Customer Reviews

Frankenstein: The True Story [Import]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Frankenstein : the true story
well
not really
they did come close
but
it's still a great movie
not bad for tv

This DVD was Originally shown on television as a miniseries... it's one of the best re-telling of Frankenstein put to film.

First off, let's correct the usual misapprehension about this film: it is NOT a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel. In fact, it is far, far from it. (Don't critics ever actually READ any of the books that become films?) Frankenstein: The True Story came out in the early 1970s, an era (possibly inspired by the JFK assassination theories and Watergate) when people were big on questioning the truth behind generally accepted stories. Conspiracy theories abounded, and there were many stories and articles at the time which told revised accounts of fictional characters. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, for example. Frankenstein: The True Story follows in that vein of literary "expose." "Forget Shelley's novel," it seems to say. "Here is how it REALLY happened..."

What the film really is is a mish-mash of Hammer (and a few Universal) ideas overlaid with fine Victorian melodrama and a homosexual subtext. And it is EXCELLENT!

The film has the over-all look and feel of a Hammer film, set in early 1800s England.
Hammer fans will have fun spotting the references: the older scientist with the damaged hands depending on colleagues to perform his surgery for him (as in Frankenstein Created Woman and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell) and blackmails a young couple into helping him (as in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed), the creature who begins life as beautiful but degenerates into a monster (as in The Revenge of Frankenstein), the troublesome meddler who gets locked into a confined space with the murderous creature (as in The Curse of Frankenstein), the Creature's crashing of the society ball (Revenge again), the attempt to lay the Creature to rest in an acid bath (as in The Horror of Frankenstein), the use of hypnosis (as in The Evil of Frankenstein), etc., etc.

The DVD is a bare-bones release, so sadly, there are no interviews with surviving cast and crew or even the theatrical trailer from the film's European release. You get the film and only the film as it was originally televised (including the half-way chapter break). But what a film! I was a mere lad of 12 when I first saw the television broadcast of this event, and I'm excited to say that it lives up to my memory of it. The acting, by a cast of seasoned pros, is uniformly excellent. The screenplay, by Christopher Isherwood (yes, the same Christopher Isherwood whose writings were the basis and inspiration for the play and film versions of Cabaret) and Don Bacardy, is intelligent and suspenseful. And the production values are of a standard rarely seen in television before or since.

If you want a more faithful adaptation of the original Shelley novel, check out the dreadfully wooden THE TERROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, the fabulous HBO version with Patrick Bergen and Randy Quaid, or the more recent one with Alec Newman. But for the thrills and excitement of an era when actual films were made for television, this compendium of Hammer's best ideas can't be beat!