Frankenstein is a 1910 American short silent horror film produced by Edison Studios. It was directed by J. Searle Dawley, who also wrote the one-reeler's screenplay, broadly basing his "scenario" on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This short motion picture is generally recognized by film historians as the first screen adaptation of Shelley's work. The small cast, who are not credited in the surviving 1910 print of the film, includes Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as Frankenstein's monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor's fiancée. Plot Described as "a liberal adaptation of Mrs. Shelley's famous story", the film shows young Frankenstein (his first name in the book, Victor, is never mentioned) discovering the "mystery of life" after two years at university. He gives life to a creature built by mixing different chemicals, and the monster follows Frankenstein back to his parents' house. The conclusion, completely different from Mary Shelley's book, shows the creature disappearing after seeing its own reflection in the mirror, and without killing Victor's younger brother or his fiancée Elizabeth, as happened in the novel. The film's plot description in a 1910 issue of the studio's trade periodical Edison Kinetogram provides considerable detail about the company's screen adaptation: Cast Mary Fuller as Elizabeth Charles Stanton Ogle as The Monster Augustus Phillips as Frankenstein Production J. Searle Dawley, working in his third year for Edison Studios, shot the film in three days at the company's Bronx facilities in New York City on January 13, 15 and 17, 1910. Staff writers for the Edison Kinetogram assured theatergoers in 1910 that the company's film adaptation was deliberately designed to de-emphasize the horrific aspects of Shelley's story and to focus instead on the tale's "mystic and psychological" elements: The film was reported in the Edison Kinetogram as having a length of 975 feet, giving it a runtime of approximately sixteen minutes at silent film rates (16 FPS), or closer to eleven minutes at modern rates (24 FPS). Reception Newspapers and magazines of the time, such as New York newspapers The Film Index and The Moving Picture World, highlighted the monster creation scene as "the most remarkable ever committed to a film". After the film's official premiere, on April 9, The Moving Picture World published a negative review signed by W. Stephen Bush, probably one of the first critics to worry about what could be shown in