Frankensteinian: Homunculus (1916)

Clones clash on this Hungarian poster for the German Das Ende des Homunculus, the sixth and final episode of the epic, eight and a half hours-long silent serial directed by Otto Rippert.

In the end, the Homunculus is confronted with an identical copy of himself, specifically created and trained to destroy the original. The Hungarian poster, elegant and tense, was created by Nandor Honti. 

Danish-born actor Olaf Fönss became a European matinee idol through his forceful interpretation of the soulless, lab-created Homunculus who sets out to destroy mankind. Like T.P.Cooke, the British stage actor whose blue-green makeup as the Frankenstein Monster inspired vert de monstre fashions in the Paris of 1826, Fönss’s costumes were a hit with the Berlin dandies of 1916.

Images from Homunculus and episode descriptions by Ian Turpen on Flickr.

Poster source: Adrian Curry on MUBI.