FRANKENSTEIN (1984)
TV-Movie
Article 4899 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-13-2015
Directed by James Ormerod
Featuring Robert Powell, David Warner, Carrie Fisher
Country: UK / USA
What it is: You know the story.

Dr. Frankenstein creates a creature, which then escapes, but returns to haunt him.

It’s getting so that I rather dread covering movies like this; the story of Frankenstein has been done so many times that I sometimes wonder if it’s possible to come up with a fresh way of approaching the material. Furthermore, this one is a TV-Movie that looks like a TV-Movie; it feels flat and is largely devoid of atmosphere. It has a decent cast, but a weak script; it borrows some of its story from the original novel, other parts are borrowed from earlier cinematic versions of the story, and for the most part, what original touches it adds to the mix are quite bad. About the only new touch that I really liked was that the monster finds himself confusing his creator with God, but the script as written makes very clumsy use of this concept. Much as I like David Warner as an actor, I wouldn’t have cast him as the Creature; he has a good face for it, but the role requires touches of pathos that don’t really play to the actor’s strengths. The acting is mostly acceptable, but gives in to melodramatic scene-chewing on occasion. The end result is a forgettable take on the classic tale.