See, most Frankenstein adaptations never quite get to the part where the monster and the scientist start cock-blocking each other at every opportunity. The most famous version of Frankenstein, the one made in 1931, is an hour long and is like a Greatest Hits collection of the book. And Bride Of Frankenstein only features the bride for about five minutes before the monster get angsty and decides to literally blow up every living cast member.

Universal Pictures "We were doing pretty good, but then I got sad. So I guess it's goodbye, everyone with a speaking part."

But Branagh, benefited by a decent budget and the impulse to turn every scene in the novel into an orchestral time bomb, includes the bits of the book that are the equivalent of the monster smacking Frankenstein in the nuts and running away laughing. Hell, at one point he even has Frankenstein revive his dead wife for dancing purposes, only for the creature to rip her away to forcefully grind with her.

TriStar Pictures It's never Ladies' Night at Club Frankenstein.

That part isn't in the book, but it's a nice distillation of how there are many previously untapped portions of the story that basically feature the monster and his crazy dad bumping shoulders and screaming "YOU WANT SOME, BRO? BECAUSE WE CAN DO THIS SHIT. RIGHT. NOOOOW." at each other.

Moreau was played by Marlon Brando, who was far beyond what could be considered the "twilight" of his career at this point. A "twilight" signifies some kind of slowing down or fading away, but Brando had lived past that and had gone supernova. His acting is everywhere and nowhere. His performance is both the best thing about the film and a black hole from which the rest of the movie is desperately trying to flee. He is both the unstoppable force and the immovable object.

New Line Cinema "Ha ha! And I definitely wore this on purpose! Certainly not because I just woke up from a four-day nap."

And he's the best Moreau we've ever seen.

See, most Moreau adaptations are forced to grapple with the fact that Moreau isn't a great villain. He's a mean, lunatic scientist whom the plot revolves around, but he has no grand scheme other than to keep trying to create his animal people. Also, his death isn't even the climax of the book. As soon as he eats it, there's a whole act left. Most movies turn Moreau into the antagonist who must be conquered in a blaze of horror and glory. Brando's Moreau is devoured in the middle of the movie while he lies screaming in a hammock.

New Line Cinema Shine on, you inconveniently eccentric diamond.

Brando's Moreau is a terrible person, but he's less concerned with, well, anything going on around him, and more concerned with being a god to his furry playthings. The closest he comes to being the actual bad guy is when he repeatedly involves the protagonist in awkward conversations. We often lump Moreau in with guys like Dracula and the Invisible Man, but in reality, he's that dude at the bar who won't shut the fuck up about his new pets. Brando's Moreau might be inexplicable, but it's the only thing in the movie that feels like a natural retelling of the book.

And you'd think that any I Am Legend made before the '70s would be similarly nice'd up in the traditional Hollywood way. The chilling vibe at the end of the novella would be replaced by classically good-looking people making out in front of the Statue of Liberty or something, because all is right in the world, there are no more vampires, and their son will grow up to be a Roosevelt.

But that isn't so in The Last Man On Earth, which features Vincent Price looming around and stabbing things. The movie is painfully slow, and was destined to be in the public domain from the first frame. But what's surprising is that Price's vampire hunter never gets the chance to do anything remotely heroic. Yeah, he's the last "man" on Earth, but this version tells the story of what would happen if the world's only living guy was a violent dickhead.

Public DomainHere lies Dr. Robert Morgan. He was disliked by literally everyone on Earth.

The book ends with the protagonist killing himself before he can be executed by survivors, never getting any kind of redemption because he's, well, kind of a serial killer. It's a pretty dark note, and The Last Man On Earth ends on an even darker one when, impaled on a spear, Price screams that his pursuers are all freaks and that HE'S the last man. Not you infected assholes. He is, because, well, he just is. He murdered a lot of your loved ones because he mistakenly thought they were harmful, and YOU'RE the shitheels for chasing him over it.

So think about that the next time you try to protect your loved ones and build a safe community, you fucking jerks.

Luhrmann had previously made Romeo + Juliet, and his vivid, sweeping treatment goes hand in hand with the emotional broad strokes required to tell the story of undying love between dumb middle-schoolers. Here, this preference for style over substance fits incredibly well too, but in the most morbid way possible. See, while the actors are trapped on a bored trip to a tragic destiny, Luhrmann is busy making the Roaring Twenties look fucking incredible. This makes all of the death stuff in the end way sadder, because they were forced to leave the '20s, where everyone drinks and dances all the time and sadness is prohibited.

Warner Bros. Pictures This, of course, would all end with the Great Frown Plague of 1929.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's original novel also builds up a tale that will inevitably end in depressing confusion, but in a way that does service to the characters. Luhrmann captures that too, despite the characters. And he does it with a blaring rendition of the setting of the book. If you can't garner a script that will emotionally affect people, at least you can pump pop music over trendy early-20th-century galas and hope that the audience is as sad about leaving the party as the narrator is.