Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Year of release : 1994
Run time : 2h3m
Genre : Sci Fi / Gothic / Horror
Cast : Robert De Niro, Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh, Ian Holm, Aidan Quinn, John Cleese
The movie,directed by Kenneth Branagh, who plays Victor Frankenstein, is based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein".
The year is 1794, and ambitious captain Walton (looking very young in this adaptation, unlike the 2004 Hallmark series, in which he's an old man) is leading an expedition to the North Pole. The ship is trapped in ice, and the second in command is advising him to turn back ,but he refuses for "they'll chop their way to the North Pole if they have to".Crazier words have never been spoken.
They hear a howling, which make the dogs run for the sound, but they are all k1lled. A man appears from the mist, asking them to get their weapons and follow him, but the captain refuses.
The men think maybe the devil came for the captain or the man who's with the captain.
The man they brought on board tells the captain how he got there, and he realizes the captain has the same need inside him to be the first, to discover something nobody did before him, so his name will live forever. The man calls it madness.
The man identifies himself as Victor Frankenstein, and starts to tell him his life story.
Victor lived a happy life with his family.His parents, who loved each other, adopted an orphan girl, who's parents died from scarlet fever.
Years later, the two are inseparable, and Victor's mother is pregnant with his brother. But she dies in child birth.
Victor becomes obsessed with finding a cure for death, as he says nobody needs to die.
His father holds a ball on his graduation, before he leaves for Germany. He's asking Elizabeth to go with him, but she refuses. His father gives him a gift from his mother, a journal in which to write about his discoveries.
At the university, he annoys his teachers with his ideas, but finds a confident in professor Waldman who might have tried the same thing he is attempting before him. He also finds a friend, Henry, who although finds sick people "revolting" and faints during autopsies, wants to be a doctor too.
After his professor is stabb3d by a man who was afraid of vaccination, Victor takes the body of the k1ller who was hanged for his deed, and the brain of his professor, and creates a new man.
He realizes in order to give life he needs amniotic fluid, so he buys a lot of it.
While he's working on his experiment, there's a cholera outbreak (the reason for the vaccination), the city he's in being quarantined, and Elizabeth with Henry come to take him home, but he refuses to go.
His experiment seems to be a success, but Victor thinks the man he created died, when he is trapped by some chains and his head is hit by some large buckets. He puts his journal in his cloak wanting to destroy it. He goes to sleep, and when he awakes, he is scared by the creature he created. So he runs away. The creature takes his cloak, and leaves.
The creature sleeps on the street and eats garbage, and steals a bread. The people of the town chase him,thinking he's the one spreading the cholera. He manages to flee the town through the place they throw the garbage, jumping into a carriage carrying corpses, and reaches the country. There, he takes shelter in a family's barn, and learns how to read and write seeing the parents teaching their kids. Helping them with the work they have on the land, the family think he is the Spirit of the Forest, and leave food outside for him.
Victor proposed to Elizabeth, and they can finally go back home, as the quarantine has been lifted. He intends to take over his father's practice.
Things don't go as planned, as the creature finds his journal and reads it,vowing vengeance.
I personally didn't like the movie. I don't know why it's called Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, because the movie is not like the novel. Victor and Elizabeth also talk to each other the way I doubt people who are not married would have, at the time.
I did like the Frankenstein mansion and the clothes. And the things they came up with for his experiment to be a success.
The acting wasn't as good as the one in the 2004 Hallmark series. In this movie most actors seemed to be smiling all the time instead of being serious. I don't know why Frankenstein is seen by Hollywood as such a happy story.
I think the soundtrack was fine.
The visual effects were good.
The movie was produced by Francis Ford Coppola's production company American Zoetrope. Coppola wanted Robert de Niro to play the creature. Actors like Gerard Depardieu and Andy Garcia were considered!
The movie received mixed reviews with a 42% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and grossed 112 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 45 million.
Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B-.
The movie has a video game released in 1994 (!) and a themed pinball machine released in 1995.
Rating : Could have been a contender!