FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND

(vt Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound)

   Film (1990). Warner Brothers. Dir Roger CORMAN, starring John Hurt, Raul Julia, Bridget Fonda, Nick Brimble, Katherine Rabett, Jason Patric, Michael Hutchence. Screenplay Corman, F.X. Feeney, based on Frankenstein Unbound (1973) by Brian W. ALDISS. 85 mins. Colour.

   This philosophical (about the dangers of the Promethean impulse) TIME-TRAVEL horror/fantasy was the first film directed by Corman for 20 years. A 21st-century scientist (Hurt) is time-warped into 19th-century Switzerland. On one side of Lake Geneva the Byron/Shelley menage is living; on the other the plot of Mary SHELLEY'sFrankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) is being played out. Hurt gets involved with both sets of characters and winds up whisking MONSTER and maker off to an ice-age future for a splattery plot resolution, laced with conservative lectures about the evils of science. Some of the plentiful laughs may be intended, given that Aldiss's playful novel is in part a comedy, though Fonda is ridiculous as the dainty but promiscuous Mary. There are some cheapskate effects, but Raul Julia is good as the madvisionary; the angry-at-the-world FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER (Brimble) comes with impressive details like scarred eyeballs; and the GOTHIC horror set-pieces are directed with unselfconscious panache.

   KN