”Roger Corman`s Frankenstein Unbound” (The title is one of those contractually mandated monstrosities) is a time-travel tale that seems to exist, though quite happily, in a time warp.
The film is the first to be directed in 20 years by Corman, the legendary drive-in auteur of the `50s and `60s whose vigorous, engaging low-budget work has included ”The Little Shop of Horrors,” ”The Masque of the Red Death”
and ”The Wild Angels.”
Corman may have spent the last two decades as a producer but has not lost his edge as a filmmaker. Indeed, ”Frankenstein Unbound” is so personal, both in its ambitious philosophical themes and its abstract, highly chromatic style, that is could fit perfectly into Corman`s filmography of the `60s.
Even the special effects, which depend heavily on obvious matte work, seem frozen at a 1965 moment of pre-”Star Wars” innocence.
Though based on a celebrated science-fiction novel by Brian W. Adliss, the film is very close in form and spirit to Corman`s chilling, underrated 1963 ”X-the Man with the X-Ray Eyes” as a fable of rogue science.
John Hurt is Dr. Joseph Buchanan, a physicist of 2032 whose experimental search for a new weapon has accidentally opened a rift-in the form of a lacy pink cloud-in the time-space continuum.
Accompanied by his computer-voiced sports car (nice vehicles always having been a part of the Corman aesthetic), Buchanan slips back to the early 19th Century, where, in a picturesque village on a Swiss lake, he encounters both Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda, daughter of erstwhile Corman star Peter Fonda) and her aristocratic neighbor, Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia).
Lurking in the woods is a pathetic monster (Nick Brimble), who represents the consequences of callous scientific rationalism.
As always in Corman`s work, the various dramatic tensions-romantic, moral, inter-generational-mount to an apocalyptic conclusion, a cathartic clearing of the game board that then allows the process to begin again.
These passages are filmed with a particular effectiveness in
”Frankenstein Unbound,” thanks to Corman`s unashamed (and highly unfashionable) use of claustrophobic sound stage exteriors and eerie, psychedelic lighting.
”Frankenstein Unbound” does contain a couple of perfunctory, vaguely embarrassed moments of spurting gore, but they are the film`s only concession to the current standards of the horror genre.
Otherwise, this is an amazingly pure piece of personal expression, a reminder (from a fairly unlikely source) that there can be more to American movies than crass commercialism.
”ROGER CORMAN`S FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND”
(STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2
Directed by Roger Corman; written by Corman, F.X. Feeney and Ed Neumeier;
photographed by Armando Nannuzzi; production designed by Enrico Tovaglieri;
produced by Corman, Thom Mount and Kobi Jaeger. A 20th Century Fox release;
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opened Nov. 2 at Chestnut Station and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:36. MPAA rating: R. Violence.
THE CAST
Dr. Joseph Buchanan……………………………………….John Hurt
Dr. Victor Frankenstein…………………………………..Raul Julia
Mary Godwin…………………………………………..Bridget Fonda
The Monster……………………………………………Nick Brimble
Byron…………………………………………………Jason Patric
Shelley…………………………………………..Michael Hutchence