Life Without Soul

Life Without Soul
Lobby card
Directed by Joseph W. Smiley
Produced by John I. Dudley
Written by Jesse J. Goldburg
Starring Percy Standing
George De Carlton
Distributed by Ocean Pictures
Release date
  • November 1915 (1915-11)
Running time
 70 minutes
Country United States
Language Silent film
English intertitles

Life Without Soul (1915) is a lost horror film, directed by Joseph W. Smiley and written by Jesse J. Goldburg. This film is an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Gothic novel Frankenstein. The film is about a doctor who creates a soulless man. In the end, it turns out that a young man has dreamed the events of the film after falling asleep reading Mary Shelley's novel.

This version is considered a lost film and the second film version of Frankenstein.[1] The first version was the Edison Manufacturing Company's 12-minute short film Frankenstein (1910), written and directed by J. Searle Dawley.

Production

This full-length film (broken into five parts), was produced by the Ocean Film Corporation and featured English-born actor Percy Darrell Standing wearing little to no make-up as the 'Brute Man'. The story is about the Brute Man killing the sister of his creator (Dr. William Frawley) on her wedding night. Frawley pursues his creation across Europe finally killing him by shooting him. Frawley then dies of exhaustion. A framing device reveals that the story is being read from a book.[2] The film was reissued in 1916 by the Raver Film Corporation with added scientific documentary footage detailing the reproduction methods of fish.[3]

Cast

  • Percy Standing as The Creation (aka Brute Man)
  • George De Carlton as Frankenstein's Father
  • Lucy Cotton as Elizabeth Lavenza
  • Pauline Curley as Claudia Frawley
  • Jack Hopkins as Henry Claridge
  • David McCauley a Victor Frawley, as a child
  • Violet De Biccari as Elizabeth, as a child
  • William A. Cohill as Dr. William Frawley

See also

References

  1. ↑ British Film Institute database entry
  2. ↑ Life Without Soul at the American Film Institute Catalog
  3. ↑ Stephen Jones. The Essential Monster Movie Guide. Billboard Books. 2000. Pg. 224


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