Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

 "This is not the end of the world."

Some films are very good, so you enjoy them. Some films are pants, so you dontr. This film fits into an interesting third category: the interesting failure. And this is one of those: Roger Corman's first film in twenty years and one which is, although right up his street- a mainly period adaptation of a novel by serious science fiction author Brian Aldiss featuring both interesting ideas around time travel and a postmodern riff on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein featuring the lady herself... er, shagging John Hurt's hero. Er, yes.

The film starts in the (this being 1990) far fututre of 2031, where there are no longer any Brazilian rainforests and KITT from Knight Rider exists, thus predicting both the disgusting Jair Bolsonaroand self-driving cars. If only cars in 2022 looked so cool.

Anyway, John Hurt is maverick scientist Joe Buchanan, selling out his country to the Yankee dollar, tut tut, and risking tim slip side effects in his attempt to sell a superweapon to the US military. He fails, but is propelled back in time to 1817, where he meets not only Mary Shelley but Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, both of whom are played for laughs, at Lake Diodati, in an early Nineteenth Century Switzerland where language differences are airily handwaved. There's all sorts of what I rather suspect are clever subtexts about the meaning of "unbound" from the novel that are never quite explored and which remain unclear.

John Hurt is superb. He cannot be otherwise, Bridget Fonda is adequate, as ever. Raul Julia chews the scenery with his usual class. Yet something doesn't quite work. Nevertheless, the film is far from dull.