FRANKENSTEIN (1984)
How NOT to make a Frankenstein movie

  Shot on video, made for Showtime, I would never have gone out of my way to rent this movie if it didn't have the irresistible hook of having David Warner play the Creature, which I'm sure sounded like a good idea at the time.  But even Warner can't save this one; for that matter, he's one of its bigger handicaps.

Easily the most boring adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel I've ever seen, this movie gives us Robert Powell as Victor Frankenstein, looking a bit like a younger Peter Cushing but displaying not a whit of what made Cushing cool.  It's also the most pared-down adaptation I can think of, really bare-bones stuff, starting out with Frankenstein just on the verge of creating his Creature.  This Creature is simply one dead body with somebody else's live brain.  Anyway, you know the story; Creature comes to life, just wants to be loved, is rejected by everybody, and makes life difficult for Frankenstein and his loved ones.

Carrie Fisher plays Elizabeth, and while her English accent isn't as bad as I'd feared, she does sing in one scene which will give you an idea of just why the Star Wars 1978 Holiday Special is so revered by aficionados of the awful.  Terence Alexander plays Henry Clerval, not like he gets to do anything, and for a brief while, Sir John Gielgud drags this affair kicking and screaming out of the suck swamp with his warm portrayal of the blind backwoods man who befriends the Creature.

The "You created me, you must be God!" "I am not God!" thing is REALLY beaten over your head in this one, most of it worsened further by Warner's performance, where he piles on the pathos like nacho cheese on a corn chip.  There isn't a single rush of suspense or excitement throughout the whole thing, just some nice scenery (filmed at the Ripley Castle) and a likeable performance from Gielgud.  And I wish people who are shooting things on video would learn to never, ever use pyro.  EVER.

If this movie serves no other purpose, it surely must serve to get the detractors of Branagh's Frankenstein movie to admit that it wasn't that bad; it might've been pretentious, but it wasn't stuffy, boring AND pretentious.  See only if you're a die-hard Frankenstein completist who has to see the bottom of the barrel with your own eyes.

Directed by James Ormerod, a British TV director who never directed anything again.  Hell of a way to go out.

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