On the first day of shooting “Frankenstein,” Guillermo del Toro held up a drawing of the creature he had made when was a teenager.

“He said, ‘This is like Jesus to me,’” recalls Oscar Isaac.

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For the Mexican-born filmmaker, Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel and the 1931 film with Boris Karloff are his personal urtexts: the origin of a lifelong affection for the monsters del Toro has ever since, in reams of sketches and in a filmography doted by them, breathed into life. For a misunderstood kid growing up in a devout Catholic family, Frankenstein’s creature, unloved by his maker but graced by Karloff with empathy and fragility, cracked something open.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein/ Getty Images Mary Shelley's Franke

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