascinating, almost otherworldly locations full of electricity and concoctions that feel both dangerous and exciting.
The average person can’t begin to understand how scientists do what they do. Hollywood writers especially have the mammoth task of trying to explain what the mad scientists are doing in layman’s terms.
And that’s part of what makes mad scientists feel dangerous. They know more than we do, and we let them, either willingly or behind the scenes, test their own limits and potentially put others at risk, either unintentionally or intentionally. It’s hard to trust even the well-intentioned characters because we don’t know what damage they are capable of doing until it has been done.
The costumes
Unlike other classic horror characters, mad scientists tend to have a pretty standard look. They’re often equipped with a lab coat, gloves, and whatever other instrumentation or costume features are necessary for their work.
We love to think about Gene Wilder’s electric hairstyle from 1974’s Young Frankenstein as a prerequisite mad scientist look, but it’s just as likely for a mad scientist to have short, cropped hair, particularly prior to the 1960s. Goggles are another likely prop, but they typically only are needed if they’re dealing with a specific type of instrument.
What sets mad scientists apart from the other characters is the fact that they are not as showy as the monsters or creatures they might create, but they stand out from the other characters because of their wardrobe. They come across as both professional but also someone willing to roll up their sleeves and get dirty.
Peter Cushing’s Dr. Frankenstein typically looks like he’s dressed for his own wedding, aside from the occasional white apron that he wears over his lacy dress shirts or expertly knotted ties. Yet, he exudes a heinousness in his expressions and attitudes which show that the frilly wardrobe is really just a decoy that masks the heartless man who wears it.
Their assistants
Every mad scientist needs a good lab assistant. They’re either colleagues or students with at least a standard knowledge of the science that they are assisting with, or they are devoted servants who were taken in by the scientist and offered a job.
A major characteristic of mad scientists’ assistants is some type of physical deformity. This deformity either depicts them as someone who couldn’t get a job doing anything else due to their physical limitations that keep them out of working in a public setting, or it gives them a motive for working with the scientist with the hope that they may help fix their physical issues.
One of my favorite assistants is Nina from 1945’s House of Dracula. Nina is a young hunchback nurse who is hoping that her boss, Dr. Edelman, will fix her hunch. However, she has a strong moral compass who puts others’ needs before her own, and she calls Dr. Edelman out when she sees that he’s up to no good.
Unfortunately, Nina meets a tragic end as a result of standing up for herself. In a way, it mirrors how outcasts are literally thrown aside in society, and only those who are truly paying attention, such as the audience who is watching their story play out, will grieve their demise.
Assistants can also be just as cruel and self-serving as their superiors, though. Fritz from the 1931 Frankenstein takes delight in torturing the newly born creature, and he pays dearly for it with a very shocking and gruesome death. He too is a bit of a throw away character but also one who demonstrates the type of torment that the creature is going to come up against, and, like a provoked wild animal, he proves right off the bat that he’s not going to stand for it.
The mad scientists’ creations
If they’re not mutilating themselves, mentally or physically, the payoff of the mad scientists’ efforts is getting to see their horrifying creations. Whether it’s only for a few seconds such as in The Bride of Frankenstein or the drawn out arc of her “husband’s” dozens of movies, the creation is the cherry on top of these mad scientist stories.
Sometimes that monster is exactly what you’d expect: a physically shocking, often super strong or super angry monster who wreaks havoc on a town because the scientist could not keep them at bay. They are sometimes very self-aware and devasted by their rejection from society.
Other times, they are completely feral and only act from instinct. Either way, the scientist has a lot to account for.
Sometimes the monster comes about from mere psychological trauma. In 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die Jan Compton survives a deadly car accident thanks to her boyfriend’s research in transplants. The only problem is, she is now just a head. And while she waits for him to find her another body, by way of murder, Jan becomes murderous herself and enlists the aid of another lab creature hidden behind a locked door to do her bidding.
No matter what product arises from the mad scientist’s efforts, early sci-fi stories set the tone for the real world magic that scientific experimentation can create in these fictional yet plausible horror worlds. The character has spun off into multiple genres of stories, ranging from comedies like Young Frankenstein and The Man with Two Brains to children’s movies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Flubber. As a result, the mad scientist is a very easily identified character with a premise that we continually flock to watch to see what their story can bring to the genre.
Who are your favorite mad scientists? Leave your answers in the comments below!
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Also, check out my other list posts about horror characters including:
10 of the Scariest Types of Horror Stories
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