Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

FRANKENSTEIN (BBC)

Frankenstein -- or E.T.? 
FRANKENSTEIN (2007 BBC telefilm). Writer/director: Jed Mercurio.

Dr. Victoria Frankenstein (Helen McCrory) is engaging in transplant stem cell research but is also fascinated by the desire to create life. Learning that her little boy, William's, organs may fail, she tries to grow new ones by adding his DNA to the soup. Unfortunately, part of this glob breaks out of the lab and begins savagely killing people. Victoria bonds with the monster because it reminds her of little William, who has died, but the hideous fellow is still quite dangerous ... This version of Frankenstein may have some interesting elements but it seems more interested in bloody limb-tearing scenes than a coherent storyline. The monster looks more like E.T. than anything else. While there are some suspenseful passages at first, Frankenstein eventually becomes tedious to a fault. The more it tries to invoke the original Frankenstein -- little William's father is named Henry Clerval (James Purefoy), for instance, and the monster murders a little girl as in the Boris Karloff version -- the worse it seems. Dragging in greedy scientists and the military does absolutely no good. McCrory makes a distinctly unappealing heroine on every level.

Verdict: Not as good as Frankenstein's Daughter. *1/2 out of 4.

2 comments:

angelman66 said...

Another one I had not heard of...though I do like Purefoy.
That Monster, though, that turns me off as well...he does look like an alien rather than a reanimated dead body!
-C

William said...

I found the whole movie to be a turn off, ha!