GOTHIC (1986) The ultimate in longwinded, pretentious boredom This, and The Addiction, are the two movies that usually get named first when people talk about truly pretentious horror movies. Were they more widely seen, they might well be the movies people mention when talking about pretentious movies of any genre. If this movie were a person, everybody would call it a wanker. It's 1816, and Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne), Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson), Percy Shelley (Julian Sands, running around for the whole movie like he's having a bad trip), Doctor Poledouri (Timothy Spall) and Mary's half-sister (Myriam Cyr, sporting enough hair for six Whitesnake videos) are gathering at Byron's remote estate for a night of ghost stories, séances, hallucinations, picking up a guitar and singing hippie ballads, running around naked on the roof during a thunderstorm, and plunging their hands onto nails. Based with presumable crack-whore looseness on a real gathering of these people (which, they say, led to Frankenstein in short order), you'd think all these famed wordsmiths would manage to cobble up something interesting to say. You'd be wrong. Now, this is the movie that convinced me that Gabriel Byrne is the worst actor of our, or any, time. Seeing it again, I'm reminded of exactly why. Byrne tries to look intense and sound profound, says every line like he's trying to be the greatest actor ever giving his best performance ever, and looms above the camera as if director Ken Russell was telling us "Behold! One of the giants of literature!" I am not fooled. Yes, I understand that Byron (whose brain, I seem to remember reading, was one of the most freakishly big on record) is said to have come across as, uh, a bit of a pompous wanker himself. I can appreciate the difference between sincere wankery and "Ooh, let's try to be as big of a wanker as I can!", and Byrne's performance is markedly guilty of the latter. If it seems like I'm overusing the word "wanker", it's only because it's there aren't any other words that do succinctly describe just what's wrong with so much of this movie. It's wank. All the men are closet homosexuals, Julian Sands unsurprisingly the one who's terrified of seeing women with eyes on their breasts, probably afraid they'll see that he's the only guy around not looking at the breasts. A hide-and-go-seek game (Byron keeps a remarkably clean house for a guy who keeps goats in it) is drawn out as if it were meant to be suspenseful, but it's so early in the film, there's nothing to give anything a sense of danger yet. What are these people more spooked by, one of Byron's goats running around the halls, or actually having to listen to their host? Or maybe worse yet, listening to Percy's acid-trip blather about lightning and life, oh please shut up. Maybe Stephen Volk's script might've found a better note with better actors? Maybe, maybe not. Russell's direction basically consists of throwing a sexual slant onto everything he can find, from player pianos to milk-maids. I appreciate the man's zealous commitment to going over the top, but this does not count as substance. I could pour six cans of paint on the south wall of my house, but that wouldn't make it painted, just a mess. If you were hoping to see some of the gremlin on the box cover, he's in this movie for less than one second. Gremlins could only have livened this movie up. As an exercise in wankery, Gothic is without peer, and as such, it might be worth seeing for the curious, or those with a suitcase full of peyote and some time to kill. "Artsy-fartsy" is a term which does not do justice to this movie's reek. Longest goddamn 90 minutes of my life. BACK TO THE G's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE