Color, 1981, 93 mins. 17 secs.
Directed by Yūgo Serikawa
Deaf Crocodile (Blu-ray) (US RA HD)

Toei Animation and Marvel Entertainment turned into unlikely but effective horror bedfellows in the early '80s when their longstanding affection for classic movie monsters turned into animated feature films. The characters of Dracula and Frankenstein had been appearing in Marvel comics for years in their own dedicated series as well as making cameos elsewhere, so the first to make the leap to film was a streamlined version of The Tomb of Dracula made as Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned. Then came 1981's Kyoufu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein (The Horror Legend Returns! Frankenstein), a very anime take on Mary Shelley's novel and the Marvel incarnation (or at least vague elements of it) which ended up making the rounds on TV and VHS as The Monster of Frankenstein (like the Marvel comics), Frankenstein: Legend of Terror, or simply Frankenstein.

In a statement meant to be released after his death, Swiss Inspector Belbeau relates his involvement in the most uncanny case of his career. When his experiment animating a creature made of dead body parts via electricity goes haywire, Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his assistant, Skell, are confronted with a hulking creation who goes off a cliff after taking one of Skell's eyes. Victor returns home to his wife Elizabeth and daughter Emily, while an eyepatch-wearing Skell resurfaces with blackmail on his mind. Meanwhile the creature is on the loose in the countryside and eventually comes upon Emily while she's staying with her blind grandfather, with them two of them calling him "Franken." The creature's fear-driven violent behavior has already gotten back to a guilt-ridden and increasingly panicky Victor, setting into motion multiple paths that will end in turmoil and bloodshed.

Quite splattery for an early '80s animated film, this one frequently betrays the influence of Universal's Frankenstein films with the Emily character and especially Hammer's portrayal of Victor as the real villain of the story. An equally ambitious soundtrack features elaborate sound effects work, and not surprisingly it was given an English-dubbed push abroad with voice talent by several familiar participants from Japanese TV shows around the time. That version came out on VHS in the '80s from Vestron and basically dropped off the map after that for a long time, so it's a welcome development that the original Japanese version finally came out on Blu-ray from Deaf Crocodile.

The new 5K scan-sourced presentation provided by Toei Animation looks much better than anything we've had before here, not surprisingly, with incredibly rich colors that pop off the screen. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 Japanese mono sounds excellent and comes with solid English subtitles; anyone who has the English dub will probably want to hang on to it as the two versions, which have almost the same running time, each still have some tiny slivers of exclusive footage mostly setting up the heads and tails of scenes. (The English version also adds a quick Heidi-like shot of Emily riding on the creature's shoulders, so judge accordingly.) Amusingly, the English dub didn't even bother trying to Anglicize the lyrics for the two songs here, opting to leave them instrumental instead which is very confusing when Emily is very visibly supposed to be singing.

A thorough and very informative new audio commentary by Arne Venema covers the Marvel-Toei monster period, significant elements of anime characters like Astro Boy, the importance of director Yūgo Serikawa, the design of the creature, creating rain via animation, and lots more. The Ryan Verrill and Dr. Will Dodson visual essay "'Blasted in These Hopes': The Hubris of Frankenstein" (15m50s) looks at the idea of hubris going back to Prometheus and its essential role in the Dr. Frankenstein character as represented here and in Shelley's novel, while a marathon roundtable videoconference "A Frank Conversation" chat with Stephen R. Bissette, Kelley Jones, and Erik Hanson moderated by the label's Dennis Bartok (91m48s) is a monster kid jam exploring all the facets of Frankenstein and his monster as a pioneering sci-fi narrative, a major cinematic subject starting in the silent era, and the other lore elements that have made it such a rich and malleable story over the decades up to Guillermo Del Toro and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Also included is a 48-page booklet, illustrated with some striking production art from Toei Animation's archives, featuring essays by Walter Chaw and Dorian Saisse covering the Japanese relationship to the creature character, the integration of organized religion here in multiple moments, the numerous international influences at play here, the connections (or lack thereof) to the Marvel comics, the significant use of different colors here and blue in particular.

Reviewed on November 7, 2026