FRANKENSTEIN - THE TRUE STORY (1973)

DIRECTED BY Jack Smight

SCREENPLAY BY Don Bachardy & Christopher Isherwood based on the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly

STARRING - Leonard Whiting as Dr. Victor Frankenstein,  James Mason as Dr. Polidori,  David McCallum as Dr. Henry Clerval,  Michael Sarrazin as The Creature,  Jane Seymour as Agatha/Prima,  Nicola Pagett as Elizabeth Fanshaw

PLOT - Following the death of his brother a young scientist -Victor Frankenstein - vows to discover the secret of life and death and conquer death itself for the benefit of mankind.

Falling in with Dr Henry Clerval an amoral doctor who has discovered a process to reanimate dead tissue, Frankenstein and Clerval embark on a quest to build a perfect man out of the body parts of the dead.

However Clerval dies from a heart attack and Frankenstein transplants his brain into the creature's body. Thus Frankenstein's creature is bought to life. 

At first then creature is both handsome and charming but eventually his physical condition begins to deteriorate until he is hideously deformed.

Fleeing from Frankenstein, the creature falls under the thrall of Dr Polidori an insane and evil scientist who has perfected his own methods of restoring the dead to life.

The creature wants a female to mate with and Polidori is all too happy to give him one, but what are Polidori's sinister motives and how do they involve Victor Frankenstein ?...

PERFORMANCES - Frankenstein - The True Story is a British produced two part miniseries that aired on American television in December 1973. 

Back in the 70's and 80's (particularly on US television) miniseries where a big deal. TV companies used to throw lots of money at these projects casting big name stars in a bid to draw in those all important ratings (probably the closest thing we get these days are some of the popular shows we get on streaming services like Netflix which again attract big stars to appear in them). 

As a result of this Frankenstein - The True Story has what TV guides of the time would have described as "an all star cast". True, the actual main leads - Leonard Whiting and Michael Sarazin weren't exactly household names but the supporting cast reads like a who's who of respected 'A list" actors of the time.

To further enforce this - some of these major stars only appear onscreen for a couple of minutes in small scale roles, the type of bit parts which would usually cast any old Tom, Dick or Harry as opposed to a big name. We get Sir John Gielgud (only one of THE most respected actors of his generation) playing a magistrate - he's onscreen for about two minutes max. We even get Tom "the best Doctor Who" Baker playing a sea captain for all of five minutes. It's crazy but also pretty damn cool.

Anyway, onto the main characters. Leonard Whiting gives us quite a different interpretation to the character of Victor Frankenstein than we're used to seeing. He's young, dashing and romantic - much more of a conventional hero than the usual mad scientist or cold villain that Frankenstein is normally portrayed as. In fact he doesn't even -technically - create the monster (that's down to Henry Clerval played by a wonderfully grumpy David McCallum), he merely "fine-tunes" the process (mainly because Clerval snuffs it before he gets a chance to finish the experiment).

Frankenstein's relationship with the creature is also very different to other versions we've seen. I don't think it's pushing it much to say that Frankenstein actually seems to be attracted to the creature, maybe not full on sexualy but there's DEFINITELY a strong gay subtext hovering not far below the surface.

The creature (at least initially) is a handsome and charming man, Frankenstein seems beguiled by him. So much so that it isn't until the creature begins to lose his looks that Frankenstein starts to become at first repulsed and then outright horrified by him. Even Polidori calls him out on this, at one point he makes the observation that Frankenstein only "lost interest" in the creature when he was no longer beautiful. The implications are clear and it does serve to make this version of Frankenstein come over as being extremely shallow.

Not only that but Frankenstein then seems to become sexualy attracted to the female creature Prima (Jane Seymour), who Polidori and Frankenstein co-create as a "mate" for the creature. He even KISSES her at one point (to be fair she instigates it, but I don't see him complaining very much), I mean...yes she's hot (she's 1970's Jane Seymour for crying out loud) but Frankenstein STITCHED HER TOGETHER FROM CORPSES !!!! Wouldn't that be a bit of a passion killer ? Basically this is a horny version of Frankenstein who can't keep it in his pants, it's an interesting take though and Whiting plays it well.

Michael Sarazin also offers a fresh new take on the creature. Instead of being hideous, he is (to begin with) a good looking guy. Despite having the brain of the curmudgeonly and bitter Clerval in his head he also has quite a friendly personality at first. He's sweet and naive and has a childlike innocence to him.

As the story progresses the creature's physical appearance starts to degenerate and he begins to look more and more like the walking corpse that we traditionally associate Frankenstein's monster with.

This has a profound effect on his personality - he goes from being happy-go-lucky to bitter and eventually murderous. We also see aspects of his original Clerval personality start to bleed though - at several points he mockingly calls Polidori "Polly Dolly" in the same sarcastic way Clerval used to. Once again this is a fresh and interesting new take on the traditional character.

The main villain of the piece is the aforementioned Dr. Polidori (James Mason), Polidori originally acted as Clerval's mentor and eventually blackmails Frankenstein into helping him. Mason plays the character with the same sense of suave menace that he gives to Straker in Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot.

Not only is Polidori an evil scientific genius with megalomaniacal tendencies, he also seems to have vaguely mystical abilities. At several points in the story he goes around hypnotising people like he's some sort of Jedi. All in all he's an interesting villain, James Mason was a class act.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Part of Polidori's twisted scheme is to use Prima's sexual allure to seduce prominent political figures with a view to assassinating them, thus destabilising the most powerful nations on the planet. He would have gotten away with it too if hadn't been for that meddling creature, who in a fit of anger rips off Prima's head with his bare hands.

There are several moments where the enraged creature kills people. Agatha - a young woman who the creature has developed feelings for is graphically run over by a horse and cart. Her head is used when Frankenstein and Polidori build Prima.

The creature ties Polidori to a ship's mast during a thunderstorm. Polidori is struck by lightning, killing him instantly. For some reason this also reduces his body to a skeleton. Maybe it was magic lightning...

There's a living severed arm left over from Clerval's early experiments. Frankenstein destroys it by pouring acid over it. We see it melt into a puddle of gore.

Frankenstein and the creature both die together in the Arctic. Crushed under an avalanche of ice. They embrace each other as they die, bringing thier relationship (and the homoerotic subtext) full circle.

SFX - Occasional moments of gore (severed heads, melting hands etc).

The main contender is the makeup for the creature's physical degeneration. The high forehead and thick brow evokes the classic Karloff look, whilst the rotting skin has elements of a zombie to it.

There's some pretty decent and traditional looking lab sets that evoke the Universal horror movies. Interestingly the creature in this version is not bought to life via electricity. Instead the "life giving" rays of the Sun are harnessed to give birth to the creature. Basically he's solar powered. I wonder if he leaves much of a carbon footprint...

RATING - This is a highly original take on a familiar story. The performances are all good, the concept is sound and despite it's long run time it's well paced and never drags for a moment. 

My only criticism is that by not making Frankenstein the originator of the life giving process (and also only being the co-creator of the two creatures) the importance of Victor Frankenstein is drastically reduced in what's supposed to be his own story. This seems to be an odd move in what's pushed as being the "true" story and seems to rob Victor Frankenstein of some agency.

That slight niggle aside this is still a good effort - 4 and a half rotting male model monsters out of 5.

ART - 

 Below - a newspaper advert for the TV premiere, and the front cover of the novelisation (yes they wrote a book adaptation of a film which was itself an adaptation of a book. I suppose in this instance though that the film WAS basically a completely different story to the original anyway, so a book version is probably fair enough.)