Burton has been making Frankenstein films his whole career and had already made one outright: Frankenweenie, in 1984, which Disney fired him for. Edward is Shelley's creature with the proportions kept and the horror removed. An inventor makes a being in an isolated house and dies before finishing him; the being is gentle, articulate and incomplete; a community welcomes him as a novelty and then turns, and the film ends with a mob climbing to the castle with torches. Vincent Price in the flashbacks is the casting saying where this comes from. Filed MEDIUM: the debt is to the creature story as it reached Burton through Universal horror, and the film is a suburban comedy for most of its length.