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List Price: $9.95
Features
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• NTSC
In Theaters : 16 August, 1985
Video Release : 06 August, 1996 |
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Elegant but empty and unnecessary
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This movie is quite obviously intent on being a "serious "version of the Frankenstein story .It comes across as dull and earnest and is marred by an excessive pomposity in script and overall treatment .In striving to be weighty it merely comes over as dull and stilted
Baron Charles Frankenstein (Sting)has already created his male creature (Clancy Brown)when the movie starts and he is looking to make a mate for him ( Jennifer Beals) .As she is brought to life the laboratory explodes and she is carried to safety by Frankenstein who wrongly assumes that the male has perished in the fire .Quite obviously the good Baron has improved his skills considerably between making the male creature and building the woma -he is the archetypal Frankenstein monster while she is a stunner .He decides to keep her for himself and raise her as a sort of Pygmalion experiment -he will create an educated , independent ,free spirited "new woman" (rather like Mary Shelley the author of the source novel).He names her Eve -the first woman- and tells her that she is an amnesia victim he found wandering in the nearby woods .
The movie proceeds to cut between Eve and the male monster .He has escaped from the fire and is wandering the roads where he meets a dwarf (David Rappaport)and they strike up a friendship eventually joining a circus and becoming moderately successful and the monster assumes the name Viktor .Things go wrong when the dwarf is murdered and Viktor takes it upon himself to avenge his death and is forced to go on the run.The two creations gradually find their way to each other and even develop a telepathic link with one amother and events move to a violent climax
I suspect this would like to think of itself as a message movie specifically a feminist movie.Eve does learn to think for herself and defies her creator but only to the extent of wanting another man -a dashing youung soldier rather than him.The other message is not notably profound either-Dont tamper with Nature .In short the standard horror movie schtick
The movie is badly acted .Sting resembles a block of wood in period garments and as for Ms Beals !Well -I did wonder about Frankenstein trying to animate her because no director has managed to do so in any of her movie roles so far.In the words of the Sex Pistols song "We're all pretty ,we're so pretty.we're all pretty vacant"The best scenes are those between Brown and Rappaport which are both funny and moving
The score by Maurice Jarre is excellent -lush and romantic -as is the art direction by Michael Seymour .In an way they sum up the movie -nice to look at but with more pretnsions than actual substance
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