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*Notable for being the last Italian horror film until I VAMPIRI in 1956 due mostly to the strict censorship that removed "sensational" scenes from fantasy films.*

As a footnote (although perhaps quite a major one!) to this observation which is often repeated in regard of IL MOSTRO DI FRANKENSTEIN, it's worth pointing out that, although produced for the Italian market and starring Italian actors, the film was actually made by a German production company, Albertini-Film GmbH, which was co-founded by future UFA production manager Ernst Hugo Correll and Italian actor Luciano Albertini, who starred in all the company's films.

The company's first films, produced for the 1920-21 season, were all made in Italy, and included four Samson wrestling movies and the Frankenstein picture.

With the introduction of stricter censorship at this point, however, production shifted to the German capital, Berlin, for the rest of the company's pictures from 1921 through 1926. These films continued to star Luciano Albertini, frequently alongside his wife Linda Albertini and the incredibly tall wrestler/actor who played the Frankenstein Monster, Umberto Guarracino, who was usually billed as 'Cimaste' (an anagram of Maciste).

Guarracino also appeared in the German fantasy adventures DIE INSEL DER VERSCHOLLENEN (The Island of the Lost, 1921) and DAS VERSCHWUNDENE HAUS (The House That Vanished, 1922), as well as in explorer Hans Schomburgk's mondo-esque drama EINE WEISSE UNTER KANNIBALEN (White Woman Among the Cannibals, 1921), which was shot on location in the former German colony of Togo, in West Africa.

Albertini-Film GmbH's productions in Berlin continued for the most part with the wrestling-adventure formula of its earlier Italian-lensed pictures, with titles such as DIE EISERNE FAUST (Fist Of Iron, 1921) and DER MANN AUS STAHL (The Man of Steel, 1922). Star Luciano Albertini also made similar pictures for Berlin-based producer/distributor Phoebus-Film AG, which was perhaps unsurprising, since Ernst Hugo Correll, with whom Albertini had founded Albertini-Film GmbH, was by this time one of the two chief executives at Phoebus.

Albertini's sci-fi/fantasy adventures at Phoebus-Film AG included MISTER RADIO (1924) and DER MANN AUF DEM KOMETEN (The Man on the Comet, 1925).

Albertini also gained a contract with Universal in Hollywood around this time, with the company renaming him Lucien Albertini (one wonders just what they thought was wrong with 'Luciano'?!) and starring him in the 15-part serial THE IRON MAN (1924). However, despite considerable efforts by Universal to promote the actor, audiences apparently found it hard to conceive of him
as a 'goodie', and were left rooting for the villain, Joe Bonomo, instead. Whatever the truth of this, Albertini never worked in the States again, although Universal's German subsidiary, Deutsche Universal, was happy enough to use the actor in his only talkie, the all-action adventure ES GEHT UM ALLES (Everything's At Stake, 1932).

What all of this lengthy post points to is the very real possibility than IL MOSTRO DI FRANKENSTEIN should not be seen in isolation as an early Italian one-off, but rather viewed as one of the first works in a substantial international career in fantasy productions (for Albertini, Guarracino, and to a lesser extent, Correll) --- a career which moved beyond Italian borders only due to the imposition of stricter censorship in Italy. A subject for further research, methinks.

A 24"x37.75" playbill-style poster from a small provincial Italian cinema has turned up on eBay (direct link, albeit with a $1000 starting price), which advertizes a showing of this movie in October 1926.

Although there's no artwork, this is still of interest in relation to this film, as it provides evidence of its having remained in circulation in the provinces for considerably longer than was known hitherto. The poster also bills the film's lead as "Luciano Albertini (Sansone)", thus seeking to cash in on his familiarity from Samson movies.

The movie was recorded by the Italian censor in 1920 as IL MOSTRO DI FRAKESTEIN, and on this poster as IL MOSTRO DI FRANCKESTEIN, which is perhaps indicative of what a mouthful the name 'Frankenstein' is in Italian with its two centrally-placed letter N's.

Barbenfouillis wrote:

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Doc, can you tell us more about these two?

Both films were primarily daredevil adventure movies whose main focus was showing off Albertini's incredible physical dexterity to the fullest. However, both seem to have made use of 'trick effects' which push them (just) within the boundaries of having mild sci-fi/fantasy content, although various of Albertini's other movies were not such borderline cases.

MISTER RADIO was a kind of 1924 version of SURVIVE! or ALIVE, pitting a handful of survivors of a train crash against the snowbound mountainous elements around them. The train crash appears to have used extensive model work, while a couple of the survivors battled occasional (trick effect) hallucinations as they sought to traverse the 'northern mountain ranges' (in scenes shot on location in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains in the East of Germany; Wikipedia, for reasons beyond mere human comprehension, has particularly striking shots of the area only on its Esperanto-language page [link]). Ultimately, it's not merely Albertini's mountaineering and orienteering skills, but more specifically his skills with radio, which save the day, allowing the film to present an interesting interplay between the positive and negative potential both of technology and of nature.

DER MANN AUF DEM KOMETEN, meanwhile, introduced Albertini as a sailor noted for his outstanding dexterity while climbing rigging. One thing leads to another, and he ends up as part of a highwire act playing (you can probably see this coming) 'the man on the comet'. It's here that the sci-fi/fantasy content seems to have featured, with the highwire act transforming into a special effects extravaganza, with Albertini's amorous feelings towards Maly Delschaft leading him into an odd encounter with Georgetta von Platy and Marinka Spadoni, playing (in the act and in the fantasy sequence alike) Cupid and 'the Goddess of the Moon.' The rest of the movie gave Albertini the chance to scale heights in all manner of daredevil ways, as a straightfaced variant on Harold Lloyd (who, by chance, stars in the other film advertized on the 1926 IL MOSTRO DI FRANKENSTEIN poster above). Here's a promotional image from DER MANN AUF DEM KOMETEN that was released as a cigarette card, and which shows the kind of stunts for which Albertini was known in Germany at the time (he is compared to Harry Piel, another name well-known for traversing the action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy genres, on the text which accompanies the card):