Judging a Book by Its’ Cover

The cover of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca.

I recently read a book that was much more than what I expected it to be.
It’s called Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca.
I expected a book about a female detective who solved crimes in 1917 New York City.
Instead, I got a book about a society woman, Mary Grace Quackenbos Humiston (1869-1948) who became a lawyer in 1904, and set up a company she called the Peoples Law Firm.
Mrs. Humiston spent the next 44 years of her life defending women and immigrants from injustice (often as an investigator, not lawyering in a courtroom).

Mr. Hyde (Frederick March) makes young Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) his mistress in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

There are several cases covered in Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.
There’s the featured story of 17-year-old Ruth Cruger, a middle-class girl who mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Manhattan.
There’s the story of German immigrant Charles Stielow, who was nearly electrocuted at Sing Sing, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of John Snowden, a Black man who was slandered and hung in 1918, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of several thousand Italian immigrants, kept in feudal bondage (1895-1912) by Southern plantation owners.

Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) confronts a drugged woman in a scene from The Blood of Fu Manchu (1966). Consuelo LaRue (a trafficking victim interviewed for the Ruth Cruger case), was said to have “borrowed” her white slavery story from a Sax Rohmer “Fu Manchu” novel.

In a press conference on 6/24/1917, Grace Humiston outlined her plan for keeping girls safe from predators:

New York does not yet realize how systematic the danger is for girls who live in it. . . Had I the power, I would cause to be inserted in the laws of every state an act that would make the tempting of a girl a serious offense, punished by an adequate penalty. I would call such practice ‘criminal persuasion’ and . . . if the white slaver knew he violated the law at the beginning of his ‘trade’ there would be fewer girls in the underworld. [Italics mine.]

She went on to discuss stationing agents throughout big cities, and keeping girls safe after they were rescued, so they could “start life anew,” free from shame.
In an America shaped by Grace Humiston, a Jeffrey Epstein would not have been possible.

To cash in on the notoriety of the Ruth Cruger case, director George Tucker (1872-1921) created the six-reel expose Traffic in Souls in 1913.

The Ruth Cruger case made Mrs. Humiston famous.
Ruth Cruger was reported as a missing person, by her parents, after visiting a motorcycle repair shop to have her ice skates sharpened.
The New York police force failed Ruth Cruger, because they assumed she was just a “wayward girl,” one of the 1,000-1,500 girls who disappeared yearly in 1917 Manhattan.
After months of searching, Mrs. Humiston (and her chief detective, Julius Kron), discovered Ruth’s battered, dismembered body buried in the cellar below Alfredo Cocchi’s Metropolitan Motorcycle repair shop.
Alfredo Cocchi happened to be a favorite fellow of the New York City motorcycle police.
Although Ruth was last seen near Cocchi’s shop, the police had quickly ruled him out as a suspect.

The dynamics are the same: girls vulnerable to the lechery of older men.
The terminology is different.
During the early 1900’s, newspaper headlines shouted about “white slavery” and “missing maidens.”
Today, we talk about “human trafficking” and “exploited children.”
Proportionally, there are more people in situations that involve human trafficking (and forced labor), in the 2020’s, than there were a hundred years ago.

Lois Weber and Phillip Smalley created the film The Celebrated Stielow Case in 1916. At that time, Charlie Stielow was on death row.

In West Shelby, New York, Mrs. Humiston didn’t believe that illiterate German immigrant Charles Stielow had murdered his employer Charles Phelps, and Phelp’s housekeeper Margaret Wolcott.
There was no evidence for him doing so.
Mrs. Humiston, and journalist Sophie Irene Loeb (1876-1929), were instrumental in staving off Stielow’s execution until his innocence could be proven.
Eventually, a junk dealer, Erwin King; and a wandering homeless man, Clarence O’Connell, confessed to the murders of Phelps and Wolcott.

A Second Reckoning: Race, Injustice, and the Last Hanging in Annapolis, by Scott D. Seligman.

In August of 1917, Mrs. Humiston also didn’t believe John Snowden had murdered an Annapolis white pregnant woman (Lottie Mae Brandon).
However, this time, Humiston’s efforts to save an innocent man failed.
Although there was scant evidence, and authorities received an anonymous confession to the rape and murder, soon after Snowden was hanged, he didn’t receive a posthumous pardon until 2001.

In July of 1907, Mrs. Humiston began spending her time as a hands-on detective in the service of several thousand Italian immigrants who worked picking cotton on Southern plantations.
Families were recruited directly from Italy, and also from factories in cities like New York.
(That’s how Humiston discovered the case.)
After the immigrants arrived in the American South, they were installed in windowless hovels, and forced to buy all their food and clothing from the company store.
Young children worked alongside their parents.
Italian babies died from malnutrition.

Cover of a record album featuring “Sixteen Tons.”

The situations of these sharecropper families reminded me of the 1955 hit* “Sixteen Tons”:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? 

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go.

I owe my soul to the company store.

Working on gigantic 13,000-acre farms like Sunny Side Plantation (in Arkansas) at first may have reminded Italians of the “mezzadria” system in Italy.
“Mezza” means “half;” in Italy, Italian tenant farmers received half of the crops, in return for working the land.
(The “mezzadria” system didn’t collapse in Italy until the 1970s.)
On Southern plantations, however, the families were overcharged for goods and services, fell into debt to the plantation owners, and many sank into abject poverty.

On 3/31/1910, Grace Humiston testified before Congress about Sunny Side plantation, and other issues related to immigration reform.
She talked about agents fooling immigrants into providing labor.
She discussed expert masons sent to labor on cotton plantations, and skilled tailors who could only get work in mines.
She testified:

The point is that we Americans are exploiting the aliens . . . For while our Federal laws are excellent for keeping them out of the country, we show a noticeable lack of interest in them after they are admitted.

Mrs. Humiston’s time in the limelight didn’t last long.
Soon after she became well-known, she lost her shining reputation because of exaggerated claims she made about young women being abused near Camp Upton, an army training camp in Long Island (1917).
As a result of the uproar, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods revoked her badge, and her credibility was ruined.
This was a tragedy, because if Mrs. Humiston had kept her ties to the Government, and to the N.Y.C. police department, she might have accomplished more good work within the system.

*“Sixteen Tons” is a folk song about coal miners. It was written, and first performed, by Merle Travis (1917-1983), in 1946. The song became a big hit in 1955, when sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991). 

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Mel Brooks (shown above) played Goddard Bolt in Life Stinks (1991) the story of a real estate tycoon who bets that he can live 30 days as a homeless man in a Los Angeles slum.

According to the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal, and we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The sad truth remains that many of our fellow citizens consider certain people “more worthy” of the pursuit of happiness, than others.
It’s all about hierarchy.

During the “Age of Enlightenment,” 17th century men questioned the “divine right of kings” idea.
However, they replaced it with the equally stupid concept that property-owning people are more important than non-property-owning people.
(Jesus tried to dissuade people of this idea in the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, human greed, and clannishness, are strong drives.)

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is the story of the Joad family—tenant farmers driven, by a bank foreclosure and drought, to give up their Oklahoma farm, and drive to California. From right to left, Henry Fonda as former convict Tom Joad, Jane Darwell as his mother, and Doris Bowdon as Rosasharn, his sister.

Because property-owners were considered “better” than non-property-owners, most American states originally required property ownership in order to vote.
By 1790, only 4% (out of 3.9 million Americans) possessed enough property to vote.
At the same time, immigrants were allowed to become citizens, after only two years of residency.
Therefore, of the relatively few men who voted in the late 1790s, some were likely recent immigrants.
Then, as now, money equaled power.

During the early days of this country, most states required men to own a certain amount of property in order to hold political office.
The amount varied from state to state.
In South Carolina, men had to “be worth” at least 10,000 £ (the equivalent of one million dollars today) to run for Governor.
In New Jersey, men had to own property worth at least 1,000 £ (the equivalent of $150,000 today) to become Senators.
While those old laws are long gone, it’s still an anomaly for a poor man to run for political office in the U.S.
(Governor Tim Walz was the poorest man ever selected to run for vice-president.)

The Founder’s Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America, by Willard Sterne Randall. Nearly all the facts, that I’ve mentioned about the Founders, are found in this book.

Most men who signed the Declaration of Independence were wealthy.
Benjamin Franklin was the printer of 30% of all books and journals published in America.
Founding Father John Hancock owned fleets of ships, and hundreds of retail shops.
When George Washington died, his estate was valued at $17 million dollars (in today’s dollars).
(A major portion of George’s wealth came to him through his marriage to Martha.)

Beginning in the late 1960’s, society devised yet another factor “to separate the wheat from the chaff.”*
Gradually, a college degree became as necessary, as a high school diploma had been, to enter the middle class.
There were exceptions (Bill Gates, sports stars, movie actors).
However, people aspiring to become clerks, low-level managers, police detectives, paramedics (and even graphic artists) were asked to obtain degrees beyond high school.

Moreover, there’s a money gap between people who earn degrees in order to educate others (or to treat them medically), and those who earn their degrees so they can deal with money.
The median salary for teachers in 2024 was $63,000.
The median salary for financial advisors in 2024 was $102,140!
Medical doctors are significantly smarter than bankers, but their jobs don’t bring in the moolah.
It’s clear that, in American society, people whose jobs involve helping others, are valued less highly than people who handle money.

The Founders realized that Americans tend to value money more than other nationalities do.
Therefore, they wrote the Emoluments Clause into the Constitution, to stop Federal officials (including the U.S. President), from accepting “gifts, payments, or benefits from foreign states.”
The goal was to prevent foreign influence.

Emperor Napoleon III’s snuffbox, from about 65 years after 1789 (when Jefferson was given his). 

Soon after the Emoluments Clause was written, Thomas Jefferson (then Ambassador to France) violated the law by his acceptance of a diamond-encrusted snuff box (valued at $81,000 in today’s money) from French officials.
Jefferson solved his ethical problem by removing and selling the diamonds from the snuffbox.
He then used most of the money (but not all!) to purchase reciprocal gifts for his French hosts.

Money has been at the root of many events in the 250-year-old history of the U.S.
One major boost to the budding American economy was the property that Loyalists left behind when they fled to Canada or England.
France spent years trying to recoup the money that it spent supporting the American Revolution, because America was reluctant to pay its’ debt.
America never paid reparations to the African-Americans whose unpaid labor was its’ major source of wealth.
The “40 acres and a mule” promise (made by Northern officials after the Civil War) was unfulfilled.

Meet John Doe (1941) is a comedy-drama about a homeless man, John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), and a reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) who invents a story about him. Willoughby is duped into being the symbol of a grassroots political party, by a corrupt businessman.

Despite not holding true to its’ promises, the U.S. has still managed to accumulate a massive debt.
According to Forbes magazine (“With the U.S. Debt A Staggering $38 Trillion Dollars, Who Exactly Do We Owe?” by Doug Melville) the U.S owes $1.13 Trillion to Japan, $807 Billion to the United Kingdom, and $750 Billion to China, with 75% of the debt controlled domestically.
According to Forbes, the interest on this debt will reach $1 trillion per year in 2026 ($83 billion per month).

America has used many strategies to keep the economic wheel turning for the upper crust.
The U.S. allowed generations of immigrants into the country, and used them to do the menial jobs (earning low wages with no benefits).
Immigrants don’t receive Social Security or Medicare benefits; therefore, immigration has helped to keep those systems solvent.
The U.S. healthcare system is based on insurance offered as a benefit through employment. This gives power to the employer, over the employee.

Few Clothes Johnson (James Earl Jones, center) in Matewan (1987). Matewan is the story of coal miners trying to build a union. It’s based on the true story of the 1920 “Matewan Massacre.”

Essentially, America has set up an underclass of Americans who are, by design, at the mercy of the monied elite.
It’s sad how many Americans are still under the illusion that they aren’t the ones being sifted out, as chaff.

*To separate the wheat from the chaff means to separate out the “good stuff,” the wheat, from the waste, or the chaff.

Similarities Between the Second Trump Presidency and a Zombie Invasion

In 1985’s Day of the Dead, a former soldier, renamed as “Bub” (Sherman Howard), reacts strongly to walkman head phones.

I just finished reading The Living Dead by George A. Romero and David Kraus (Romero’s last zombie creation).
This novel was published in 2020, about three years after George Romero’s death.
Romero’s agent (Chris Roe). and Suzanne Desrocher (George Romero’s wife). asked David Kraus to finish the novel soon after Romero died.
[This piece contains spoilers.]

Back story: the novelization of Dawn of the Dead* (1978) was written by George Romero and Susanna Sparrow.
Therefore, The Living Dead is the first novel by George Romero that isn’t based on a script.
John Russo wrote the 1974 novelization of Night of the Living Dead; that work was based on the 1974 screenplay, written by John Russo and George Romero.

When he died, George Romero was working on a zombie film in which the living dead drove cars. Its' working title was Road of the Dead.

Five interesting facts about Romero’s series of zombie films, versus his novel:

(A) The novel shifts the zombie timeline to the early 2020’s. In the novel (just as in 2007’s Diary of the Dead), there are cell phones, computers, and the internet.

(B) Romero regretted the implication in Night of the Living Dead (1968) that a Venus probe produced the zombies. Shortly before his death, he asserted: “No one ever would, ever could, figure out why zombies came into existence.”

(C) Animals aren’t zombified in the Romero films, but they are in the novel. Certain species of mammals begin to prey on humans, but not on each other.

(D) Zombies have a time limit, roughly fifteen years. After that time period, the living dead slow down, decay, and begin to fall apart.

(E) If certain zombies have clear objectives that they want to fulfill, prior to becoming the living dead, then they will still do these actions after they become zombified (in both the films and the novel).

By reading the coauthor’s note, I learned that while The Living Dead might not exactly be what Romero would have written (had he lived a few more healthy years), Kraus tried to be as close as possible.
I think that if Romero had survived, the novel would have been much, much longer.

The novel is extremely gory, a bit uneven, and sometimes it’s even unclear.
The novel does give us George Romero’s last stories on zombies.
Since I’ve been fascinated with Romero’s work from 1968’s Night of the Living Dead through 2009’s Survival of the Dead, it was a good read.

The zombie version of Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) avenges himself on the owner of Fiddler’s Green, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), in 2005’s Land of the Dead.

George Romero (1940-2017) was a Bronx-born film-maker, and the father of the modern zombie myth.
Because of his name, I had high hopes that Romero was a fellow Italian-American.
However, I was mistaken.
Although Romero was the grandchild of immigrants, his ancestry was half Lithuanian and half Spanish.
He became a citizen of Canada in 2009.

One of the things I liked most about the Romero films was his liberal sensibility.
In Night of the Living Dead, the hero is a black man who summons up the strength to help others, while the villain is a selfish, white “family man.”
In Day of the Dead, military grunts decide that they don’t want to work for the common good.
In Land of the Dead, selfish millionaires get their comeuppance.
It was obvious that Romero was a liberal from his first films.
Anyone who didn’t understand this, was just looking for a gore fest.

Avid zombie shoppers wandering a mall in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead.

In Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth, Kim Paffenroth analyzes the film Land of the Dead. Paffenroth says,* in the chapter on that film, that the villain of the piece, Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper):

Based his entire kingdom [Fiddler’s Green] on ignoring others’ rights and acting like a terrorist and a criminal. . . a potent and uncomfortable indictment of the United States, for all the disenfranchised and exploited on which we base our affluent and wasteful lifestyle.

Romero and Kraus end The Living Dead in Toronto, Canada, the city where Romero died at the age of 77.
Many of the main characters, who we’ve followed in Acts One and Two of the 635-page book, meet up in Toronto, in Act Three.
Surprisingly, they come to the conclusion that they shouldn’t have spent years killing the living dead after all.
The readers are left with a question: Are human beings really worth the attention of God? 

Leader zombie Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) pumping gas, in 2005’s Land of the Dead. 

The American “heroes” of The Living Dead novel are a very diverse group:

• a black high school student who lives with her father in a trailer park, and is very skilled with a bow and arrow
• a near retirement Japanese-American master helmsman on an U.S. aircraft carrier (who happens to be gay)
• a blonde female autopsy technician in San Diego, who has a crush on her Latino boss
• a famous male TV newscaster known as “The Face.”
• a neurodivergent female statistician who works for the Government in D.C.

The “villain” of The Living Dead novel is an ex-movie producer called Richard Lindof.
He reminds me of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” because he comes from money, he limps, plus he’s rather ugly.
(However, “limping Lindof” appears in very few pages.)
The true villain of The Living Dead novel is human nature itself!

By the end of The Living Dead novel, one group (led by our heroes) is willing to compromise their own safety, lock up their guns, and live peacefully next to the dying zombies.
The group comes into conflict with another group (led by Lindof) that goes for chaos, and behaving viciously.
Mammals, like rats and dogs, become zombified.
However, the zombie mammals only attack humans, not each other.
Miraculously, one of the main characters turns into zombie hybrid.
Her eyes are not clouded white, she speaks, and she’s retained her pre-zombie personality.

The similarities between the second Trump presidency and a zombie invasion are the following:

1. We live in a state of fear. In Romero’s universe, we’re worried whether zombified rats will bite us while we sleep. In our universe, we wonder whether Trump will invade Venezuela or Nigeria.
2. We’re participating in a battle between a desire for the common good, and watching out only for our own lives and prosperity.
3. There are two sides and they don’t understand each other; each side believes they’re the prey of others out to do them wrong.

*The sections I quote from Gospel of the Living Dead, by Kim Paffenroth (Baylor University Press, 2006) carry footnotes that reference Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, a film director and college professor, who reviewed the film Land of the Dead in the Journal of Religion and Film (2005, Volume 9, Issue 2). 

Americans Voting for the Sizzle

A poster for Joe Dante’s 1987 political satire The Second Civil War. 

In the 1987 film, The Second Civil War (a film first created to stream on HBO), slick lobbyist Jack Buchan (the late great James Coburn) instructs the U.S. President (the fondly remembered Phil Hartman):

“No disrespect sir, but the American people vote for the sizzle, and not the steak.”

This late 1980’s dystopian satire* was set forty years in the future (the mid 2020’s).
Unfortunately, no network has had the nerve to brush the cobwebs off of this film.
It’s a comedy about immigration, and we can’t do comedies about immigration anymore!
The main plot is this: the Federal Government orders Idaho to accept one million Pakistani immigrants.
The Idaho Governor (Beau Bridges) objects, and a second Civil War results.
(My husband and I own a DVD of the film.)

Speaking of “sizzle,” one of the reasons that Trump was elected in 2016, was that people were tired of voting year after year, and seeing no real change in our unjust systems.
On November 18th, 2025, survivors of Epstein-Maxwell abuse gathered outside the Capitol.
They spoke of being ignored by five different administrations.
Several women mentioned contacting the FBI, and the Justice Department, and not being listened to because mere women were accusing rich and powerful men.

1939’s The Wizard of Oz, with the Wizard (Frank Morgan) revealed from behind the curtain.

Trump reminds me of the big green head in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
Trump is the head, and the people who wrote Project 2025 are Professor Marvel (the person behind the curtain).
Trump has never been an “idea man.”
When pressed for an agenda, he rails against his enemies, blames other people, and lies that he has a “concept of a plan.”
During his November 2, 2025, 60 Minutes interview, with Norah O’Donnell, Trump actually said that he didn’t know the billionaire cryptocurrency founder (Changpeng Zhao), who he’d pardoned just a few days before!
Does Trump truly believe that ignorance makes actions OK?

I’ve been unable to trace it back, but a few days after Trump took office, in 2016, one pundit said that he’d never realized (until that election) how many Americans simply didn’t care if the world “blew up.”
I keep going back to this memory over the past nine years.
Why did so many people want something (anything, anyone) to shake up the status quo?
Weren’t they worried about the nuclear football?
Couldn’t they see that Trump just cared about himself?

An “old” Italian-American saying.

Is America mainly a nation of gamblers?
I guess that would make sense.
Most of our ancestors—at least the ones who came here willingly—gambled with their lives as they made their way to these shores.
They gambled that the ads published in European newspapers (promising streets paved with gold) would be accurate.
They gambled on surviving, as they traveled from Boston to California in wagon trains.
Men and women gambled that they wouldn’t die of diphtheria, or dysentery, or scarlet fever.
Women gambled that they wouldn’t die in childbirth, or starve to death. 

Why are Canadians not gamblers?
Why are they not as divided, and not as violent, as Americans?
Is it because most of their population came to Canada for safety, and for land?
Is it because Canada’s population is so much smaller in proportion to its’ land mass?
Is it because the Canadian climate is colder?
Is it because Canadians are more likely to be bilingual?
(The official languages of Canada are English and French.)

Is Canada so different from the US because Canada has never been dependent on slavery, and the tainted wealth that slavery brought?
Upper Canada ended slavery in 1793.
It’s estimated that there were only about 4,000 African slaves in Canada, when Canadian slavery was totally abolished in 1834. 

Volume 5 of the 1997 Collier’s Encyclopedia (page 268, in the “Canada” article) postulates that: “Canadians have shown a persistent desire to not become Americans.”
While Americans talk about being “a melting pot,” many Canadians have viewed their country as “a mosaic.”
Canadian citizens (except Inuits, and other native groups) have been encouraged to keep their ethnic individuality.
I much prefer the concept of a mosaic, over that of a melting pot.

Of course, like all countries, Canada has not been free of ethnic conflicts, or of racism.
Native groups have been oppressed and discriminated against.
In the 1990’s, French-Canadian citizens still tended to make less money than non-French-Canadian citizens.
Although most Canadians consider themselves “middle-class,” there are still class divisions, as well as a gap between the rich and the poor.

Americans have long been different from Canadians, however, in that Americans tend to be more materialistic, more violent, and “better” risk-takers.

Although the giant lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, is part of both American and Canadian folklore, he originated in Canada.

Another difference between the U.S. and Canada is that there were no “heroic thieves” (like Billy the Kid, and the Sundance Kid), or a “Wild West,” in the Canadian national mythology.
Instead, Canada was the place where Paul Bunyan was born, and wild creatures like Sasquatch or Wendigo roamed the forests.

The question comes down to this: Are Canadians generally a touch more conservative, less materialistic, and less “sensation-seeking,” than Americans?

* The Second Civil War (the 1997 HBO film), is close in title (at least) to Alex Garland’s 2024 thriller Civil War, that starred Kristen Dunst. Although the two films have a few things in common, they are polar opposites in terms of sensibility. Both films are about another Civil War, but in the current time period. Both films also feature news journalists (and a U.S. President) as main characters.

Imperfect Fathers and del Toro’s Frankenstein

Baron Frankenstein (Charles Dance, left) talks to his son, Victor, in del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Unless you want to be spoiled, don’t read these musings until you’ve seen Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
This memorandum contains spoilers.

With the possible exception of Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994), Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is the closest movie to Mary Shelley’s novel than any of the other Frankenstein films.*
The “Frankenstein” 2011 play (performed with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, switching between Victor Frankenstein and his “creature”) follows the Shelley novel more closely than either film.
However, that’s a play that was filmed, not a movie.

Essentially, Branagh brought into his story the creation of a female “creature,” and got further away from the original story.
On the other hand, del Toro brought in an additional character (Harlander), plus he changed the main female character Elizabeth.
(Harlander fills in partly for the Henry Clerval character (in the novel); however, while Clerval was the voice of love and sanity, Harlander portrays a purely materialistic point of view.)
Del Toro’s mysterious Elizabeth becomes the only idealistic figure in the del Toro film, but her motivations are unclear.

I loved the del Toro film.
However, it didn’t hit me in the gut as much as my two favorite del Toro films, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.
I didn’t identify with Elizabeth in Frankenstein, as I identified with Ofelia in Pan’s Labyrinth, or Elisa in The Shape of Water.
Instead, if I identified with anyone, it was with the creature.

Del Toro’s very tall creature (Jacob Elordi) in his 2025 Frankenstein.

Perhaps, Frankenstein is more a man’s film, than a woman’s film.
It’s mainly about two males, their relationships with their father-figures, and a battle against materialism.
It's also more of an action film.

Certainly, del Toro’s creature (Jacob Elordi) is more of a “superman” than Branagh’s creature (Robert De Niro), or the Universal Frankenstein (Boris Karloff), was.
The skin of del Toro’s creature heals miraculously after being shot.
He “dies,” and then recovers, at least twice.
He seems to have the strength of fifty men.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein differs from Mary Shelley’s novel, in that Victor Frankenstein’s father (Charles Dance) is a benign presence in the novel, but a malignant presence in the film.
In the novel, Victor’s father is not interested in science, and is a loving mate to his wife.
In the film, however, his father is a physician obsessed with his career.
Another older “father” figure (Harlander, played by Christoph Waltz) is invented for the film, in order to provide funds for Victor’s experiments, and to portray the purely materialistic viewpoint. 

Was Victor (Oscar Isaac) a “bad father” to his creation because he was badly parented by the males in his life?
The creature is lucky enough to find a more caring father (than Victor had), in the person of the blind man (David Bradley) in the forest.
Learning from the blind man is how the creature begins to communicate with others, and to say more than the two words “Victor” and “Elizabeth.”

The creature, as drawn in the Bernie Wrightson “Frankenstein” graphic novel.

In terms of looks, the creature resembles what Mary Shelley described in her novel, and the work of artist Bernie Wrightson (who del Toro thanks in the end credits).
Wrightson (1948-2017), one of the creators of “Swamp Thing,” drew the creature in his 1983 “Frankenstein” graphic novel.
The Wrightson drawings make the creature look a bit more cadaver-like, than the film does.

Another significant difference between the book and the film is the character of Elizabeth.
In Shelley’s novel, Elizabeth is a foster sister who Victor grew up with.
(In the novel, Victor describes his adopted sister Elizabeth as “the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures.”)
In del Toro’s film, Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is a wealthy stranger betrothed to Victor’s younger brother (William, played by Felix Kammerer), plus she’s Harlander’s niece.

Elisa (Sally Hawkins, left) with the amphibian man (Doug Jones) in The Shape of Water.

Unlike the Elizabeth in the novel, del Toro’s Elizabeth is enraptured by the strangeness of Victor’s creature as soon as she sees him.
Her attraction to the creature brings up memories of Elisa’s fascination with the amphibian man in The Shape of Water.

I didn’t realize (until I read the end credits), that Mia Goth played both Victor’s mother Claire (in a dark wig), and Elizabeth (in a red wig).
Mia Goth is quite different in the two roles.
As Claire, she’s a fragile woman, devoted to her son, and afraid of her husband.
As Elizabeth, she’s a much more exotic female, newly released from a convent, independent, and (although she’s religious) very interested in the sciences.

Although del Toro’s creature is as full of rage as Shelley’s creature in the novel, he does not kill except to defend himself.
He doesn’t commit the sin of raping or killing Elizabeth.
He doesn’t kill an innocent child.
He doesn’t plant evidence (a necklace) pointing toward another killer for a murder that he committed. He does cause Victor Frankenstein’s death, but (at the end of the film), he’s as filled with remorse, as the creature is in Mary Shelley’s novel.
After all, Victor is the creature’s foster father.

*I’ve also written about Roger Corman’s Frankenstein film, in three memorandums: “Must Knowledge Lead to Progress? Part I,” “Must Knowledge Lead to Progress? Part 2,” and “Losing a Dime Making a ‘Message’ Film.”