
It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

After the massive success of 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola produced, but opted not to direct a spiritual sequel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The original screenplay, by one-and-done screenwriter Steph Lady, was given a second draft by Frank Darabont. Both writers described their original script as filled with subtlety and quiet moments, and it was considered the closest adaptation to Shelley’s original novel to be brought to film in nearly a century of different interpretations.
Enter Kenneth Branagh.
Branagh was a rising star of the British stage and screen, having trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He spent the better part of the Eighties acting and directing for the stage, with a highlight being his performance as Hamlet, where he was compared to Olivier, Gielgud, and Guinness (both positively and negatively). Before taking on the job of directing and starring in Frankenstein, he had directed and starred in four previous films, Shakespeare’s war drama Henry V (1989), the neo-noir Dead Again (1991), the contemporary Big Chill-like comedy Peter’s Friends (1992), and a return to Shakespeare with Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Each film garnered awards and praise and he was in a relationship with his leading lady, Emma Thompson, who was originally cast as Elizabeth before bowing out to take another role more suited for her.
This allowed for the casting of Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth and broke up Branagh and Thompson’s marriage, after he and Bonham Carter had an affair while filming.
Anyway..

Perhaps inspired by the emotional Romantic excess of the time when the novel was written (I would be surprised if Branagh hadn’t been a little influenced by Ken Russell’s Gothic), Branagh’s direction is bombastic and operatic, in much the same way Coppola’s Dracula had been. There are sweeping landscapes and massive sets, a powerful music score, and a bevy of the most talented actors working at the time. Branagh continued his tradition of leading the film, casting himself as Victor Frankenstein.
Helena Bonham Carter plays his adopted sister/fiancé Elizabeth, Ian Holm was cast as his father, Tom Hulce plays his school friend Henry Clerval, and Robert De Niro took on the laborious role of The Creature. Monty Python’s John Cleese also plays a dramatic role as Victor’s mentor Professor Waldman and Richard Briers appears as the elderly blind man who traditionally befriends the Creature. Nearly every secondary role is filled with British television, film, and stage performers who will have you pausing the film repeatedly to try to figure out where you’ve seen them before (probably in the Harry Potter films, to be honest).
However, when the film was finished and Branagh showed it to Coppola, he kind of hated it, requesting at least half of the first hour of the film be cut down or out entirely. Branagh refused to cut anything and a legend was born. Both writers, Lady and Darabont, are also on record as hating what Branagh did to their script, with Darabont (in an interview with the now-defunct Creativescreenwriting.com) accusing the film of having “no patience for subtlety… no patience for quiet moments… no patience period. It’s big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn.”

Audiences and critics seemed to feel the same way, with its domestic box office crashing and burning at $22 million on a $45 million budget and most reviews lambasting the film for its over-the-top performances and Branagh’s penchant for removing his shirt onscreen. In fact, the dominant critical narrative about the film tends to focus on Branagh’s arrogance as the source of all the problems. The international box office was more forgiving, however, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ended its run with a $112 million haul – which was unfortunately still just over half of what Bram Stoker’s Dracula had made.
As a first-time viewer, I wasn’t sure what to expect sitting down to see this film that I’d avoided for the past thirty years. Right off the bat, the film is impressive and expansive, opting to retain the novel’s original framing device, set in the frozen Arctic Sea where an ice-locked ship is stranded while trying to find passage to the North Pole. Moments away from mutiny, from out of the snow staggers Victor Frankenstein, on the run from his Creature. The ship’s captain takes him in and he tells his story, beginning all the way back to his childhood.
Whether or not this is necessary for the film’s narrative is the question. It does establish in great detail the central relationships that shape the unfolding story, Victor’s with his mother and with his adopted sister, Elizabeth (and to a lesser extent, the family serving girl, Justine). That said, Coppola was right in that it could have been trimmed and tightened. Branagh’s decision to reject the novel’s representation of Victor for his own is probably the main creative choice that puts people off.
At least straight white men, it seems.

Rather than being melancholic and neglecting his health and wardrobe, Branagh plays Victor more like an idealized golden Apollonian hero, corrupted by his more Dionysian impulses. He’s larger than life, nearly shouting his lines as much as speaking. He’s tan and fit and not averse to throwing his shirt off and displaying his physique (It’s one of the reasons Dr. Girlfriend watched the film in the first place back when it originally hit video and she was in her early twenties). It’s one of the most emphatic criticisms made by the majority of male critics I’ve watched and read preparing for this review.
To paraphrase one of Branagh’s most notable roles, the cis men doth protest too much, methinks.
Although to be fair, the scene where shirtless Victor and the naked Creature slip and slide in gallons of amniotic fluid (actually liquid gelatin) after his birth, trying to get to their feet, draping all over each other, and showing a lot of De Niro butt, could have been shortened. It goes on for so long that it becomes comical before suddenly ending with an abrupt burst of violence that also unintentionally leads to laughs. But part of the reasoning for this decision is to ground with no uncertainty, the contrast between Victor and his Creation. They are light and darkness, but at the same time, there are shadows in the light and glimmers of light in the dark.

The majority of the violence in the film is brutal and bloody, sometimes excessive to the point of shocking the viewer. But it is never gratuitous or glorified. Branagh does a very nice job visualizing the superhuman strength of the Creature. So much so, in fact, that Frankenstein is almost a precursor to the current superhero movie genre, or perhaps drew some inspiration from the almost schizophrenic mood swings of 1990’s Darkman.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s like Branagh took his filmmaking inspiration from one of the Creature’s own lines: “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and a rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” The film indulges in storms of passions, creation and destruction alike. It is understandable why audiences might not want to embrace the near madness of its presentation, especially when at times it veers dangerously close to clichéd camp or even parody.
Luckily, in those moments, Branagh relies on the talents of his cast to keep the narrative on course. Most of that weight falls on the shoulders of De Niro.

Back in the nineties, when I heard that he was playing the Creature, I had my doubts, as this is so far out of his wheelhouse that I just couldn’t see it. But De Niro is able to play both subtle and melodramatic emotion in a way that cements his interpretation as one of the strongest in Frankenstein film history. It’s a pity that so many people dismiss the film to this day, because they are missing out on an iconic performance. Apparently, he studied stroke victims trying to regain their speech in order to believably represent the Creature’s struggle with learning, or maybe remembering, language. This, combined with the miraculous makeup effects, make De Niro’s Creature the most human representation of the character to that date.
Bonham Carter also brings her A-game, especially once the tensions begin ramping and Frankenstein’s whole family is in danger. I mean, the whole “no longer brother and sister, husband and wife” bits are a little on the incesty side, but I guess they’re not blood relations at least. She really shines in the climax of the film after a fast and dirty reanimation, where her severed head is mounted on the recently deceased body of Justine. Emotionally, this is a complicated moment, as Justine had always loved Victor in silence (her character is often played as a sexual object for an amoral Victor in earlier adaptations). Bonham Carter’s physicality and commitment to the role are immediately heartbreaking and her reaction to being placed both physically and emotionally in between Victor and the Creature is a masterclass in practical fire effects and stunts.

Yes, ultimately it’s way over the top, comically so, but it’s a standout memorable moment.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is nowhere near a perfect film, but it does stick closer to the plot and intellectual intent of the novel than any other filmed adaptation. It’s loud and extreme but has depths of emotional resonance that are rare to find in other versions. No character is good or evil, and Darabont’s script combined with Branagh’s direction converge to land squarely in an existentially gray morality that is more satisfying than the usual good vs. evil dialectic.