In 2031, scientist Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) makes a weapon that has the side effect of ripping holes in reality which may lead to other times or other universes. Buchanan is pulled through one of these tears to what appears to be the 1830s, where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and his monster (Nick Brimble). Buchanan attempts to stop the tragedies in the novel Frankenstein from playing out, turning to Mary Godwin (Bridget Fonda), later named Mary Shelly, who wrote the novel, in hopes that her knowledge of events will help him change things.
A good rule for filmmaking: if you can’t do it right, with excellent acting, witty dialog, top shelf production values, and exquisite camera work, then do it different. If something is strange enough, it’s hard to notice if parts aren’t working. More than not notice, it sometimes becomes meaningless to say that those parts aren’t working. Should that character be speaking the wrong language and reacting to world-shaking situations as if they are drinking a mint julep? Who can tell?
B-movie mogul Roger Corman (The Raven, The Terror, X, The Masque of the Red Death) demonstrates his understanding of the rule by tossing a schlock sci-fi story into a gothic horror tale, casting the leads against type, and presenting it all as a philosophical treatise. The effect is quite jarring. Returning to the director’s chair after a twelve year absence, Corman abandons his past exploitation methodology in favor of intellectual chic. There’s a bit of the old Corman with limbs and hearts ripped out in showers of gore, but gone are the well endowed maids with substantial cleavage. Instead, there is a liberated Mary Godwin, and the poets Byron (Jason Patric three years after The Lost Boys) and Shelley (Michael Hutchence from the band INXS), who appear as drug-addled Californian club-hoppers. Don’t take that as a complaint. In this film, nineteenth century drug-addled Californian club-hopping poets work just fine.
John Hurt (Alien, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Hellboy) is an unlikely action hero, but then, this is an unlikely movie. He’s an even more unlikely “every man,” but he pulls off the combination role.
Between makeup and acting, Nick Brimble makes one of the better Frankenstein’s Monsters. There’s the proper amount of violence and pathos in him. Plus, the stitches in his eyes are particularly gruesome.
I enjoyed Raul Julia and Bridget Fonda, but I can’t say if their performances are good as their characters have little connection to actual humans. Neither Godwin nor Frankenstein bat an eye at Buchanan’s talking car and the latter doesn’t question his near supernatural knowledge. But this fits the movie perfectly. Sure, real people would go into hysterics if they lived through the events in the film, but I’ve seen that a hundred times, and it is generally pretty dull. Every once in a while, it’s enjoyable to see some unreal people take the changing universe in stride. Since I can’t guess what universe they are in (or if the universe makes any sense now that Buchanan’s experiments have made it “unbound”), these bizarrely calm renditions of semi-humans might be right on the money.
Frankenstein Unbound is a fast-paced, quirky entry into the overstuffed fraternity of movies based loosely on Mary Shelley’s book. It whips along quickly enough to be over before you spend too much time questioning why everyone is acting so strangely, and leaves you with just enough to think about to make you feel that maybe it had some of the depth it pretends to have. It may not be great, but it isn’t boring.