Gothic Is About the Night Frankenstein Was Born

By The Backlot

@backlotfriends

Five characters in period Regency costume seated at a long formal dining table in a grand English manor room, with oil portraits on the walls, gold candlesticks, and crystal decanters spread before them.

Everyone knows the story. In June 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin, who was 18 years old, were stuck at a Swiss villa during a volcanic winter. Byron proposed a ghost story contest. Mary Godwin started Frankenstein. Polidori started what became the first vampire story.

Ken Russell made a film about it. Critics called it Ken Russell wallowing in excess. What they did not realize: the wildest moment in the film, the one that sent Percy Shelley screaming from the room with a candle, was taken directly from Polidori's diary.

Screenwriter Stephen Volk told the BFI he read the real diaries and found many provocative elements already there. The 1816 night was already a Ken Russell film before Russell was born.

It is Natasha Richardson's film debut. It is free on Tubi.

Quick Facts

Gothic Is About the Night Frankenstein Was Born

DirectorKen Russell

CastGabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Myriam Cyr, Timothy Spall

GenreHorror

Release1987-02-27

Runtime88 min

Rated5.7/10

Instagram caption

The 1816 night that gave us Frankenstein and the vampire was already a Ken Russell film before Russell was born. Gothic is free on Tubi right now. #Gothic #Backlot

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Gothic (1986) is about the real night that gave us Frankenstein and the first vampire story. Critics called it excess. The wildest scene came from Polidori's diary. Free on Tubi. #Gothic #Backlot

Screenwriter Stephen Volk told the BFI he read the real diaries and found many provocative elements already there. The 1816 night was already a Ken Russell film before Russell was born.

It is Natasha Richardson's film debut. It is free on Tubi.