‘Praise for a Man Who Made Edison Look like a Tinker’

Don Banning
Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Sunday, July 12, 1981

Ken Strickfaden of Santa Monica, who created the lightning bolts that jolted Frankenstein's monster into life in the movies, thinks it's shocking that more people didn't celebrate the 125th anniversary of Nikola Tesla's birthday Friday...“I suppose there are a few people who have never heard of Tesla,” sniffed Strickfaden, who has been interested in Tesla since he returned from World War 1. “He put all of his life to solving problems, not seeking applause.”

Strickfaden is the special effects expert who made the terrifying lightning effects for all of the most famous American Frankenstein films, including the Mel Brooks film “Young Frankenstein.” To make the effects, he used Tesla coils and other equipment based on Tesla's ideas.

“Tesla,” said Strickfaden, “was one of the greatest geniuses to come out of the earth. He did things they said couldn't be done...He was the real father of radio, not Marconi. A U.S. Supreme Court patent decision, the year after Tesla's death, awarded him that honor.”

Strickfaden made some respectable lightning bolts of his own for the original 1932 “Frankenstein,” for “Bride of Frankenstein,” “Son of Frankenstein” and “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.” But he said one should not believe everything one sees in a Frankenstein movie. Photography can stretch a spark of a few inches into laboratory length.

“Even at that,” said Strickfaden, “it takes 80,000 volts to generate a 4-inch arc. Those are real arcs from real generators in the Frankenstein movies, but some of the equipment that you will see is props.”

(Editor: The above article also included comments by Bill Wysock and Nick Basura).

‘The Cinema of Adventure, Romance & Terror’

George E. Turner, Editor
From the archives of American Cinematographer

The high angular stone walls of the watchtower (in Frankenstein) were filled with eccentric electrical machines created by Kenneth Strickfaden, an energetic little musician from Montana who began his film career in 1921 ⁽¹⁾ as an electrician at Metropolitan Studio and later at Paramount.

“I made these things because I didn't know anything and I had fun doing it,” Strickfaden said in 1981. “It was a matter of experimentation. I'd put something together and then sit back and marvel at it. Then I found there was a market for my 'Edison Medicine.' The styling all depended upon what kind of junk I had at hand. Some of the pieces were very heavy, being made of the finest china in order to withstand the terrific electricity.” Strickfaden took his experiments very seriously. “Electricity is life,” he said shortly before his death. “We're just a bunch of sparks with various quantities of air.” ⁽²⁾

Paramount used several Strickfaden machines in The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1929 and Fox showcased the lot the following year in their musical science-fiction extravaganza, Just Imagine. Frank Graves, head of Universal's electrical department, put Raymond Lindsay in charge of the weird electrical devices used in Frankenstein, which included a lightning bridge, a bariton generator, a nucleus analyzer and a vacuum electrolyzer - to use Strickfaden's names for them. “Ray Lindsay should get the credit,” Strickfaden said. “I designed it, he operated it. All I did was make adjustments and replace equipment as it burned up. I lost quite a bit of it, and some of it is in a medical museum in Minneapolis.

“The fantastic electrical machinery (in Flash Gordon), which performs impressively in the laboratory scenes, was created by Kenneth Strickfaden, an electrical genius whose creations appeared in all of Universal's Frankenstein films, Just Imagine, The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), The Invisible Ray and many others.”

1. The 1921 date is not supported by Strick's notes. At that time, he was working as a laborer at various jobs.
2. Strick would often point at his head and say, “We're just a bunch of sparks with various quantities of hair.”