VENICE - Mexican director Guillermo del Toro gave birth to another monster, his big-budget "Frankenstein" movie, joking that the effort had left him worn out as his creation got its world premiere in Venice.
The last creature he delivered here, the aquatic being in "The Shape of Water", swam off with the festival's top prize in 2017 before going on to triumph at the Oscars.
This latest version of the Mary Shelley masterpiece is also among the 21 films in competition for the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion.
Del Toro's film is an elaborate, evocative production the director said he had been dreaming about making since he was a child.
It was surely no accident that the film got its premiere on what is know as Frankenstein Day -- the August 30 birthday of the novel's author, Mary Shelley.
Starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creation, the film is a no-holds-barred Gothic spectacle.
Following the scientist obsessed with inventing his own living creature, it explores themes of humanity, vengeance, unbridled will and the aftermath of that all-consuming hubris.
The film's rich visuals include the imposing tower where Frankenstein performs his experiments and the gruesome anatomical parts from which his creature is stitched together.
Since James Whale's seminal 1931 "Frankenstein" starring Boris Karloff, there have been a string of adaptations, testimony to the appeal of the story.