My memory is that it took place in modern times, and the “monster” was created by accident when a doctor put together donated organs/parts I think just for long-term storage, not expecting it to “wake up”.
Could it be Mr. Stitch? From 1995 but otherwise fits a lot of your criteria–made for TV, modern setting, then again I’d assume you’d have remembered Rutger Hauer and Wil Wheaton being in it but you never know.
There was a Michael Sarrazin-starring movie of the week called Frankenstein: The True Story that pings some, but not all, of your search criteria. It was set in its familiar period. And despite its purple title, it was a worse than average adaptation of the novel.
This sounds like it might be confused recollection of Frankenhooker, in which a bunch or Spare Hooker Parts (don’t ask) are stored in a back room and get zapped to life as a monstrous conglomeration of butts, boobs, and legs.
It was Frank Henenlotter’s essential remake of The Head/Brain that Wouldn’t Die , the surprisingly gory 1960s flick that MST3K eventually hacked. That movie, too, features a Creature in the Back Room, only it was purposely created, and not from spare boobs and legs and such.
(Henenlotter’s film actually featured something that only appeared on the poster for The Head That Wouldn’t Die – a Brain in a Jar with a single huge eyeball in the front)
Brain with Eyeball from Frankenhooker
Random pix from Frankenhooker, including spare parts:
I remember that, vaguely. Similar to the creation scene in Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein.
The scene with the female that I REALLY remember after 45 years is Michael Sarrazin ripping her head right off her shoulders in the middle of the formal ball.
If it was “Dr Franken” with Robert Vaughn, my vague memory is that the “monster” wasn’t a reanimated corpse but a man who had been in a coma for years. While he was in the coma, Franken practiced all kinds of experimental transplants on him… So when he awoke, he had someone else’s eyes, someone else’s ears, many organs from many people.
When he finally awoke, he didn’t know who he was, but he had memories of things his eye donor had seen, things his ear donor had heard, etc.
At the end, I suspected they were hoping to use this movie as a pilot for a series. But the series never materialized.
I vaguely recall that the eye donor had been murdered, and the “monster” brought the killer to justice by remembering what the donor had seen right before being killed.
That creature was scary as shit all through the movie–you only saw a hand/arm at one point–until the end when the door opened up, the creature rescued the DiD and shambled offset. I laughed MY head off. Man, did they drop the ball.
Sorry – I think you’re confusing two different science fiction films starring Robert Vaughn. Dr. Franken is a TV movie that came out in 1980, but the plot you’re describing is that of The Mind of Mr. Soames, an underappreciated 1970 cinema flick that starred Terence Stamp as the comatose Mr. Soames.
