Well I suppose it had
to happen, after Dracula had been given the 90's remake treatment somebody (in this case Kenneth Brannagh) got the
bright idea of remaking the other well known classic horror tale, namely Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.
Brannagh both directs and stars as the lead character, Dr Victor Frankenstein. A young medical student who becomes fascinated with the unethical research of one of his university lecturers, Proffesor Waldman (played by British comedy actor John Cleese), who believes that living creatures can be created from dead matter.
When Waldman is inadvertently killed, Frankenstein decides to carry on the research. With a Cholera epidemic sweeping through the city, providing an ample supply of corpses, he locks himself away in Waldman's lab and attempts to see if his research is correct. Eventually, he succeeds in creating a creature made from body parts (played by Robert DeNiro), but upon realising the true horror of the monster he has created, decides that some things are best left undone and so destroys the lab, and (he believes) the creature along with it.
Returning home, Victor Frankenstein attempts to make a normal life for himself and marry his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter). However, as he is to soon discover, the past always has a nasty habit of catching up with you.
Whilst the film is fairly entertaining, it is unfortunately all to obvious that Brannagh was on an ego trip here, as far too much of the film appears to be focused on his (not so brilliant) acting abilities. Added to that the bizarre abstract way in which some of the scenes are shot, the inconsistencies in plot, and the monster having a New York accent, and you can see why the critics universally panned it when it came out in 1994. However, the film does manage to capture some of the spirit of the original novel, and those that enjoyed Bram Stokers Dracula will undoubtedly enjoy it also.
