If there’s a common theme running through the wildly diverse retellings and reinterpretations of Frankenstein, it’s that the original set of characters, as depicted in Mary Shelley’s novel, have been misunderstood in some way. This revisionism is applied most frequently to The Creature, who often gets reworked to be a little more sympathetic than we initially imagined him to be (though he is already a tragic figure the reader can easily empathize with to begin with, even with his murderous instincts). Alternately, when Victor is revised, the trend is to make him harder, colder, nastier. One of the most notable early instances of this was Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein, in which Peter Cushing’s chilly performance made explicit the notion that Victor was the true monster of the story (a theme that would continue to play out in the other Hammer/Cushing Frankenstein movies).
Even so, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a less sympathetic Victor than the one depicted in Frank Roddam’s 1985 film The Bride, which begins as a very loose reworking of James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein and then wanders off in a different direction entirely. As our story begins, Victor (Sting — the pop star, not the pro wrestler) is fulfilling his promise to The Creature (Clancy Brown, hard to recognize beneath lots of makeup) by making him a bride. However, when the resurrection process is complete, Victor is astonished to discover that his second creation turned out far better than expected. The bride (Jennifer Beals) isn’t merely alive, but beautiful. Victor is immediately appalled by the very notion of just giving this attractive woman to The Creature, and decides to keep her for himself.
The Creature, furious and heartbroken, heads out of town, where he meets up with an amiable Little Person named Rinaldo (David Rappaport). Rinaldo knows what it’s like to be an outcast, and decides to take The Creature under his wing and help him make his way through life. Meanwhile, Victor begins a tutoring program of his own, teaching his new creation — who takes on the biblically-adjacent name Eva — how to walk, talk, ride horses, and behave in polite society. He’s giving her the Pygmalion treatment, more or less, but this time with the creepy, self-serving goal of having her as a prized sexual possession when his task is finished.
These two storylines alternate back and forth, to such a consistent degree that the movie falls into a kind of tedious predictability: there’s an unmistakable sense that we’re just killing time until something dramatic happens, and it’ll be a while before anything does. This could work just fine if the characters were well-drawn, or had an interesting journey to go on, but they’re mostly just generic types, frozen in place until the plot eventually nudges them elsewhere.
Victor, as played by Sting, has exactly one note: icy haughtiness. To his credit, Sting is persuasive at playing this note, but he isn’t any fun to spend time with, and — more critically — it isn’t remotely surprising when his baseline sour behavior turns into something darker later in the proceedings. Beals earned a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress for her turn as Eva, but she’s perfectly adequate given the material she’s given. She begins the film as a confused newborn, and becomes smarter and more sophisticated as it proceeds (in this regard, it’s a proto-Poor Things). This is what Victor wants, but what he fails to realize is that anyone with even a little intelligence will eventually realize that Victor is a dirtbag.
It would have been interesting if Eva’s journey to self-actualization was mirrored by that of The Creature, but he starts and ends the movie as a mumbling simpleton. Brown — a sensational actor in the right role — does what he can with the part, but often lands closer to Peter Boyle than to Karloff, failing to generate the sort of pathos the role demands. Rappaport’s turn as Rinaldo is pretty easily the film’s best performance, as the actor brings an easy charm to his scenes. But he, too, seems to be biding his time until the plot gives him something to do.
There are stray scenes that hint at the sort of compelling melodrama The Bride could have been. The scenes toward the beginning and end of the film have a certain measure of gothic flair, and the full-blooded romanticism of the Maurice Jarre score (who deploys the ondes Martenot in much the same way that Elmer Bernstein liked to) suggests a considerably more inviting sort of movie. However, the vast majority of the film feels very much like its version of The Creature: shuffling along slowly without saying or doing much of interest. It makes two hours feel like four.
Despite explicit nods to Mary Shelley, Zelda Williams’ Lisa Frankenstein owes less to Shelley than it does to John Hughes and Tim Burton. Set in 1989, the film is designed as a sort of love letter to the cinematic output of that era. It feels, fittingly, like a Frankensteined movie, cobbled together from bits and pieces of Heathers, Sixteen Candles, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and so on. But the tone it’s aiming for — a blend of dark comedy and subversive romanticism — is an exceptionally tricky one, and it doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Lisa, like so many of the big-screen protagonists of her era, is a misfit. Her mother was murdered, and her father remarried a woman named Janet (Carla Gugino) who regards Lisa with immense contempt. Janet is doting and loving to her biological daughter Taffy (Liza Soberano), but deeply critical of every move Lisa makes. Lisa has trouble making friends at school, finding a boyfriend, and she’s cooler and smarter than pretty much everyone around her. You know the type. Because of this, and because she has a brooding goth-y side, she spends a lot of time hanging out at an abandoned cemetery in the woods, fantasizing about a random dead guy who passed away in 1837.
One day, the dead guy comes back to life (the science and reasoning behind this is vague, it’s a “just go with it” thing). We’ll call him The Creature, because that’s what he’s called in the credits. When we first meet him, he’s gross. He smells horrible, bugs are constantly falling out of his clothes, and he’s missing some body parts. But he and Lisa connect, in their way. And then The Creature murders Janet. He did so because Janet was being pretty mean to Lisa, but still a pretty intense reaction.
Lisa, after some consideration, decides that it’s more of a romantic gesture than a creepy one, and helps The Creature dispose of the body. Well, most of the body. The Creature keeps Janet’s ear, because he needs an ear. He needs some other things too, so there will be more bodies as the film proceeds. One sequence involves castration, which pushes at the edges of the PG-13 rating with as much forcefulness as anything I can recall. This, it must be said, is fitting for a film paying homage to an era when PG and PG-13-rated movies tended to have much sharper edges than they do now.
But for all of its vibrant visual flourishes (which include a striking animated opening sequence and a black-and-white Bride of Frankenstein homage) and enthusiastic edginess, the film doesn’t have the tonal confidence of its assorted inspirations. There are any number of more productive directions this story could be nudged: you could play it as DeVito-esque dark comedy, you could play it as horror, you could play it as a Natural Born Killers-style toxic romance. But oddly, Lisa Frankenstein mostly just seems to want to be liked, and it isn’t likable. Imagine a version of Edward Scissorhands in which Edward was deliberately slicing people up, and Winona Ryder was helping him, but the wistful tone remained entirely unchanged. It would feel off, and that’s more or less how Lisa Frankenstein feels.
Even this might have been overcome if the film were sufficiently funny, but it doesn’t get there. Diablo Cody’s dialogue is often simultaneously clever and leaden, as in the following exchange:
Guy: “Who’s your favorite director?”
Lisa: “Pabst.”
Guy (glances at his beer can): “You’re just reading my beer can.”
Lisa: “No, he’s a brilliant filmmaker.”
Guy: “What kind of movies does he make?”
Lisa: “Silents.”
Guy: “Okay, I’ll be quiet.”
And look, it’s hard to hold much ill will towards a 2024 teen comedy containing G.W. Pabst references (along with multiple nods to George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon). The movie has personality, and it feels like a real movie made by people drawing from real creative inspirations, not a cynical piece of assembly line product. To borrow a phrase, it’s alive. It just doesn’t work.
Kiersten White’s YA novel The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein puts one of the novel’s less-developed characters front and center. The angle is a promising one: the story is retold from Elizabeth’s perspective, and we learn about the ways in which she has both enabled Victor and been betrayed by him. In the Shelley novel, Elizabeth’s story ends tragically: she’s murdered by The Creature on the night of her wedding to Victor. That knowledge hangs over White’s story like a gradually descending pendulum, and up until she reaches that point, it’s a focused and compelling read.
But White, like so many others, is ultimately more interested in subverting Shelley than in contemplating her foundation. As in Fred Saberhagen’s The Frankenstein Papers, the Shelley novel exists within this story, and is ultimately revealed as a sort of propaganda hiding the real story. The new truths are unspooled over the final third or so of the book, which is where the whole project runs out of steam: the story becomes less about understanding the tragedy of Elizabeth Frankenstein, devolving into a series of generic twists. It’s another piece of YA wish fulfillment, and that’s only disappointing because for quite some time, it looks like more than that.
Last, and perhaps least, is the L.A. Theatre Works audio dramatization of Shelley’s novel, performed in front of a live audience in February 2020 (mere weeks before the pandemic shut the country down). As a work of adaptation, boiling the story down to 90 minutes, it’s mostly fine: it doesn’t feel overly rushed, and it does a decent job of figuring out where to condense things. However, the performances are of the variety that plague many lesser adaptations of classic literature: the actors seem to be dramatically reciting a sacred text rather than finding a way to bring the material to life.
The only exception, unsurprisingly, is Stacy Keach as The Creature, who summons the sort of furious heartache the role demands and pulls us in during his scenes. Unfortunately, the strength of his work only makes the flatness of the rest more apparent, and one may still feel inclined to peek at the remaining runtime every time he departs.
So concludes another Frankenstein Report. Here’s hoping for a better hit-to-miss ratio next time around.
Back at ya later
Since you are doing the professional thing by adding actors’ names, probably should edit and add Kathryn Newton’s name to Lisa. ;)