The egotistical allure of life-creating science is front and center in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which reworks Mary Shelley’s foundational novel into an operatic story that asks whether something beautiful can be created by someone so selfish. Beyond Frankenstein, cinema has no shortage of amoral scientists breaking the boundaries of human nature — and Herbert West, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Jekyll, the Invisible Man, and more can all be traced back to pre-cinema literature. Lesser known is Georges Bonnet, the protagonist of Hammer Film’s The Man Who Could Cheat Death, but with this obscure mad scientist film receiving a 4K upgrade thanks to boutique distribution label Vinegar Syndrome, it’s worth discovering his ill-fated experiments as a colorful alternative to del Toro’s latest.
