October is here! Halloween is around the corner! And in an effort to make up for the slow stream of posts the last few months, we'll try to pick things up for October. Starting today with Frankenstein Unbound.
This Roger Corman outing came after a roughly 20 year hiatus, and has been his last since. And While there's a lot I wanted to love about this, and I won't say this often...but I just didn't get it! Not like I didn't understand what was happening, and I've watched plenty of turds with looser plots, but within those films for the most part, I understood why characters did what they did. Not so much here. Maybe this is one of those movies you have to like when you saw it at 10 to still like it as an adult. I really am torn, because this should be right up my alley. Time Travel? Check. Monsters? Check. Lasers? Super check.
The book Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorites, and if you haven't read it, please do. I'm sure it's nothing like you think it is if the 1931 Universal film is your only gauge. But anyways, Frankenstein Unbound, also loosely based on a novel on the same name
, is in a way, doing what Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did a few years back. We meet Dr. Buchanan (John Hurt) a scientist in the future doing weapons research that causes time riff, warp hole stuff science, who inadvertently gets sent back in time with his Kitt-like super car to the 1800s. Here, and settling in quite nicely, he meets not only the real Dr. Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and his monster, but Mary Shelly (Bridget Fonda). This suggests that the events in her book are based on true events!
So again, anyways, back to what I was saying before, the characters here act super strangely, wherein a normal person from the 1800's mind might literally erupt and bleed out their eye sockets and other orifices at seeing Hurt's talking super car, Fonda as Shelly takes a nice Sunday drive and seems pretty comfortable with her brains where they are. And the end with the lasers and the clapper. It's weird I guess somehow these things just are as they are, no explanations.
It does take some good cues from the original Frankenstein novel though I haven't read Frankenstein Unbound. Like I said before, think PP&Z but with Frankenstein and I dunno, Time Cop? Not really, but you get the idea. It gets pretty wacky crazy at the end, and if you're looking for a different take on the Frankenstein story, I'd say give it a go. It's silly, it's kind of fun, and maybe there's nothing to "get" like I complained about earlier, but I can think of better time travel/monster/laser movies.
Check it out on Netflix or or get it from Amazon
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