As we all know, there have been multiple attempts to pull the Universal Horror Monsters out of the closet over the past decade and start playing with them again. Sometimes, like in the case of Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, it works out. Other times, there are adaptations like 2017’s The Mummy. Something that not even Tom Cruise could save, no matter how fast he ran. But in the early to mid-’90s, we were this close to a full-blown renaissance of the monsters of old, reimagined as big-budget operatic tales meant to be revered by scholars and horror fans across the world. Fresh on the fancy heels of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, famed movie maker Francis Ford Coppola received a script for another classic monster tale that could have been the start of a whole new era. It wasn’t. Instead it ended up being ridiculed by many critics and even its own script writers, with one of them even dubbing it “the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” Despite Robert De Niro, a script closer to its original source material than any other before it, and a $45 million budget to play with, today’s film ended up swimming with electric eels in a vat full of amniotic fluid hovering above the stage in an apparatus lovingly referred to as “the scrotum” by those on set . This is the story of what happened to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
It proves to be very difficult to find any information about writer Steph Lady, their ambition or thoughts while writing the original script adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. After all these years, the writer only has one other produced script to their name. You guessed it! Eddie Murphy’s 1998 remake of Doctor Dolittle. Regardless, Lady penned the initial screenplay adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, focusing on its gothic, philosophical core. Victor Frankenstein’s obsessive quest to conquer death, triggered by his mother’s death during child birth, and the tragic consequences of man attempting to play God. The script emphasized poignant tragedy and faithfulness to the novel’s themes of ambition, isolation, and hubris, avoiding the campy horror of earlier Universal adaptations. The script was then sold to Francis Ford Coppola and his company, American Zoetrope. It would make sense, then, that Coppola would direct himself, as he had just completed a successful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992. He must have been tired from all that bloodsucking and Gary Oldman’s method acting, however, because he passed and elected to executive produce instead.
The Godfather director made it known that the project would star no other name than Robert De Niro as the monster himself. TriStar Productions would come on board as a parent studio to the project. Long before he took the reins on Marvel’s Thor in 2011, director Kenneth Branagh was known for both directing and acting in Shakespearean-focused fare. He directed and starred in Much Ado About Nothing just the year before. As Branagh joined this maiden voyage as both lead actor and director, he brought with him famed writer Frank Darabont, fresh off the success of The Shawshank Redemption to go to work on Lady’s script. Piggybacking off of Lady, the goal from here on out would be to make the most faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original work that there had ever been before. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel had produced a wealth of adaptations spanning back to even before any of the Golden Girls were born. The first film adaptation goes all the way back to the 1910 silent short film Frankenstein. Since then, there had been over a mind-boggling SIXTY adaptations of the story on film by the time we reached the mid-’90s. None of which remained very dutiful to the book that spawned them. The production made its objective clear by literally titling the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as eschewing characters and storylines that other adaptations had made popular, such as Frankenstein having a hunchback assistant.
The pages of the novel still lacked explanation around certain things the audience would expect to see, such as the creation of the monster itself. The production also chose to make several departures in the name of telling the tale in a contemporary fashion, starting with the character of Victor Frankenstein. Whereas he’s been portrayed as a madman in the book, the writers felt the need to instead portray him as a “dangerously sane” romantic. For the supporting roles, they felt as though other adaptations had merely treated the characters around Frankenstein as caricatures. Hence the casting of the always-memorable Helena Bonham Carter in the role of Elizabeth. Cherie Lunghi took on the role of Victor’s mother, with the casting of his good friend Henry going to Tom Hulce, who portrayed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Amadeus a decade prior. Aidan Quinn plays Walton in a bookend role in the film and a sympathetic ear for Victor to tell his story to. You’ll also notice a litany of talented character actors such as the great Ian Holm as Victor’s father and John Cleese as Professor Waldman.
Shooting began during spooky season in October of 1993, mostly in the UK (something Branagh demanded before he’d even agree to work on the film), with a week of shooting in the Swiss Alps to depict what they couldn’t recreate in the studio: the Arctic. Principal photography was mainly done at London’s Shepperton Studios. Branagh preferred to shoot as much as possible of Frankenstein in the studio rather than on location so that they could control the elements. In doing so, they ended up crafting some of the most complex sets England had ever seen, consisting of seven sound stages, five major sets, and over half a dozen smaller interiors that took about ten months to put together before cameras even rolled. This included constructing three full-sized ships measuring 100 feet long and 23 feet wide, as well as smaller models.
Over the course of the following sixteen weeks of production, it finally came time for the creation of the quote-unquote monster. For this moment, Branagh had a picture in his mind of parents being horrified by their own baby as it left the womb and leaving it to crawl around on its own. Which, in itself, is a thought that makes me want to call a therapist for both of us. But in this moment, it led him to crafting a process for the birth of the creature that is purposefully full of explicitly sexual imagery. As a matter of fact, in Branagh’s own book of the making of the film, he mentions the word erotic about 5000 times.
They purposefully made the creation of Frankenstein feel more like a birth. Apparently when the miracle of life takes place between two men, it means De Niro and Branagh fumbling around in mystery fluid in a scene that resembles the world’s worst WCW Nitro main event of all time. A mystery fluid that we know includes amniotic fluid from pregnant women because we were forced to watch them collect it. It’s a moment Branagh says we’re supposed to get a “voyeuristic thrill” from and to that, I say, absolutely not, Ken.
Moving on, because we really badly want to now… having De Niro as the creature made it an easy decision to again stick closer to the book. He made the character feel a bit more human and educated than he’d been portrayed in a lot of other adaptations. Which worked because they had to do everything possible to make people forget about the Boris Karloff adaptations and recreate the character on their own terms. They kept the creature the same height as De Niro but wanted to keep him unnaturally strong. The makeup/creature design team, led by Daniel Parker, crafted the makeup around the ability for De Niro to emote and for the pain in his eyes to be ever-present. They studied morticians’ manuals and even experimented with sewing various animal skins purchased from a butcher to see how they looked and responded on camera. Throughout the process they went back and forth to New York to get De Niro’s thoughts and incorporate his ideas. Once an idea was settled on and the molds and various equipment pieces were being created, De Niro was forced to stay in the exact shape he was in for eight months to make ensure the molds still fit during production. In an effort to make it seem like the creature was healing as the film went on, this was constantly evolving throughout filming. De Niro’s full-body prosthetic and makeup took as long as ten hours to apply each day on set in a role that at one point also had him swimming in below freezing water in the alps.
12 Monkeys’ cinematographer Roger Pratt was brought on board to help craft a stylized gothic visual scheme full of dramatic lighting and shadows. Though it was an obvious period piece, instead of focusing on minute details at all times, the crew focused instead on making sure the environment reflected the emotions of the film. Victor’s home was bright and spacious, while the landscape of Ingolstadt was dark and depressing. Academy Award-winning costume designer James Acheson created over a hundred original costumes for the ball at the Frankenstein mansion, as well as the peasants and rotting corpses over in skanky Ingolstadt. For the sounds of Frankenstein, frequent Branagh collaborator Patrick Doyle was brought on as composer. Doyle claims he was in tears on the airplane while reading the script for the first time and knew he wanted to give the film a big, operatic score to match those feelings he’d felt on Delta that day.
Frankenstein was released in theaters on November 4, 1994 and would take in over $11 million in its opening weekend on its way to only $22 million in the U.S. and Canada total. Overseas sales helped tremendously and carried the film to a worldwide gross of $112 million against its budget of $45 million. Not a failure, but not exactly a barn burner either. Turns out general audiences weren’t all that excited about Branagh’s erotic fluid wrestling. Critics weren’t either. Some found De Niro as the creature to be too distracting, while others felt like it was a big, silly mess of a film altogether. There were those who appreciated the almost hilariously dramatic overacting and gothic whimsy of it all. But for all of Branagh’s bluster, Frankenstein wasn’t being taken very seriously by critics or audiences. And definitely not by writers Frank Darabont and Steph Lady. Lady called the film “a shocking disappointment” and blamed specifically Kenneth Branagh’s “runaway ego” for the debacle. Darabont said of the project that it was “the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” He said it was the most he had ever had his ass kicked as a screenwriter and was dumbfounded at why Branagh insisted on taking a subtle, patient movie and turning it into a loud, obnoxious production. He insists that Branagh deserves any praise or criticism for the film because it was his and his alone.
The movie ended up on its fair share of “worst of the year” lists but, hey, it didn’t win any Razzies. Daniel Parker and company were even nominated for “Best Makeup” at the Academy Awards. Bafflingly, a video game adaptation of the movie was released on Super Nintendo and Sega. In the game, you play as the creature, swatting away ignorant townsfolk with a stick while you hunt for Victor because they used to make video games out of anything!
You could call Frankenstein overambitious. Or you could make an argument that it’s the result of a director high on his own supply. To hear Branagh talk about the production with highbrow thoughts at every turn is quite different from experiencing the film yourself. Whether it’s Frankenstein declaring “say my name” twenty friggin’ times in a row while resurrected Bonham Carter decides she’d rather die a second time than deal with any of this or the never-ending shots of best friends running excitedly at each other and over-acting like coked-out hyenas. It’s just a weird movie, man. And that… is what happened to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
A couple of the previous episodes of this show can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
