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A few facts first, for all those who are not already in the know: This
film is (somehow) based on actual events: the meeting of Lord Byron
(Gabriel Byrne), Percy Shelley (Julian Sands), Mary Godwin (later Shelley)
(Natasha Richardson), her stepsister Claire (Myriam Cyr) and Byron's
physician Polidori (Timothy Spall) in Byron's estate at the lake Geneva in
1916 really took place, and they really passed the time by telling horror
stories to each other (or at least that's how it's handed down through the
centuries), which eventually inspired Mary Shelly to write Frankenstein
and Polidori to write The Vampyre, which in turn was the main
inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Since this is a Ken Russell-film though, it is safe to say that the
actual factedness ends here.
The film has its opium-drenched quintet then do a seance, which pretty
much drives everybody over the edge a bit: Claire totally freaks out, runs
off and is later found in the cellar, totally nude and behaving like a
beast, Shelley sees himself pursued by breasts that have eyes instead of
nipples, Polidori repeatedly tries to commit suicide, with not even the
slightest sussess, and Mary falls into a deep nightmare while awake that
confronts her with events from her past, like when she lost her child, and
has her grow immensely jealous of her stepsister whom she thinks is
carrying Shelley's baby, while for her, Byron's mansion turns into a maze.
Even the very cool Byron eventually gives in to the panic that has
befallen the others, and they try to exorcise the demon they have set free
... and the very next day, everything is back to normal again - but that
night has given birth to Frankenstein,
as the last image (a baby with a head shaped like that of Frankenstein's
monster - as played by Karloff - swimming in the lake) shows us ...
Of course, to make a horrorfilm based on the events that happened on
this fateful night in 1816 seems to be the obvious thing to do, but it
takes a director like Ken Russell to make something worthwhile out of it:
In his hands, the film takes moe the direction of an opium dream than a
horrorfilm per se, with logic and realism thrown out of the window soon
enough, giving way to the surreal, the macabre and the horrific,
influenced (as is usual with Ken Russell) by high culture and low
culture alike. That way, Russell achieves a piece of shock cinema
that's at once intelligent and weirdly entertaining, which is of course
also helped by great performances by all of the involved and an excellent
score by Thomas Dolby. As a whole, the film might not be for everyone, but
if you are looking for something different from the usual formulaic horror
fare, you might find yourself liking it.
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