User reviews

Gothic, directed by Ken Russell, is a rather interesting film that deals with, among other things, the dark side of creativity and imagination. More specifically, it's about the night when Mary Shelley came up with the idea that she would later turn into the novel "Frankenstein." By and large, the performances are quite good, although I didn't really care for Julian Sands. However, the story was almost non-existent and ephemeral, existing merely to have a bunch of people go around saying stuffy lines and get scared out of their wits by creatures borne of their imaginations. Granted, some of these sequences and images were haunting and surreal, but it all added up to a lot of style with very little substance. As far as the score is concerned, I thought that the work Thomas Dolby did was impeccable as far as its musical quality, but some of the cues didn't really fit (to me) with this kind of period piece. The story takes place in the early 19th century, but a lot of the music sounded very 1980's with synthesizers and programmed drums. It's a score that I'd buy, but I'm not too sure that it completely fit the film. From a technical standpoint, I thought it was very well-made, i.e., it was well-lit and the shot composition was varied. There were also some Dutch angles that accentuated the disorienting feel the filmmakers seemed to be going for. Overall, if you're looking for a well-told story that has characters you care about and identify with, this might not be the best choice for you. However, if you like heavily stylized and surreal horror, this will probably suit your fancy.

I guess if you were Ken Russell in 1986, riding a crest of weirdity, you can do just about anything you want. I think that Russell was the first really wacko film director I got to know. I hadn't watched anything of his for a long time. This is one of those things that allows this director to take complete license. You have true historical figures who come together in the house of Lord Byron, a really colorful character. The lives of these people come out of boredom. They are misunderstood and a bit spoiled. So, according to Russell, they sit down one night and begin to tell their best horror story. This leads to a series of debauches, hallucinations, whatever. It is filled with images and sex and masochism and anything that the director could throw in there. Now, because you are producing in an accepting time, you can get away with all that. I guess I would watch this again, knowing what the whole of the thing presents, but when you play by no rules other than to do what you want, the results are like throwing paint on a canvass. We get a lot of paint, a lot of color, but no motif. So, while I thought this was a real head trip, I'm not so sure there is much coherence or even meaning to it.

Was this a story of Mary Shelly's inspiration for Frankenstein. It could be, but that is not what makes it interesting.

It is not your usual horror film. It is more for those who dwell in the surreal world fueled by opiates.

Shelly (Julian Sands), Mary Shelly (Natasha Richardson), and her half-sister Claire (Myriam Cyr) travel to Lord Byron's (Gabriel Byrne) estate where his biographer (Timothy Spall) is staying. They enter into a realm of drug-induced fantasy, where they conjure up their greatest fears.

It was a mess, wandering all over the place, but it certainly kept my interest.

It must be said, I love the work of Ken Russell. If he were of any other nationality or generation he'd be subject to a veritable tome of critical analysis; with amazing films like Elgar (1962), The Debussy Film (1965), Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972) all standing out as some of the most radical, imaginative and visually impressive feature films of the last fifty years. Too often his excesses got the better of him, as in films such as Lisztomania (1975), The Lair of the White Worm (1987) and Salome's Last Dance (1988), but despite the overall quality of those films, the results were always interesting and visually unforgettable. Gothic (1986) has much in common with the latter collection of works, being somewhat messy and decadent whilst still trying to remain somewhat conventional in its approach to character and narrative. It is this aspect of the film that is the weakest, with the story and the characterisation often feeling somewhat weak or unformed, particularly in the first half. However, once the film gets going - and the wild images and hallucinations begin to accumulate - Russell's energetic style and talent for creating outré and unforgettable visual compositions and ideas really begins to take off; creating a film that is fascinating and open to deeper interpretations regarding the character of Mary Shelley and the unfortunate circumstances of her life that may have led to the creation of her classic and iconic horror story, Frankenstein.

Naturally, the roots of the film are based in fact, taking place in June of 1816 - the "year without summer" - when the five central characters met at Lord Byron's Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. From here, the film creates a fictional back-story to the wet and windy night that would give birth, not only to Shelley's Frankenstein, but also Polidori's celebrated novel, The Vampyre. What follows is a bizarre and overwhelming example of pure visual storytelling, which is all the more impressive when you take into account the obviously limited budget. However, if you can overcome this aspect - as well as the rather poor performances from Julian Sands as the exaggerated Percy Shelley and Myriam Cyr as Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont - then the film will reward with a truly astounding final act filled with Russell's typically surreal and lurid imagery, an escalating sense of fever-dream-like horror and exaggeration and the three fine performances from Gabriel Byrne as the seductive Lord Byron, Natasha Richardson as the tortured Mary Shelly and Timothy Spall as the beleaguered Dr. John William Polidori. The tension is also heightened by the choice of location, with the film taking place almost entirely within the Byron estate, and almost entirely at night; although there are two separate framing devises, one of which takes place in the present-day and helps clarify some of the scenarios depicted in the film's aforementioned final act.

These don't necessarily add much to the story - though neither do they detract - simply giving a certain sense of context before Russell gets on with the mind-blowing imagery and finely tuned atmosphere of eroticised dread. Some have likened the film to Dario Argento's classic supernatural thriller Suspiria (1977), with the use of Gothic locations, bold colours and a self-consciously visual approach to storytelling. These similarities stand, though you can also see the film as an extension of the earlier Altered States (1980) and Crimes of Passion (1984); both in certain thematic preoccupations, and in the actual visual presentation overall. The film works simply because of the intensity of the images, but ultimately going deeper than even that; tying the whole thing into the character of Mary Shelley and her own sense of personal tragedy. It gives the film that much needed emotional quality, helped along by the fine performance from the incredibly young Richardson in one of her first leading roles. She's complimented well by Byrne, who takes the role of Byron entirely seriously, even when spouting some incredibly pretentious dialog and attempting to seduce every character in the film. Nonetheless, the intensity of the role shines through and really establishes the character, with his fears and weaknesses going towards the creation of his own personal nightmare that will reverberate through time.

The film suggests that by raising the spirits of the dead you fate yourself to an inescapable evil. This is reflected by the tragic circumstances that surrounded the characters - hinted at in that tour-de-force final - and their eventual fate as documented by history itself. It's very clever once you get past the awkward, slightly giddy and anachronistic-like feeling of the first few scenes and really get into the horror aspect and the more much rewarding sense of human interest. Naturally, it won't be to all tastes, as the factors that Russell tends to highlight in his work - religious symbolism, garishness, sex and sensuality, brutality and anachronistic humour - will obviously cause problems for viewers looking for a more conventional "horror" story. I liked the break in convention, though. After all, there are plenty of horror films that regurgitate the same old stock tactics and scenarios. Gothic goes for a different approach; one that is more eccentric, single-minded and unique, layering the fact and fantasy elements of Stephen Volk's imaginative screenplay with a lurid and sensational approach to the visual telling of the story, rife with his usual themes and obsessions. If you love Russell's work, and appreciate interesting and unconventional cinema, then Gothic is well worth checking out; if not for the bizarre visual aspects and exciting, nightmarish final, then certainly for the nicely judged performances of Richardson, Byrne and Spall.

On a dark and stormy night, in a remote, but lavish country estate, in an equally distant Victorian mansion there resides the charismatic, but often eccentric, Englishman, Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne). Staged for an exercise in humanistic logic, scientific philosophy and creative writing, he gathers an odd assembly of thrill seeking Bohemian characters. Among the notables, are poet Percy Shelly, his author wife Mary, his personal physician, and of course their host, Lord Byron. Beginning with a blasphemous premise that they are imbued with the power to create life itself, Byron suggests they abandon their earthly inhibitions of morality and civil conviction and drink a concentrated draft of Laudium laced wine. The terrifying after effects manifest themselves in the literal passages later found in the poetic works of Percy Shelley or his wife's most famous novel Frankenstein. With a storm raging high above them, the group evokes sacred beliefs, sacrilegious rites and amoral concepts which create a frightening spectral atmosphere that nearly consumes them. Anyone seeking the foundation of the most popular Gothic monster ever created, should view this film. ****

As this film seemed to be the first film (that I could find anyway) to describe how Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein (published in 1818), I must give some consideration. However, the pains the film goes through in depicting a drug-induced, nightmarish landscape of horrors, is too far gone.

Laudenaum, a popular hallucinogenic drug during the 19th century, brings to life the imagination of five manic individuals: Lord Byron, his physician Dr. Polidori, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire Claremont (Mary's half sister). When Lord Byron challenges them all to come up with the most horrific tale they can muster, each cultivate his/her own macabre web of self-torture.

This film, in an attempt to show the frantic workings of the mind, comes off as merely comical at times. Some of the scenes, which are intended to shock and convey horror, seemed to simply repel. Gabriel Byrne aptly plays the decadent Lord Byron, but his character is overly vicious and twisted. Julian Sands plays Percy Shelley, who is like a lunatic pedant at best. If you can figure out one thing he says, as he seems to spout "non-sensical intelligence" (if there is such a thing), then kudos to you. Natasha Richardson does well in playing Mary Shelley, although the described "free love" she was supposedly a participant in I think was a bit of a stretch in this movie and could have been left out.

I must admit, for all the reviews I read of the film, I expected more of a punch and more of a meat-and-potatoes thriller story. This film did little but disorient using a sexually-hedonistic Rubix cube. Perhaps that was the director's intention, but the film did little in translating its horror and madness to its characters. Thomas Dolby's score just grates the disorientation further into the bone.

I will give the director credit for doing his homework in researching the odd amount of death that seemed to riddle Mary Shelley's biography. The marriage of Frankenstein's creation to this aspect as being nothing ironic is quite clever. All in all, I just think a better job could have been done with a brilliant idea. And somebody please give Julian Sands a role where he is not a blithering crybaby! 4/10

The beauty of the film is it's theatrical aura. Dialogs proceed like watching a theatrical play. Great actors and director can support the concept. Have seen the movie several times.

...which undoubtedly explains my lack of appreciation, understanding, or any positive feeling I might muster against this extraordinary piece of rubbish. I love Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Frankenstein films(for the most part), and history but this film has virtually nothing to do with any of that. It looks like some guy on a big acid trip got a camera and some far-out crew and made this film coaxing some over-the-top performances from what normally would be a great cast. Yes, many will say I lost the point. I didn't get what director Ken Russell was trying to do. His vision is lost on me(thankfully I might add). The best part of this film is the beginning prologue and end epilogue of a tourist group in Switzerland seeing the place where Frankenstein was born. Pity, we had to endure the bit in the middle. The film lacks cohesion so to give you the story would virtually be impossible but here goes: five people(Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, some other girl, and Dr. Polidori)are vacationing in the Alps and taking part in all kinds of perversions that would make the Marquis de Sade quite happy. You might have been taught in school that they had a contest and each set out to write a ghost story. Here there is little screen time devoted to that. What we do get is intellectually pompous drivel devoid of any real substance - substantiative or artistic. The cast drives around like mad with Julian Sands parading naked on a roof top and looking more like an inmate of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest rather than a great 19th century Romantic poet. Gabriel Byrne is sadistic as the great Byron. Timothy Spall is mad and disgusting as Polidori. Only Natasha Richardson give a somewhat subtle performance - if you can call it that for it lacks any direction at all. Ken Russell has always been intriguing as a director and if you are looking for something off the beaten track - this road is spotless and free of conventional transportation. Sometime; however, I would rather take the road more traveled.

Despite it's uninspiring title, Ken Russell's "Gothic" is actually an intriguing, and uniquely inspiring piece of cinema. Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" is one of the stories that has helped to shape horror cinema, and so the story behind it is guaranteed to interest horror fans. This film isn't exactly the story of how the story came to fruition; but rather a compilation of ideas surrounding "what could have happened" (but quite clearly didn't). The film takes influence from the enigmatic Lord Byron more than anything, and it's always him that springs to mind as we watch the small cast delve into their imaginations, culminating in an orgy of sex and violence. The story is simple, and focuses more on imagery and the ideas behind what is happening on screen. We follow Percy Shelly and his wife to be, Mary; along with her sister Claire, who travel to the self-exiled home of Lord Byron. While there, the four of them; along with Byron's biographer, decide to indulge in the art of making up ghost stories. However, the fun gets out of hand when the quintet begins to believe that they have actually created a monster.

The film has a very 'intellectual' flavour, but the fact is that there isn't a lot below the surface of this film. Gothic, to me at least, is a visual treat rather than food for thought - with Ken Russell's imagery providing more than any deep and complex substance. The imagery is stunning, and fits into the film very well. Russell's sets compliment the story excellently, and the atmosphere in which the film takes place is more important than the story itself. Lord Byron's house is almost a character within itself, and when combined with the actual characters; Russell has provided horror fans with a very surreal film indeed. The cast is excellent. Films with a small cast rely more on their actors, and this film certainly doesn't fall down in that respect. Gabriel Byrne leads the cast, and does an excellent job of holding the film together. Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Myriam Cyr and Timothy Spall, who all portray their characters excellently, join him. On the whole; I can easily see why people dislike this film; as it's somewhat messy, and doesn't adhere to common horror standards - but if you like your horror different, this is highly recommended.

I have read some, quite of lot, of the viewers' critiques before watching this movie again, from start to end, and form a final opinion. I did see the movie, which I have seen whole or in fragments previous times and some things became clearer to me.

You have to know enough about the background of the story and the heroes to understand the plot. Otherwise you will think that they are a bunch of raving maniacs. I happened to be interested in the Romantics, thus I knew a lot about the stories generated from the time spent in the famous villa. There the most famous novel of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein was conceived. I had read the novel in the English language with a dense introduction that was describing the preoccupations of Shelley's circle, the infatuation of the age with the newly discovered electricity and the belief that it could generate life. Also I knew about the intricate relationships of the characters involved.

If someone without this background tries to understand what the movie is about, he will be disappointed unless he has such a fine artistic sensibility and general education that can fill the gaps of the ignorance of the facts and emotions surrounding this coterie of quite exceptional people.

All the information relevant is contained in the dialogues and images but unless you knew that before you would be unable to make the relevant connections or understand why the characters behave in such a manner, why and what they speak about and the whole purpose of it all.

The actors are good I think for their roles. Gabriel Byrne has the latent evil touch and subdued lasciviousness that we attribute to Byron, Julian Sands is truly, the "Mad Shelley", as he was called by his fellow schoolboys when at Eton, Timothy Spall gives a grotesque image of Dr. Polidori, which is perhaps unavoidable given the fact that tradition has so much focused to the personalities of the two great literary men that his reputation has been eclipsed, therefore a normal appraisal is perhaps impossible. Myriam Cyr as Claire Clermont follows the conventional interpretation of her character as a sensuous girl attracted by the fame of the poets and lacking herself the depth and gravitas of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is the most normal character among the protagonists and has a fine sequence of scenes, near the end, where she sees as if a prophetess the ensuing fate of many of the characters, which latter developments validate. The other point I wanted to make about Claire Clairmont is that when she is not portrayed as a slut with cultural pretensions, she is shown in a condition of animalistic primitivism or as possessed by demons. Dr. Polidori is also a buffoonish homosexual who eyes both the great poets. It is clear that because Claire Clairmont and Dr. Polidori were the ones of the company that did not achieve literary fame, because the were not the "literary monuments" the other two and to a lesser extent Mary Shelley later became, they have to suffer in the hands of posterity when a director has to cast their roles so as to fill the required quorum along with the "great ones". Not only life but also posthumous reputation is unfair....

Sound and visual effects are adequate and achieve surprise and fear, especially the first time the movie is watched. A lot of demons and related creatures occupy the screen. One though must not blame the director for overdoing it because those elements formed the staple iconography of the so called "Gothic" atmosphere and the diaries of the heroes contain references to hallucinations and the like, perhaps because of drug taking, or just because the symbiosis of some of the most active and strong imaginations alive during that particular time.

The best word that I can use to describe this movie is "uneven". It has good actors, it is supported by sound and scenic effects, it has costumes that look authentic but at times it becomes disgusting, chaotic, devoid of a real plot and radiates hysteria. There are attempts towards sexual explicitness, though by today's standards not so offensive; it must have been for the eighties though...

I was interested in the movie because I am very interested in the Romantics. Otherwise it can be seen as a story of rich people indulging to their decadent appetites for sex, drugs, aimless philosophising and self-absorption, reminding one of a company of people devoted to Marquis de Sade's idea of pleasure(graphic illustrations of his books are page-turned by Mary). Mind you, if tabloids had existed during that time the story would have been a scoop. It might even hit YouTube. When famous people follow their fancies or get their kicks, it is always different from simple plebeians....

Apart from the literary fame of the characters, which in their lifetime was actually secured only by Byron, Shelley and even more Mary Shelley were to be vindicated by posterity; and Shelley was actually more famous-that is- notorious for his unconventional sexual mores, his atheism and his political radicalism, rather than for his verse, is this a story actually worthy to be made to a movie? I can not give a definite answer. Would such a story of drugs, free love (actually sex), hallucinations and sheer self-absorption be of interest to anyone? But of course it produced Frankenstein the most famous of Gothic novels …. I do not think that all this creativity was portrayed in the film. It focused more on the "bad, mad and dangerous to know" aspects of the characters. In that sense I do not think it does justice to what happened in the villa of Geneva and mainly to what was produced. Not all hedonists produce novels of enduring value. Stressing on the eccentric aspects of the lives of the characters the film has betrayed their literary significance and succumbed to sensationalism and cheap thrills.

This sole reason for why I watched "Gothic" was because I am a fan of Julian Sands. However, oddly enough, then I never got around to watching "Gothic" before now in the middle of 2019.

"Gothic" is by no means a great milestone in cinema history. Actually I found the movie to be so bizarre and having such an odd storyline that the movie wasn't particularly enjoyable. There was just too much strangeness happening throughout the entire course of the movie, and not in a great coherent sense, mind you.

The movie was visually great, because there was some really nice and interesting sets and props. This movie doesn't utilize an abundance of special effects, so don't go about expecting a visually great special effects experience.

The characters in the movie were adequate, although they were suffering from the lousy storyline and the slightly off-beat dialogue. This meant that the actors and actresses in the movie were fighting an uphill battle. I will say that they did have some interesting names on the cast list, aside from Julian Sands, which included the likes of Gabriel Byrne, Natasha Richardson and Timothy Spall.

I managed to sit through the entire course of this odd movie, but I can in all honesty say that I am never returning to it for a second viewing. The movie just didn't have much of any appeal to me.

Films like Gothic, directed by Ken Russell, will not be to most people's taste. Russell is noted for a skewed view of life with very twisted imagery, such as his invariable trademark snake that slithers around in all his films. In this particular film he has devised a story that touches on reality in an unreal way as he brings the famous night that Percy Shelly, Mary Shelly, he half-sister Claire, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori spent together that brought about two of the great horror stories of all time about as a result. Between debauchery and Opium laced nightmares this could have been very much what it was really like as this quintet of famous or rather infamous people got together and brought the birth of a new kind of literature, years before Edgar Allen Poe began his writing. Polidori's "The Vampyre" which for many years was attributed to Byron was the forerunner and inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Of course, Mary Shelly was to go on and write "Frankenstein." This is how it could have happened.

This feature is intense and not for everyone. Definitely not for young people. But a true intellectual's horror tale.

Fierce and flamboyant film director Ken Russell takes the viewer for a weekend in the country with some literary notables in Gothic, a nightmarish orgy of blood and thunder based in fact. It is nothing new for Russell who unlike like any other director took factual historic accounts of lives of the famous (Mahler, Tchaicovsky, Isadora Duncan) and applied audacious compositions that some might say bordered on character assassination. Given Byron's temperament I'm sure he would have approved.

Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) has the poet Shelly (Julian Sands) , wife Mary (Natacha Richardson), and half sister sometime lover Claire down to the Villa for a weekend of sadistic parlor games challenging the status quo and their sanity with ungoverned imagination and confession. Accomodated by a violent storm the five scurry wildly from room to room to roof hallucinating and acting out monstrously.

The weekend is framed between two eras fitted into brief prologue and epilogue, centuries apart with inquisitive tourists checking out the grounds and listening to the same gossipy chatter of the guide. Within this framework we are barraged with relentless scenes of shock and awe as each character confronts and is confronted with mean spiritedness and cruel reality.

Russell in typical form offers up some incredibly potent imagery with copious amounts of blood and sexual depravity as well as appearances by living gargoyles and leeches. He allows no respite between opening and finale as the dark humor he skillfully applies in other films is so dark as to be invisible here.

Byrne provides the character of Byron with a a perverse twinkle in his eye while half sis Claire played by Myriam Cyr remains semi demonic throughout. Sands idealistic Shelley counterpoints Byron nicely and Natascha Richardson brings a balance and touch of sanity to the group as Mary Shelly, even as she endures a night of terror and memory. Fifth wheel Dr. Polidori played by Timothy Sprall conveys a magnificent repugnance.

With Byron's well documented esoteric lifestyle and the fact that Mary Shelley claims to have been inspired on this night to write the book Frankenstein Russell's wild style is a good fit to fill in blanks. Watching it for some may be an ordeal but I'm sure Lord Byron would have been impressed with Ken's kindred spirit.

The writer of Frankenstein (Natasha Richardson), her beau (Julian Sands) and half-sister (Myriam Cyr) visit the mad, bad recluse Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) at his lavish estate on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. There they meet Byron's equally bizarre physician friend (Timothy Spall) and spend the stormy night of June 16, 1816, in hallucinatory revelry, including a challenge to write a spooky story, which gave birth to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre," the first published modern vampire story.

The premise of "Gothic" (1986) is great, the first act is interesting and the short epilogue is effective. Unfortunately, the hour in between is meandering, hedonistic, perverse, outrageously overdone and utterly tedious. I can handle the unsavory elements (and expected them) as long as the story is compelling, but that's not the case. It's basically a string of coked-up theatrics and perversions in an attractively gothic setting.

Speaking of attractive, one of the few consolations is the jaw-dropping Natasha Richardson in her prime. She was Liam Neeson's wife from 1994 until her death in 2009 from a skiing accident.

If you want to see a gothic flick set in the 1800s that's actually decent, check out "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992). For a movie that treads similar terrain that's really good and in some ways great see "Marie Antoinette" (2006). "Gothic" is trash by comparison and fittingly bombed at the box office. Sometimes director Ken Russell's unique projects work, like "Altered States" (1980), but not this.

The film runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot at Gaddesden Place & Wrotham Park in Herfordshire, England. Thomas Dolby wrote the score, his first and last.

GRADE: C-/D+

I've only seen two of Ken Russell's films (Gothic and Lair of the White Worm), but if they are anything to go by, he is one of the best horror directors of all time. It is so nice to see someone going against the mould and not making predictable slasher films or Hollywood 'Sixth-Sense' style horror-thrillers.

It is about the weird night that Mary Shelly and her poet brother spent with Lord Byron, which supposedly inspired her to write Frankenstein.

It is filled with hallucionations and erotic weirdness which bridges it much closer to the work of David Lynch or Cronenberg than to the traditional horror film.

I absolutely loved this film and can't recommend it enough. Even if you hate it, you can't deny that it's an experience! 5/5

A fictional telling of an event that happened in Switzerland in 1816. Five friends were on vacation--Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne), Shelley (Julian Sands), his wife Mary (Natasha Richardson), Mary's half-sister Claire (Miriam Cyr) and Dr. Polidori (Timothy Spall). Unfortunately it rained every day of their vacation. To entertain themselves they told horror stories and each decided they would write their own horror stories. Only two finished--Polidori wrote "The Vampyre" and Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein". According to this film they were all on drugs and spend a dark and stormy night in a HUGE house confronting their deepest darkest fears.

For Russell this is restrained. There's plenty of drug-induced imagery, female AND male nudity (courtesy of Sands) and lots of screaming and running around. It makes sense (sort of) but it's out there. There's one serious casting error--Byrne. He's terrible as Byron but the rest of the cast is good--especially Richardson and Sands. A pretty good Ken Russell film that has been forgotten. I give it a 7.

Living in an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley (Godwin at the time). Together with Byron's lover, Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.

An 80s Ken Russell creation, so you already know the movie is going to be weird. It had heaps of potential though: the meeting of the Shelleys and Byron, the sheer creative forces at work, the idea that this will lead to some great art (and, if you know your literary history, it did) and the blurring of fiction and reality.

Yet, despite this and Russell's attempts to turn the experience into one nightmarish trip, it really doesn't go anywhere. More than this, you sort of know this, as you think 'None of this is real'.

Despite this, there was room for some scary scenes but even these seem quite tame. Rather than make us genuinely scared, Ken Russell just throws random weird imagery and scenes at the audience.

It's all quite random and pointless.

Story of the night that Mary Shelley gave birth to the horror classic "Frankenstein." Disturbed drug induced games are played and ghost stories are told one rainy night at the mad Lord Byron's country estate.

When you have a horror film directed by Ken Russell, starring Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, you expect a certain level of quality, or at least entertainment. And I think this more or less hit those marks.

For me, the most troublesome part was the poor quality DVD. Maybe there are good ones and bad ones, but the one I had was pretty fuzzy -- not unlike a VHS transfer. This is the sort of title that Shout Factory could do wonders with.

This is the type of film which makes you fall in love with movies. Ken Russell is a master filmmaker and one which always captivates, delights and challenges the viewer. I was lucky enough to catch him in Philadelphia in the 90's where he was given a filmmaker award for excellence in film. He's as interesting, humorous and intelligent as his movies.

Other films by him I highly recommend WOmen in Love (1969), Lisztomania (1975), Altered States (1980), Salomé's Last Dance (1988), The Lair of the White Worm (1988), The Rainbow (1989) and there are probably many others - including his work for British TV - but I've yet to see them yet unfortunately.

Gothic is a film which will enthrall, engage and frighten the viewer with excellent acting from ALL the actors - support and lead. Sad that this was Richardson's first major film and we have been denied the grace of viewing any future projects from such a wonderful actor.

I highly recommend Gothic to any serious film goer. This is the type of film which will make wish to research further information about the main characters. Mary Shelley is brought to flesh through Russell's excellent direction and Richardson's beautifully nuanced intelligent interpretation.

As others reviewers have said this is indeed a visually stunning film from Ken Russell. Starring Byrne, Sands and Richardson as Lord Byron and the Shelleys and set in the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, it takes place at night where they all seem to go mad at some point or other. Well acted of course, but perhaps a bit too strange for most tastes. Great performance too from Timothy Spall as the similarly wierd Dr Polidori.

GOTHIC is a seductive and fascinating study of the four principle players in the turn-of-the-century origin of at least one, if not two, of the principle monster icons of popular culture: the

vampire and the Frankenstein Monster. But despite the incredible (and true) historical significance of the writing challenge, to produce a ghost story apiece worthy of these literary personages, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Polidori, the film is brilliant in its fictional depiction of people whose minds are brilliant enough, creatively, that their ideas become tangible forces, released, and uncontrollable.

The chaotic structure of GOTHIC is excellent, while the interplay between the actors is fabulous. GOTHIC's intellectual hysteria creates an atmosphere where ghosts and demons gain power and autonomous life from their creators, showing the formulation in Mary Shelley's mind of the Frankenstein story, and the tragic consequence of both the story and the real lives of Percy Shelley, Byron and Polidori. Well worth experiencing.

A great situation. Here are Byron and his girl friend Camille, Shelley and his wife, or rather his girl friend, and Dr. Polidori. All come together on a haunted evening and agree to dream up ghost stories. Poor Polidori tried, but his effort stank. Byron put in a bit more effort and talent and incorporated it into the introduction into a later, longer work. Or was that Shelley? I get them mixed up. The most important thing to come out of that summer was Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus."

Well, it's understandable. It was a time when science was flexing its technological muscles during the industrial revolution, and theology was coming under rational scrutiny, which is always bad for theology. Within a few years there would be a virtual revolution underway. Andrew Dickson White's "The Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom," Madame Blavatsky, a kind of séance movement, in which lots of celebrities joined, including Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle and Houdini's widow.

The question at the time wasn't so much, "What can science do?" as, "What can science NOT do?" It is utterly fascinating to wonder what went on during that summer. Lord Byron was a manic-depressive (vide "Touched With Fire" by Kay R. Jameson). Shelly was effete and almost a semi-mystic. Camille, I don't know anything about. Mary Shelley was the daughter of William Godwin, who had been inspired by the French revolution to write "Enquiry Concerning Social Justice" in 1793. He was kind of a pre-Marxist and believed the world was moving towards a perfect condition in which government would be unnecessary. (He got most of his notions from the Marquis de Condorcet who, ironically, was hiding from the revolutionary extremists who wanted to cut off his head for advocating such counter-revolutionary ideas as the abolition of the death penalty.)

It's a terrific situation, and Ken Russel, through an excess of self indulgence, doesn't get the job done. What we see is at the same time boring, shocking, and irrelevant. I won't go on about this. The acting is okay, but everything else except the sets and photography are dismissible. The party guests drink wine laced with laudanum, an opiate, and then have horrifying hallucinations. When was the last time an opiate user experienced anything but pleasant, imaginative reveries and transient euphoria?

Russel has people crawling around in the mud, eating rats, doing the vampire thing (how did that sneak in?), arguing and fighting with each other, and not having a good time at all. Jeeze, I'd never go to a party like that. (Been to too many already.) Natasha Richardson looks good and acts good, as always. I don't know why, with her talent, she didn't move farther up the ladder. Perhaps it's because she is merely attractive instead of drop-dead gorgeous thanks to fabulously expensive dentists. She put in a turn on one of those Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series that was truly memorable. Sands looks properly wimpy as Shelley, a monstrously talented poet with colossal legs of clay. Nobody seems to know much about Camille, so it's okay that she looks like one of those black-and-blue Tijuana hookers with slightly jellied flesh. Actually I wouldn't mind biting her throat with my incisors myself.

But, all seriousness aside, this is a ghastly movie. It's not fun at all. Boiled down, it's hardly a narrative, but rather a succession of increasingly revolting images -- of cockroaches, blood, rats. A bit of orgiastic sex might have saved it, but there's very little of that. I can't imagine to whom this movie is designed to appeal. What does the word "depraved" mean?

Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) throws a party like no one else! Gathering his friends, including the future author of FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson), Byron sets out to have a night of haunts and fear. To get things started, everyone imbibes laudanum infused wine. This results in their spending an evening of hallucinations and deepening states of terror.

Director Ken Russell shows his knack for presenting narcosis on screen, treating us to several nightmarish images and a heavy, foreboding atmosphere. GOTHIC has many memorable scenes, including the randy suit of armor, the thing in the coach, and the "look into my eyes" scene. Fans of Mr. Russell's other work will want to add this to their watchlist...