Frankenstein Unbound

Review #2534: Frankenstein Unbound.

Cast: 

John Hurt (Joe Buchanan / The Narrator), Raul Julia (Dr. Victor Frankenstein), Bridget Fonda (Mary Shelley), Nick Brimble (Frankenstein's monster), Catherine Rabett (Elizabeth Lavenza), Jason Patric (Lord Byron), Michael Hutchence (Percy Shelley), Catherine Corman (Justine Moritz), Mickey Knox (General Reade), and Terri Treas (The Voice of Computer) 

Directed by Roger Corman (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, #1042 - War of the Satellites, #1136 - Gas-s-s-s, #1147 - X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, #1186 - A Bucket of Blood, #1423 - The Wild Angels, #1425 - The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, #1674 - Machine-Gun Kelly, #1684 - Creature from the Haunted Sea, #1918 - House of Usher, #2030 - The Trip, #2113 - The Undead, #2211 - The Intruder, #2275 - The Wasp Woman, #2295 - The Pit and the Pendulum, #2434 - The Premature Burial)

Review: 

"I don't know how to exactly sum up my career other than to think of myself as a filmmaker. I've done everything, every thing from being a messenger at Twentieth Century Fox to being a truck driver on location to being a writer, producer, director, distributor, and even a sometime-actor. So, I would say that Tm somebody who has worked in all areas of motion pictures. I would hope that I've contributed something to the American film industry and I've had a great time doing it. I'm not sure that I will be remembered in years to come. But, if I am remembered in film history, it will probably be as a medium- to low-budget producer-director who contributed along the way to giving other people opportunities."

Well, better late than never. Honestly, I wanted to do this film last November, but I just didn't have enough time to truly give the film the attention it deserved, even with the occasion of the film turning 35 years ago. Coincidentally, this month was the 100th anniversary of Roger Corman's birth (having been born on the 5th in 1926 in Detroit). Now, you might wonder, what the hell is Frankenstein Unbound? Well, it was the little-seen swansong of Roger Corman as a director. Sure, he had kept busy as a producer, but he had not directed a movie since the chaotic production of Von Richthofen and Brown (1971). Producer Thom Mount approached him with the idea to get back into directing and after a few years of ballooning budgeting (reported to be $11.5 million for a film distributed by 20th Century Fox in the US/Canada and Warner Bros. for the international market), Corman was there, complete with a $1 million fee. The film is loosely based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Brian Aldiss (whose other noted story that was turned into a film being "Supertoys Last All Summer Long", which served as the basis for A.I. Artificial Intelligence [2001]), for which F. X. Feeney, better known as a freelance journalist was tasked to write the adaptation, although Corman wound up being credited as a co-writer with his input on the script; Edward Neumeier (of RoboCop [1987] fame) apparently contributed to the script but was not credited. The movie was not a success with audiences (according to Aldiss, a screening he went to in London had just six people seeing it), managing to go to the video markets by February after being released in November. While Aldiss apparently was interested enough to want to do a "Dracula Unbound" to where he wrote a script, it never came to pass, and Corman stuck to producing all the way up until 2018. 

It almost pulls it off. As pulpy and as ridiculous as it might look, it really does almost work as a movie worth thinking about on the offbeat path when talking about Frankenstein-adjacent films. I imagine those who saw the Corman movies from three decades prior that freely had fun with the works of Edgar Allen Poe will have a bit of curiosity in seeing what Corman has to offer here...and just wish it all clicked more. So, what's the setting: in the future (insert yell here) of 2031, a scientist has made an energy beam weapon that could destroy an object on a molecular level that he thinks could lead to world peace only to have it cause bad weather and rifts in time. He just happens to be in his state-of-the-art talking sports car when he goes to 1817 and finds a scientist that not only exists along with Mary Shelley but also is totally not similar to him in developing a major scientific breakthrough with dangerous consequences. Of the main focuses, Julia seems to be the only one who is really pulling in an invested performance, having a solemn dignity in his delusions about being one above the rest as a creator that can't reckon with the idea of being wrong. this isn't to complain about Hurt, who is tasked to play an American for whatever reason, although Fonda isn't exactly swimming in praise when you consider that Rabett is meant to be the key force to setup the actual climax (to say nothing of the lack of things to really do for Patric or Michel Hutchence, best known as the singer of the underrated band INXS).

I can't say it is a compromised movie in producer interference, but it just seems to be out of step with really delivering on what it believes it wants to show in the perils of trying to play God in the guise of science. It just feels like a movie out of date despite its strange moments of charm that prove too fleeting for something that meanders far too many times to not earn its runtime (85 minutes). It has a few charming moments, at least; simply put, even goofy schlock is better than self-important slop. Nothing feels all that surprising or particularly involving besides the occasional splotches of gore (to say nothing of the curiously stretched makeup of the monster, which goes better than the lack of material for Brimble to chew on). After a climax of transporting people back to time and killing people off as swiftly as possible, it ends with a bunch of lasers going around to somehow deal with the monster, who then voices the last lines of the film about being "unbound" for whatever reason. And that's the last you see of Corman as a director, a...voice of the unbound as a guy goes to a crappy future looking for a city (speaking of premises that might have been better).  As a whole, Frankenstein Unbound begs to really cut loose in being a film besides the usual trappings of a Frankenstein movie that isn't bound enough in motivations or in energy to really rise to the occasion for entertainment. If you like to see curious last efforts or films that might be a hidden gem in the rough, this might just be up your alley.

 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*I really did want to watch and review it for November 7 to close out 7 Days of The Week After Halloween (2025), but I instead went with the doubleheader Mayhem and Suitable Flesh. So it goes.

Heaven's Gate.

Review #2237: Heaven's Gate.

Cast: 

Kris Kristofferson (Averill), Christopher Walken (Champion), John Hurt (Irvine), Sam Waterston (Canton), Brad Dourif (Mr. Eggleston), Isabelle Huppert (Ella), Joseph Cotten (The Reverend Doctor), Jeff Bridges (John L. Bridges), Geoffrey Lewis (Trapper), Paul Koslo (Mayor Lezak), Richard Masur (Cully), and Terry O'Quinn (Captain Minardi) Written and Directed by Michael Cimino (#1458 - The Deer Hunter) 

Review: 

"I wanted you to feel what it was like to walk down a street in that period: to follow those noisy wagons, to cross all that activity, what you felt, what you heard. People made so much dust; my God, was it dusty! That makes the streets dirty... when hundreds of wagons go around, they raise dust. And very often, we took the time to record the background sound. In the store, for example, we recorded numerous conversations, with the intention of inserting them into the soundtrack later. This isn’t general background noise; you hear people, in a corner, argue over the price of a knife, discuss the merits of a particular rifle... each of those people are engaged in a very specific activity and you hear them."

Believe it or not, I was awaiting the chance to watch this film in the best scenario and presentation possible. No, I was not waiting for this day to come just to deluge you with some spiel about the production of the film being the legacy of the film for years and years. August seemed to be the best time to see if this film truly deserved to be acknowledged as something beyond just being thought of by critics and audiences as a failure. The attention to detail actually shouldn't be surprising considering that Cimino (the Yale graduate in fine arts of painting) was quite familiar with the arts before his filmmaking era had begun. In fact, his cinematographer for this film (Vilmos Zsigmond) equated Cimino's selection and placement of extras (which could be as many as fifty) in particular places for shots to painting to go with doing as many takes as it seemed necessary to get the right one to use for a scene. Let us run down the various versions of the film really quickly: Cimino's first screening was for studio executives in June of 1980 (initially before all of the hubbub happened, United Artists wanted a Christmas 1979 release), which ran for 325 minutes that he felt would only be a little bit longer than the final cut. The November 1980 screenings (which lasted a week and had critics going "the Devil has just come around to collect") saw a 219-minute version cut by Cimino. Five months later, a 149-minute cut came and died in theaters. Cimino would only direct four films (the last being The Sunchaser [1996]) prior to his death in 2016. Both of these versions were released in some form of the days of home media. In 2005, a "restored cut" came out for screenings that was assembled by MGM archivist John Kirk with no involvement from Cimino, who had stated that even the original premiere version wasn't really a "director's cut". Finally, in 2012, a version restored and supervised by Cimino himself that lasts 216 minutes and removes the sepia tint that had been present in every edition (which is one that you can see here); it was screened to apparent applause and ovations that Cimino got to hear for himself (while saying once that he "never needed vindication") before an eventual home media release, with the Criterion release being the one I saw for myself.

From 1889 to 1893, a reported range conflict, now generally referred to as the "Johnson County War" occurred in Wyoming involving county settlers and cattle companies (the Wyoming Stock Growers Association) trying to prosecute who they felt were rustlers that led to a variety of lynchings and deaths, such as Ella Watson and her husband Jim Averell or a murderous gunfight involving Nate Champion. The film utilizes real-life names such as Watson, Averell, Champion and Cannon but is generally fast and loose with actual events (such as the death of one person who actually lived until the 20th century). Cimino had envisioned making a film loosely based on the War since the early 1970s (after being inspired by the history of barbed wire in relation to the Old West), but it was only just before The Deer Hunter (1979) garnered Academy Awards that had United Artists onto the idea of giving him money and carte blanche to do what he wanted in filming (located mostly in Montana and Idaho). The result was a film that had a studio executive write a book detailing the movie in all the grisly details (Final Cut, published in 1999). What I see from this film (set in 1890) is one that tries to thread the needle of being the epic of mythmaking, one that wonders just what really lies beneath the fabric of what we call America (complete with a line musing about it "always was" a danger to be poor in the country). It is a movie all about tragedy in its mosaic that demands plenty from its viewer that is easy to see its qualities and drawbacks that are quite distinct from those who saw it in its "prime". Beneath all of the lush photography (and an edited tint, remember) is a film for those with the patience to gaze at the building tragedy that arises from knowing blood will be spilled on this soil as manifested by the destiny of those to live with people who look and act like themselves. The obsession for perceived perfection by Cimino bleeds out quite evidently in the weirdest of ways. In other words, to get to the climatic sequence of wagons and wood, one must see for themselves a sequence of roller-skating (which is where the title comes from) or plenty of stilted moments of this would-be love triangle. Kristofferson and Walken seem to battle for who dominates the screen best in terms of presence in the trouble of staying with the loyalty they wish to express to both Huppert along with the uncertain frontier (Walken has that certain type of glare and Kristofferson has that facade of trying to seem like a common man). Poor Huppert seems lost in trying to hack it beyond hazy charm when Walken can just waltz into his introduction without losing a step. Hurt gets to play an observer removed from actually being involved with the general plot (because of his hollow character) that is sort of effective in a sea of one-note stuff. Poor Bridges chimes in just as little as one thinks by the time of the halfway point, while Waterston seemingly is one really good scene away from being the true presence of soulless manifest the film seems to think he is. The film gives one a hazy outline to basically use their imagination in trying to make one see themselves in these folks that are not merely outsiders, which is only somewhat successful. Its battle sequence at the end makes for a poignant hollow victory for all involved, one where the blood will stay on the soil long after all involved have shuffled off the coil that is considered "settled" to go with that last scene of an older and, well, settled lead presence in the privilege that comes with compliance. I can't call it a great movie because really it is just a bit too bloated to really rise to greatness (although being close to sprawling flawed films like Dances with Wolves is not a bad thing), but I think it is pretty obviously a movie worth checking out to see for oneself (while paying attention, naturally) to assess where it ranks in the pantheon of tragic Westerns and mythmaking as a whole.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Hello folks. As you can see, we have another August upon us, which means a theme month once again.

2021: "Anniversary in August"

2022: "Action in August"

2023: "Around the World in August"

The theme for 2024 is "Acknowledged in August", which will cover films that were either lambasted or forgotten by critics or audiences at the time of release in an attempt to see if, well, they deserve to be acknowledged for possibly worth having a cult following. What better way to start than with a film trashed to hell and back in Heaven's Gate? From Michael Cimino to Robert Altman, we will cover some films that may or may not be "something to acknowledge". There will be a few new releases covered alongside the Acknowledged stuff this month, as evidenced by the next review: Trap.

Movie Night: Alien.

Review #530: Alien.

Cast
Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), Yaphet Kotto (Parker), and Bolaji Badejo (The Alien) Directed by Ridley Scott (#100 - Blade Runner)

Review

Alien has its shares of influences such as (#519) The Thing from Another World or (#331) It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but beneath all that is a wonderfully dark masterpiece. The set design by Ron Cobb and Chris Foss is really well done, it doesn't distract from the movie, but it is wonderful. The alien (and other accompanying elements) by H. R. Giger works so well because the design doesn't look like a suit for somebody to be in, it's a big and long suit that is so unconventional and yet so cool looking. Ridley Scott does a good job directing, his best decision in this film is not showing all of the Alien throughout most of the film, which keeps the suspense and terror of the Alien intact. The actors (insert your John Hurt as the War Doctor reference here, which I won't do out of choice in the name of peace and sanity...oops.) are well suited for a film like this, especially Sigourney Weaver, who certainly can act with terror all around her. Even Bolaji Badejo does a good job, his movements of the Alien from inside the suit are more natural looking and menacing. This is a tense and effective horror film that would later have three sequels and a...film in the same universe as Alien but not a prequel. Whatever the case, Alien is still a terror to behold 35 years later.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Review #302: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Cast
Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones), Cate Blanchett (Irina Spalko), Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood), Shia LaBeouf (Mutt Williams), Ray Winstone (George "Mac" Michale), John Hurt (Professor Oxley), Jim Broadbent (Dean Charles Stanforth), and Igor Jijikine (Dovchenko) Directed by Steven Spielberg (#126 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, #168 - Raiders of the Lost Ark, #169 - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and #170 - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

Review

REVISED: Rating now 7/10 (June 30, 2023)

When I first reviewed the Indiana Jones films, I actually considered watching this film, having four films all reviewed together. And yet there was some sort of opposition to the thought of watching this, so I relented and didn't review it. But guess what? I've decided to review this anyway to either bring the (so-called) level of happiness from the big milestone yesterday or to just finish the (possibly) the final chapter of the Indiana Jones franchise. So how is it? Well...Let's get to the pros and cons first. Harrison Ford does his best, once again having a good performance, 19 years removed from the character but still a good one. As such, the film decides to segue into the 1950s (Indy couldn't always fight the same kind of enemy, so I'll give this a small praise), and it works in some ways...and not in others. And then there's Shia LaBeouf. He is...Not very developed, unless you count "Indy's son", "Guy with jacket", "So called rebel" as development. Perhaps they meant to make it a parallel to Last Crusade, with the old father and young son working together, but it doesn't work as well, as LaBeouf doesn't connect well with Ford.

I do like Cate Blanchett as the villain, she is far different from the other villains in previous installments, but she gives a strange unrecognizable allure that works for the most part. What I don't care for is the character of Mac (though played decently by Ray Winstone), and his "triple-agent" outline. It's pointless and not very useful. The rest of the acting and characters are alright. Allen returns to the role of Ravenwood after 27 years, and she does a fine job, even though I wish the dialogue between Ford and Allen would've had more time to develop, as it is as good as the two were in 1981. The action is mildly decent, having some enjoyment. And then there is the rest of the film. First off, there's the Fridge scene. While it does raise questions on how you could escape an explosion with a fridge, think back to when Indy escaped death by jumping off a plane with a raft and landing on a mountain side along with falling off the side and landing into a river. That sounds a bit more unrealistic, though the other questions don't escape this film. Such as why the sudden plot explosion after Mutt is introduced? Why the reveal of the beings (that I won't spoil) to begin with? Why do they look weird and not trying to resemble the era they're from to begin with? Why is Mutt even in here? Why is there no Sallah? Why is not as recognizable as the other three? That question I can answer. Because while it tries to capture the spirit of the trilogy, it stumbles in some ways even with some slight advantages to make an uneven disappointment.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Watership Down.

Review #300: Watership Down.

Cast

John Hurt (Hazel), Richard Briers (Fiver), Michael Graham Cox (Bigwig), John Bennett (Captain Holly), Ralph Richardson (Threarah), Simon Cadell (Blackberry), Terence Rigby (Silver), Roy Kinnear (Pipkin), Richard O'Callaghan (Dandelion), Denholm Elliott (Cowslip), Zero Mostel (Kehaar), and Harry Andrews (General Woundwort) Directed by Martin Rosen.

Review

To begin with, Watership Down is based off the novel of the same name by Richard Adams. (Reviewing films based off novels being very familiar to me already) I do wonder if there is anyone who heard their were rabbits and hills and then saw the film and realized...it was a film far from imagined and yet excellent nonetheless. The acting is good, it sounds urgent, with the lines (for me anyways) giving a sense of importance with some of the lines, which is excellent, with the acting especially by Hurt, Briers, Andrews, and Mostel being the standouts in this film. The animation is top notch, looking beautiful and dark at times. But the main thing here is its story. It is masterfully well told, with dark elements that while being tear inducing (for some people, though let me say that this does not hurt the film), is not savage (or bright) in its way of telling a story, it has fine action and a good story to make a really good film, rabbits, tears, reviews and all. Speaking of that, thank you for reading the 300th Review of Movie Night. I thank anyone who is reading this right now and I thank anyone who has helped at all in any way possible. I hope for a whole lot more reviews. Happy 300.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.