Green With Envy

Like the ill-fated fictional medical experiment unleashed on the world by novelist Mary Shelley two centuries ago, John Karwin’s Frankenstein collection is out of control. Talking about his preoccupation with the Frankenstein monster, the curator-exhibition specialist for the Fullerton Museum Center sounds like an escapee from a self-help recovery program. “I’ve been doing OK,” he says. “I’m getting good. I’m trying to get rid of stuff. There was a period when I was buying all the kitschy stuff, like the Frankenstein Hot Wheels car that came out a couple years ago.”

The earliest of his more than 40 vintage copies of Shelley’s classic dates to the 1880s. As an art historian, Karwin is fascinated in the way depictions of the monster evolved over time, and his collection includes most of the illustrated editions. Karwin’s Holy Grail, the rare first illustrated “Frankenstein” from 1831 that has been known to sell at prices well into the four figures, is not among them. “It’s a little out of my price range right now.”

Posters from stage productions and foreign Frankenstein films cover the walls of Karwin’s Fullerton apartment, which is a teeming laboratory of monstrous ephemera. A prized relic is Big Frankie, the 18-inch deluxe Aurora model. “They only made them for six months in 1964. It’s one of the most valuable pieces I have.” A standout among his more than 400 comic books and other publications is a “Frankenstein #1” from a series that ran from 1945 to 1954. “It’s not in good condition but it’s scarce,” Karwin says. “There are less than 200 copies in the world.”

He became a Frankenstein fan while growing up in Santa Cruz. “My dad worked for the university and had access to 16-mm films. He would bring home ‘King Kong’ and Buster Keaton movies.” And horror films, of course. Karwin received a bachelor’s in art history from San Jose State University and a master’s at Cal State Fullerton in museum studies. “Horror films became the beginning of a lot of interesting things for me. That’s how I got into art history.”

Aside from the Boris Karloff monsters, Karwin, 40, loathes most of the movie Frankensteins, though you wouldn’t know it from his 6-foot-high bookcase crammed with Frankenstein videos and DVDs, among them schlocksters such as “Lady Frankenstein” (“Only the monster she made could satisfy her strange desires,” the film publicity rants), and “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.” Karwin does have kind words for the Mel Brooks spoof “Young Frankenstein.” “It’s so well made, and it’s actually funny. They used Ken Strickfaden’s equipment from the original Frankenstein.”

For Karwin, Shelley’s genius is more in her thematic vision than her prose. “The original book is intolerably boring. She uses the word ‘misery’ 200 times. Her vocabulary wasn’t that great, but she was only 20 when she wrote it. Her mother died shortly after childbirth. She’s concerned with death and whether you can bring someone back and the implications of science. . . . It’s so prophetic in that way. It’s described as the first real science fiction book.”

Like many a recidivist, Karwin may say he’s cutting back, but his wish list tells a different story. “I’m looking for a very early edition that’s affordable. It could be in poor condition. Or a real movie prop, anything Karloff-related. Or . . .”