All the other parts and joints are just stitched together.
Were they in the original fairy tail or just the movies?
I think it was just in the movie, and it gave the doctor some place to connect the electrodes.
Barry
P.S. The doctor’s name was Frankenstein. The monster was simply known as “the monster” (or sometimes “Frankenstein’s monster”)
I think that’s where doc attached the jumper cables. IIRC, he hoisted the creature thru the roof and lightening struck the lightening rod, passing electricity thru the cables and the neck bolts. This jump-started the monster, bringing him to life.
Much of the Monster came from executed criminals. When men are hung, necks get broken. The bolts are part of a metal implant that holds his neck together.
Or, it looks cool.
It wasn’t a fairy tale, it was a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818.
The movie differs greatly from the book, which contains almost no details about how the young student Victor Frankenstein brough life to his creation. This is the extent of the description of the climactic scene in the novel:
In the movie, the bolts were electrodes to introduce the electricity that brought life to the creature.
In the Boris Karloff movies, the neck bolts were there for conducting electricity, not to hold the neck together. But the monster did havestaples on his forehead and temples, presumably along the line that his cranium was opened to insert the brain.
They’re a fashion statement. He’s metrosexual, y’know. Platform boots, too. 
Just watching SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, the third of the series with Karloff (following FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.) Basil Rathbone, as the Son of Doctor, finds the monster’s body and is trying to bring it back to life, holds the bolts and specifically describes them as where his father attached the electrodes.
In the movie My Life, Keaton videotapes instructions to his unborn son on how to use jumper cables to start a car. He says: “Do not use these to play Frankenstein!” and winces at the thought of it.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster was usually called “the fiend.” I think “Frankenstein’s Fiend” sounds way cooler and I wonder why it hasn’t caught on. There was a movie titled Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I haven’t seen it. Anyone who has seen it, is the filmed story more faithful to the novel as the title promises? How is the animation scene played? Any neck electrodes? Do they use the word “fiend”?
I read somewhere that those neck bolts were copyrighted or protected somehow - by the movie studio that first produced the Frankenstein (FrankenSTEEN!)movies.
That screen monster is a wonderful intellectual property, and the neck bolts make him instantly identifiable. I wonder who thought them up - some unsung yet ingenious makeup man/woman?
If you haven’t already, you might want to read Shelley’s book.
Jack P. Pierce (1889-1968) was the legendary makeup artist at Universal studios who created the special makeups for Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), Bride of Frankenstein, WereWolf of London (1931), and The Wolf Man (1941).
And yes, the particular look of Universal’s Frankenstein monster is under copyright, and must be licensed to be used elsewhere.
Now how did that happen. That should be Bride of Frankenstein (1935), WereWolf of London (1935).
I wasn’t asking whether any other poets like Coleridge used the word “fiend.” I was asking about the screenplay for the movie Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that came out a few years ago. According to the credits at imdb.com, Robert DeNiro starred as “The Creature.”
Trivia:
Kenneth Branagh apparently banned the term “Monster” from the set. He insisted that everyone refer to DeNiro’s character the way he was identified in the credits, as “The Sharp-Featured Man”.