A studio bleeding $2.2 million at the start of the Great Depression, a star who quit rather than grunt in a mask, and a plot point inspired by a real laboratory accident involving Walt Whitman's brain. This episode goes inside the making of Universal's 1931 Frankenstein, from the Dracula windfall that sparked a monster strategy, to Bela Lugosi's refusal to play a mute scarecrow, to James Whale's casting of the obscure Boris Karloff because his gaunt bone structure could emote through layers of heavy makeup.

We correct the record on Igor, who does not exist in the film, and explain how the hunchback Fritz and Lugosi's later Ygor were mashed together by pop culture. We also break down how pre-Code censorship actually worked, with state boards physically cutting film strips, why Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York removed the drowning of ...