Names like Boris Karloff, Mary Shelley and James Whale all come to mind in reference to FRANKENSTEIN. But have you ever heard of Kenneth Strickfaden? Long ignored in the annals of horror movie fame, Strickfaden is the man whose electrical designs made Frankenstein the movie that it is. He was called "Dr. Frankenstein's electrician" and was directly responsible for all of the electrical effects used in the monster creation scene. He also created all the electrical effects for the slew of other Frankenstein sequels. He was even a stunt double for Boris Karloff, who was deathly afraid of electricity.
Strickfaden was methodical about his special effects, concocting various unique laboratory equipment, as well as securing the use of a Tesla Coil built by the legendary scientist Nikola Tesla himself. Rest assured, all the electricity in the film was real, and the equipment he used to produce them became known, in fandom, as "Strickfadens."
Strickfaden also coordinated the memorable lightening bolts that shot across the lab. He was responsible for all those spectacular electrical devices Frankenstein and Fritz, in various movies, clutched, clung to, and recoiled from. Without the aid of Tesla's coil, those fantastic discharges would be impossible to create.
Tesla coils are essentially resonant transformer created by Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla around'91. These coils channel very high voltage, low current and high frequency alternating current electricity. The electrical discharges produced those lighting-like plasma filaments that were so extensively used in the film. Believe it or not during the early'00s Tesla coils were used to apply high frequency current directly to the body in what was then considered therapy!
Kenneth Strickfaden was heralded as an innovative special effects genius, especially in the'30s and'40s. He worked on movies from "Frankenstein" to "The Wizard of Oz" to "The Mask of Fu Man Chu." In his later years, he worked on various television series, including "The Munsters." With more than 100 motion pictures to his credit, he still managed to give 1500 traveling science demonstrations and lectures across the U.S. and Canada. He remains one of the lesser known heroes of early film and television, where the lightening bolts were real, the laboratory dangerous, and stuntmen walked into electrical storms.
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