I like Mary Shelley's novel and some of the film adaptations, and I like the "Back to the Future" series, and although they're both fine science fiction, they don't mix especially well together here in "Frankenstein Unbound," which is apparently based on another novel, by Brian Aldiss. That's because so much of the good stuff is reduced here to some silly historical fiction and a throwaway morality tale against playing God, and the finale, despite its time-travel sci-fi, devolves into a run-of-the-mill slasher horror picture, with Frankenstein's creature becoming merely another Jason, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger.
There's a good deal of talent behind this one, including Roger Corman's return as a director and stars the likes of John Hurt, Raul Julia and Bridget Fonda, which, perhaps unfortunately, has the effect of preventing the film's silly premise from being camped up or being a so-bad-it's-good type of movie. In it, a Dr. Buchanan is a futuristic Frankenstein doppelgänger, of Los Angeles 2031, who has invented a weapon that has the side effect of ripping holes in the space-time continuum--called "time slips" here. By the way, never trust a scientist who tests his weapon on a model of his and your own nation's national symbol (in this case, the American Buchanan zaps to oblivion one of the Statue of Liberty). It's bad enough he shares the namesake of the President who oversaw the country devolve into civil war.
Anyways, Buchanan and his futuristic car, which even has gull-wing doors like the DeLorean, are sucked up into one of these time slips, which look like bad electric storm clouds--another Frankenstein connection. Buchanan is transported to Geneva 1817, where he meets Dr. Frankenstein, as well as Mary Godwin and her travel mates Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Buchanan, however, must be wrong to believe he's merely traveled back in time, because he's obviously entered an alternate dimension where Frankenstein and his creature were real, where Genevans speak English instead of French but read French-language newspapers and where Mary and her friends traveled to Geneva a year later than they did in our world. The only other logical explanations are that Buchanan was already from a parallel universe from ours, or the past was already altered by prior time-slip mishaps... or bad writing. Seeing this 1990 film in 2018, we already have self-driving cars, TV screens in cars, computers that talk to us and environmental disasters made by man, so it seems the film's vision of 2031 is more accurate than its depiction of 1817.
Although Buchanan has the scientific genius and the car of Doc Brown, he messes with the timeline like Marty McFly. Soon after entering the past, he thinks it his duty to try to save Justine from being wrongly hanged for the murder of Frankenstein's brother. By the way, minus Buchanan, this is an actual incident from Shelley's novel, where the monster killed Frankenstein's family and friends to try to force him to create him a bride. In between expressing his fanboy crushes for Mary and her circle, he also tries to enlist them in saving Justine. When that doesn't work, he settles for banging the teenage author of the Gothic horror classic.
Besides this paralleling the sexual encounter Marty has with his teenage mother in "Back to the Future" (1985), there's no good reason for the inclusion of Mary and company in this film. With then-recent films such as "Gothic" (1986) and "Rowing with the Wind" (1988) already covering the events surrounding the writing of the novel, it feels like more piggybacking for a picture that is already based on a novel that, if this film is in anyway faithful, largely regurgitates another story, that of Mary Shelley's novel. Three years later, with "Dracula Rising," Roger Corman, then as producer, would do the same thing by adopting the lousy reincarnation romance scenario from "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992)--not to be confused with Stoker's Gothic horror novel, which has no such silly premise.
Worse than the fate of Shelley in this film, however, is that of her story. Frankenstein is made an atheist and immoral mad scientist, caring little for the lives of his fellow man. Meanwhile, his creature, while more articulate than the versions of Boris Karloff and his imitators, is considerably more stupid than Shelley's character. In between his killing sprees, he says little beyond asking where babies come from. By the time he begins asking some good questions, such as why everyone is so determined to kill him, it's too late--nobody cares. Meanwhile, Buchanan dreams himself to be the monster. Somewhere between bedding Mary and being disgusted by Frankenstein's atheist-inspired mayhem, he finds God and decides it's his mission to get rid of all the baddies. If only he'd began with himself... or maybe spent some time on trying to fix the holes in the fabric of space and time he created... or, if he really wanted to help 19th-Century people, why doesn't he invent Penicillin a century plus earlier or something? Even Marty, without a high-school diploma let alone a PhD, at least invented skateboarding and Rock 'n' Roll music for us. What a monster and what a monstrosity of a movie.
There's a good deal of talent behind this one, including Roger Corman's return as a director and stars the likes of John Hurt, Raul Julia and Bridget Fonda, which, perhaps unfortunately, has the effect of preventing the film's silly premise from being camped up or being a so-bad-it's-good type of movie. In it, a Dr. Buchanan is a futuristic Frankenstein doppelgänger, of Los Angeles 2031, who has invented a weapon that has the side effect of ripping holes in the space-time continuum--called "time slips" here. By the way, never trust a scientist who tests his weapon on a model of his and your own nation's national symbol (in this case, the American Buchanan zaps to oblivion one of the Statue of Liberty). It's bad enough he shares the namesake of the President who oversaw the country devolve into civil war.
Anyways, Buchanan and his futuristic car, which even has gull-wing doors like the DeLorean, are sucked up into one of these time slips, which look like bad electric storm clouds--another Frankenstein connection. Buchanan is transported to Geneva 1817, where he meets Dr. Frankenstein, as well as Mary Godwin and her travel mates Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Buchanan, however, must be wrong to believe he's merely traveled back in time, because he's obviously entered an alternate dimension where Frankenstein and his creature were real, where Genevans speak English instead of French but read French-language newspapers and where Mary and her friends traveled to Geneva a year later than they did in our world. The only other logical explanations are that Buchanan was already from a parallel universe from ours, or the past was already altered by prior time-slip mishaps... or bad writing. Seeing this 1990 film in 2018, we already have self-driving cars, TV screens in cars, computers that talk to us and environmental disasters made by man, so it seems the film's vision of 2031 is more accurate than its depiction of 1817.
Although Buchanan has the scientific genius and the car of Doc Brown, he messes with the timeline like Marty McFly. Soon after entering the past, he thinks it his duty to try to save Justine from being wrongly hanged for the murder of Frankenstein's brother. By the way, minus Buchanan, this is an actual incident from Shelley's novel, where the monster killed Frankenstein's family and friends to try to force him to create him a bride. In between expressing his fanboy crushes for Mary and her circle, he also tries to enlist them in saving Justine. When that doesn't work, he settles for banging the teenage author of the Gothic horror classic.
Besides this paralleling the sexual encounter Marty has with his teenage mother in "Back to the Future" (1985), there's no good reason for the inclusion of Mary and company in this film. With then-recent films such as "Gothic" (1986) and "Rowing with the Wind" (1988) already covering the events surrounding the writing of the novel, it feels like more piggybacking for a picture that is already based on a novel that, if this film is in anyway faithful, largely regurgitates another story, that of Mary Shelley's novel. Three years later, with "Dracula Rising," Roger Corman, then as producer, would do the same thing by adopting the lousy reincarnation romance scenario from "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992)--not to be confused with Stoker's Gothic horror novel, which has no such silly premise.
Worse than the fate of Shelley in this film, however, is that of her story. Frankenstein is made an atheist and immoral mad scientist, caring little for the lives of his fellow man. Meanwhile, his creature, while more articulate than the versions of Boris Karloff and his imitators, is considerably more stupid than Shelley's character. In between his killing sprees, he says little beyond asking where babies come from. By the time he begins asking some good questions, such as why everyone is so determined to kill him, it's too late--nobody cares. Meanwhile, Buchanan dreams himself to be the monster. Somewhere between bedding Mary and being disgusted by Frankenstein's atheist-inspired mayhem, he finds God and decides it's his mission to get rid of all the baddies. If only he'd began with himself... or maybe spent some time on trying to fix the holes in the fabric of space and time he created... or, if he really wanted to help 19th-Century people, why doesn't he invent Penicillin a century plus earlier or something? Even Marty, without a high-school diploma let alone a PhD, at least invented skateboarding and Rock 'n' Roll music for us. What a monster and what a monstrosity of a movie.