‘Sometimes you frighten me, Victor, with your strange ideas about things…’
A young medical student leaves Geneva for university in Ingoldstadt. Unfortunately, he actually attends some lectures, and is inspired to meddle in things that man must leave alone. The results of his experiments is a creature sown together from corpses stolen from the local graveyard. One stormy night he brings it to life…
Highly faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s immortal 1818 novel, which seems to have debuted on television, rather than on the big screen. Whether it was made for that medium in the first place is open to debate, but it’s more likely that it was a project that failed to find cinema distribution. Why? Well, it’s probably the most bloodless and scare-free version of the story ever presented. Given the obvious reverence for the source material, that might well have been intentional, but it was never likely to set the box office alight as a result. In fact, the film attempts to crowbar the entire novel into its 90 minutes, with the inevitable result that the plot seems rushed and characters are unsympathetic because they have no time to develop. It may have been cut down from a much longer version, of course, but that seems unlikely as there are no gaps in narrative logic or obvious continuity problems.
This was an Irish-Swedish co-production, directed, written and produced by Calvin Floyd. He was a filmmaker who has only 4 dramatic pictures to his name, of which this was the third. There’s a heavy Swedish presence in the cast, although this includes only one of the principals, Per Oscarsson who plays the rather unintimidating creature. Elsewhere, our title character is Leon Vitali, a man with few subsequent acting credits, due to his role as Stanley Kubrick’s Personal Assistant, and casting director on ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1982) and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1996). The most familiar faces in the cast are Nicholas Clay, who played Lancelot in John Boorman’s rather silly ‘Excalibur’ (1981), and Stacy Dorning, who is remembered for her appearances in a couple of UK TV shows based on Anna Sewell’s novel ‘Black Beauty.’
The real problem with the picture is the lack of drama. Keynote scenes such as the creation of the creature are resolutely unspectacular, and the murder of Frankenstein’s young brother in the woods almost plays as an afterthought, rather than an important plot development. The creature makeup is also terribly underwhelming, so much so in fact that it stretches credibility when women faint at the sight of him and men take up burning torches to drive him away. In fact, the horror is downplayed throughout and, although that’s admirable in a way, it does rob the story of its edge and blunt the nature of the tragedy.
‘If you’re going to build a Snowman, kid, I’ve got some realistic parts you can use…’
To its credit, there is mention of Victor’s early experiments in the vein of the alchemists, and it’s a welcome change to see him portrayed as such a young man. Sure, Vitali pouts at times like a petulant child, but it’s a far more authentic take on the character in that respect than the many other screen versions, where he is inevitably portrayed as middle-aged or older.
The film turned up recently as ‘Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein’ (2015), a spoof version, where a new and entirely fictional story unfolds in a rushed commentary supposedly recorded by the original filmmakers that plays over the old footage. Veteran Clu Gualger (the Sheriff on ‘The Virginian’ in the 1960s) was the voice of the director, Zack Norman (‘Romancing the Stone’ (1981)) the screenwriter and, rather brilliantly, Leon Vitali returned to play ‘himself.’ All very post-modern, and, it has to be said, a far more interesting idea than anything that ended up in the original film.
Despite its highly laudable attempts at fidelity to the novel, it’s really not surprising that this version of Mary Shelley’s classic has slipped through the cracks over the years. Not the worst adaptation you will ever see, but far from the best.
Mark David Welsh 