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| Courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
“Pope of Pop Cinema” Roger Corman is
regarded as the grandfather of low budget independent cinema, having generated
numerous films throughout his career as well as formulating New World Pictures
and having mentored a number of budding film directors including but limited to
Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James
Cameron and many, many more.
He was also instrumental in launching
the careers of many actors such as Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper,
Sylvester Stallone and William Shatner.
Though often an exploitation filmmaker himself, often directing Edgar
Allen Poe adaptations with Vincent Price such as The Pit and the Pendelum as
well as the original Little Shop of Horrors, Corman’s widespread
influence can be felt in every corner of the independent as well as the
mainstream Hollywood film worlds.
While a prolific film director, Corman
admittedly preferred producing to actual directing and took a backseat to
making his own features for nearly three decades, his last official film being Von
Richthofen and Brown. Though heavily
involved in film production of movies made for theaters and television, usually
low budget grindhouse fare, Mr. Corman’s director’s chair began collecting dust
until producer Thom Mount approached him at the tail end of the 1980s with a
directing job.
The project in question turned out to
be the first film adaptation of one of renowned science-fiction novelist Brian
Aldiss’ works, Frankenstein Unbound.
A weird science-fiction/horror hybrid that’s at once futuristic, historical
and strangely meta, this is at once the umpteenth take on Mary Shelley’s iconic
Frankenstein while also probably being the craziest one yet attempted, rivaling
the insanity of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein. Not quite what Aldiss intended but most
certainly becoming of its influential B-movie producing guru.
In a post-apocalyptic future of Los
Angeles, 2031, a nuclear scientist named Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) who develops
a weapon that can implode objects with a laser beam is whisked away by a rift
in the spacetime continuum which transports him back into Switzerland 1816. With his talking electric car as his only
companion, as he explores the terrain he runs into young author Mary Shelley
(Bridget Fonda) in the midst of writing her legendary novel Frankenstein.
Treading similar ground as Ken Russell’s Gothic,
at first it seems like an investigation into the Villa Diodati meeting that spawned
Shelley’s iconic tale of a man being created out of dead body parts. But not long after meeting Lord Byron (Jason
Patric) and Percy Shelley (INXS frontman Michael Hutchence), Dr. Buchanan bumps
into none other than the presently-being-written-about Dr. Frankenstein (Raul
Julia) and his creature (Nick Brimble) begging for the Dr. to make him a mate.
In literary form, the coexistence of
Mary Shelley and her literary creations in the same universe was intended as a
razor-sharp deconstruction and deeper investigation into the Frankenstein lore
and mythos while also channeling H.G. Wells and a hint of Jules Verne in terms of
classical science-fiction lore. In
Corman’s hands, however, whatever allegorical contexts intended by Aldiss are
bulldozed over here in favor of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink level of
bonkers madness that doesn’t really work as narrative storytelling but is every
bit as unpredictably crazy and outright wacky as his legendary Little Shop
of Horrors.
Boasting an overqualified cast stuck
with what feels like deliberately cornball dialogue, the most infamous lines of
which come from Bridget Fonda’s horny Mary Shelley smitten with her new guest
from the future, Frankenstein Unbound is what happens when you slate
visionary intellectual science-fiction to someone who is clearly the classroom
clown who mostly knows the answers but is more interested in amusing the
students making armpit fart noises. With
tacky blue-screen visual effects, plastic looking sets and and cheap costumes,
you almost feel for the distinguished cast members trapped in what is ostensibly
the artistic equivalent of Corman’s own Death Race 2000.
A Frankenstein-monster of sorts in and
of itself, mixing disparate subgenres together aiming to be Mary Shelley’s Back
to the Future while ultimately being a Bill and Ted movie, Corman’s Frankenstein
Unbound is a blender of a movie, mixed together whether it’s digestible or
not. A bit of a shame as Hurt and Julia
give mostly serviceable performances and the creature makeup for the monster
itself gets the job done. To the film’s
credit it does follow the chronology of the original novel’s ending (with some
laser beams and colored lights thrown in too cause, hey, why not?), but
otherwise Aldiss’ brilliant rethinking of Shelley’s text is ignored in favor of
jumping as many rails as it can in this frankly goofball mess.
This wound up being Corman’s final film
as a director and despite an $11 million budget, the film took in a meager $335,000,
abysmal for the money involved. Aldiss
himself remarked he saw it when the film came out and spotted only six other
attendees besides himself. As of current
the film is pretty much completely forgotten and is rarely discussed even among Corman die-hards.
Looking at it now however, it does fit nicely alongside such fare as his
70s exploitation flicks ala Death Race 2000, Forbidden World and Galaxy
of Terror where the quality of the blue-screen matting effects, clunky
dialogue and cheap sets/costumes didn’t seem to matter to your enjoyment of it
as pure trash. Frankenstein Unbound isn’t
what Aldiss set out to convey, but it is most certainly a B-movie trashterpiece
made by the man who arguably singlehandedly invented the subgenre.
--Andrew Kotwicki
