Frankenstein (David Wickes, 1992)

The Gothic horror tradition in both film and literature can ultimately trace, if not its genesis, then its apotheosis back to that legendary storm-wracked three day weekender on the shores of Lake Geneva at the Villa Diodati in the haunted summer of 1816 when the legendary 'Mad, Bad and Dangerous' George Gordon, Lord Byron gathered together the elements of himself, his fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's soon to be wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Byron's personal physician Dr John Polidori - and together they infused the spark of undying life into the nascent Gothic genre.

The horror movie's debt to literature was recognised in James Whale's seminal 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, which opened with a prologue set at the Villa (recast as the standard Universal Horror storm-lashed turret upon a craggy peak) with Mary (Elsa Lanchester) recounting her tale to Byron (Gavin Gordon) and Shelley (Douglas Walton), a scenario fully fleshed out on film by Ken Russell in Gothic (1986) - a superlative filmic fictionalisation of the epoch-making events of that eventful evening.

There have of course been many filmed versions of Frankenstein, from the Edison Company's silent 1910 short to the Boris Karloff-starring 1931 Universal Pictures classic and its many sequels, through the Eastmancolour Gothic chills of the Hammer horrors of the 1950s through to the '70s.  In the early 1990s a few Frankenstein films emerged blinking into the light including Roger Corman's 1990 Frankenstein Unbound and Kenneth Branagh's much-trumpeted lavish 1994 rendition that proclaimed itself to be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  Betwixt the twain nestled a largely ignored made for cable television movie directed by David Wickes, who had previously helmed the 1988 Michael Caine miniseries Jack the Ripper - noted for Armand Assante's scene stealing turn as Victorian thespian Richard Mansfield performing his famed transformation from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde - and had cast Caine again two years later in the titular role(s) of 1990's Jekyll & Hyde.

Beginning, as some adaptations do, in the book-accurate preamble setting of the wild and savage frozen North we open with a wild sled-chase across the ice as creator and creation pursue each other in a frenzy of destruction before encountering the pack ice-stranded ship of Captain Walton (Roger Bizley).  There, the rescued human contingent begins to unfold his tale in flashback to the University of Ingolstadt where the young Dr Victor Frankenstein (Patrick Bergin, who just the year before had starred as Robin Hood in a film my schoolboy self far preferred over the contemporaneous adventures of Kevin Costner's incarnation of said merry man) goes unrecognised by the chancellor (oh look, it's Vernon Dobtchef!) for his work in the field of anatomical medicine as the school prize goes to a theological professor for his feats in the field of the imaginary.

Ingolstadt is in the midst of a cholera epidemic, and Victor is berated by his friend Henry Clerval (Lambert Wilson, in a performance so wet as lettuce it's hard to imagine he screen tested for James Bond) for putting himself at risk by working to help the sick - you know, being a doctor.  They didn't have any Personal Protection Equipment back then, you see (topical!).  Victor takes Henry back to his lab, and shows him how he is trying to make life in the time of cholera - his lab contains cages filled with grotesque animal hybrids such as a snake with a cat's head and a rabbit's head upon the body and quills of a fretful porcupine, like creatures from a mediaeval bestiary made manifest in stitched-together flesh.  This of course - this being the early 1800s - brings Clerval out in a religious terror of foaming "You're not God!" proclamations.  Good thing, then, that he leaves the premises before Frankenstein unveils his ultimate creation, floating in a tank of primordial ooze (a vivarium vitae) like a monstrous embryo is a man that he has created in his on image and from his own very essence.

Of course, it's the same old story: the experiment goes awry and the newborn creature flees out in to the night of this strange new world abandoned and alone as the ill Frankenstein is taken home by Clerval to the arms of his beloved Elizabeth (Fiona Gillies).  As Victor recovers his health and wits in the care of his beloved and his family, the creature (Randy Quaid, in his intermediate period between being Cousin Eddie from the National Lampoon's Vacation movies and being an actual full-on mentalist) wanders in the wilderness harassed and hounded by humanity.  In a nice reversal of the classic "drowned little girl" (better known as "the flower that wouldn't float") scene from the Karloff classic, the monster actually dives into the water and rescues a drowning young girl called Amy (played by Quaid's real-life daughter Amanda) but is then shot and wounded by hunters and left be swept away down the river rapids.

A neat innovation of this adaptation is taking the "two sides of the same person" notion of the doctor and the daemon hinted at by previous films and making it literal - there is a real connection between Frankenstein and his monster, Victor feeling the pain whenever his progeny is hurt.  The standard meeting with the blind man De Lacey (Sir John Mills, who found out that he himself was going blind at around the time of filming) occurs, with some genuinely moving interactions between the old man and the sea creature as they help each other and the monster learns speech, only to be driven off again into solitude by the hunters (and neither of them even has the decency to be played by John Carradine).  The connection betwixt the twain drawing them together like magnets, it isn't long before creation finds the home of creator and begins his furious revenge, killing first a more aged-up than usual William Frankenstein (Timothy Stark, in his twenties at time of filming) - Victor's younger brother - then then father Alphonse (Ronald Leigh-Hunt in his final film role), Clerval and last of all Elizabeth.

Just as vengeance-consumed as his rage-filled genespawn, Frankenstein begins his pursuit vowing to follow the creature to the ends of the Earth if necessary in order to destroy him (sadly without a Feyd Rautha style "I WILL KILL HIM!", but close enough) which brings us back, back to our beginnings upon the icebound boat where Frankenstein father and son have their final confrontation.  Responding to the anguished cry of "Help me!" from the monster, Victor vows to help the both of them and then crashes into the bulky behemoth and throws both of them into the frozen Arctic beneath the cracking ice sheet and angel down they go together: two halves of of one man entwined, he dies twice in the ice.

Imperfect - as all adaptations are - this is an interesting version of the oft-told tale (with an interesting cast, including as the Arctic ship's boatswain the late Michael Gothard in his last role) that i'd recommend to anyone who's a fan of the original story and might be seeking out a version they haven't yet seen.