Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

"Frankenstein: The True Story" is what happens when a literary adaptation is allowed to run riot over dramatic elements. Christopher Isherwood is a highly respected writer, but someone should have stopped him from this flaccid reverie only partially based on Mary Shelley's story.During the course of the 3-hour version of this TV movie, you can catch the author making heavy-handed references to "Pygmalion," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "The Hands of Orlac," "Tales of Hoffmann," and "Fu Manchu" among others. It almost turns into a parlor game to catch the petty thefts from other sources.Perhaps the whole thing might have gone better with another director. I've never seen a Jack Smight movie without feeling that he's somehow fumbled it, slack rhythms and the camera often in the wrong place. This too feels like a misfire. Pyrotechnics and lava lamp effects notwithstanding, the great set pieces are uniformly feeble. It's like he doesn't shoot the story, but shoots around it.Smight certainly gets bad performances out of well-remembered actors. James Mason is helplessly inadequate trying to convey the emotion of terror. Agnes Moorehead is over the top, Michael Wilding produces his dazed smile and little more, Margaret Leighton is actively embarrassing, Sir John Gielgud perfunctory and Sir Ralph Richardson's blind hermit is perhaps the worst performance of his film career.I suppose it's not possible to stage the love triangle of Victor Frankenstein, the girl he wants to marry and the male monster he creates without raising an eyebrow from time to time, but this retelling of the tale strongly evokes the sexual ambiguities of Isherwood's "Cabaret." The monster is played not by a hulk but by a hunk, a soulful young stud who loves Mozart opera. The first meeting of Frankenstein and his monster plays like a pickup. The character of Dr. Polidori is openly contemptuous of "mere" women, and it is he, not the monster, who disrupts Victor's wedding night. Generally women come off very badly, the older ones caricatures of old bags, and the younger ones annoying, even nightmarish, in their sexual demands.Despite the starriness of the supporting cast, this film is merely a curiosity. The famous Karloff/Whale version remains the first among equals, and the Oscarsson/Floyd "Terror of Frankenstein" conveys the book the best among the color versions.Unfortunately, Mel Brooks actually gets closer to Mary Shelley's vision than this film does. Only for completists.

What can you say about one of the best TV movies ever made? I want to apologize in advance because I wanted to talk about the novel, which although I read just a few short years ago – my memory is failing so I apologize in advance for inaccuracies. First of all, this has to be one of the greatest stories ever written. It's just so rich in themes, and I think when someone takes the novel on, the closer they adhere to Shelley – the better. The clichéd Frankenstein's creature – the lumbering, mindless killer – just can't hack it on a thematic level. This version's creature is not exactly verbose, but his emotions and feelings toward his creator are never in doubt, and vice-versa. To be honest, the novel was far from perfect, and curiously gave the creature a first-person dialogue in many chapters. In lieu of this, the novel I think begs to be adapted to the cinema because its premise is so strong – and the drama alone between Victor Frankenstein and his tragic creation effects a lot of dynamism. The only problem I had with the adaptation is Polidori. I don't recall him being in the novel (forgive me if I'm mistaken), and his motives are not that clear in the story. Hence, he really does feel like a fifth wheel in many respects. Witness the fact that he happens to be on the same ship bound for America as the Frankensteins. After the death of Prima, one could say that Polidori's role should come to an end. I think the disintegration of the creature in this version is a novelty, and I think it worked very well.

Beware - "Frankenstein: The True Story" - is not! In fact, after the film gets off to an intriguing start, it begins to unravel in almost comic fashion to the point where it seems to be a parody on the order of Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein". Seriously, how can you keep a straight face when that disembodied arm begins crawling across the room? And didn't Michael Sarrazin's Creature seem just a bit too poofy when he first came out of the fish tank? Here's a puzzler. When Clerval (David McCallum) and Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting) construct their body from the best of the remains of seven dead men, they agree that they need the 'perfect' brain to place in their creation. So when Clerval loses his heart medicine and dies, instead of cutting Clerval's brain out of his head to use in Frankie, why didn't he just bring Clerval back to life and eliminate the middleman?There's a lot of stuff like this that wasn't given much thought in coming up with this 'true story'. Like just how long WAS Victor asleep on that boat ride to the Arctic? Don't you think he might have been a Popsicle by the time they got there the same as every other ice encased object on board ship? And no Igor? - what's with that? Every good Frankenstein film needs an Igor. At least the movie manages to cram in the elements of all three original Frankenstein concepts, including those from 'Son' and 'Bride'. Speaking of which, I wonder what Jane Seymour thinks to herself these days when this picture is brought up? And she did it all with a straight face! Listen, if you ever heard the term abomination used in describing the original Frankenstein Monster, it's a term that seems perfectly suitable here, but in regard to the movie, not the Creature. That's not to say you shouldn't view it at least once just to get all that 'true story' stuff out of the way. It's worth it to see a notable cast that includes the stars already mentioned along with James Mason, Nicola Pagett, Michael Wilding and Agnes Moorehead, and then ask yourself, what were they thinking?

In the prologue, the script has James Mason, the actor, come out and show us Mary Shelley's grave and explain the origin of the story. Then the script more or less buries Shelley's original under a collapsing iceberg of additional myth, fantasy, and whimsical repetition.This TV miniseries comes in two parts. Part One isn't bad. Leonard Whiting is Victor Frankenstein. David MacCallum is his mentor in building the creature (Michael Sarazzin) using electrical energy and parts of cadavers.Christopher Isherwood was behind the script and -- well, I'll tell you. If this isn't an allegory I don't know what is. Sarazzin, as the creature, climbs from his gurney wearing only a few strips of bandages, his jewels prominent, his face and hair carefully groomed. "Beautiful!" gasps Frankenstein. And with a sweet and beckoning smile the creature repeats, "Beautiful." The two handsome young men get along quite well together, though to be sure one of them is rather dead. Frankenstein's fiancée, Elizabeth, turns pretty much into the beard. Oh, sure, he's engaged to her but we know in which direction his affections lie.But now our story turns a bit. The creature suffers the agonizing fate of every narcissist. He ages -- and quickly. And as he ages his features collapse and seem to rot, so that he shortly begins to look like Dorian Gray's portrait. (Another allegory there, which we needn't go into.) The creature, discovering that he's turned ugly and feeling bitter, begins to brood, and Frankenstein locks him up and begins to pursue his plans with Elizabeth again. The creature gets out and visits Frankenstein and Elizabeth at a fancy ball. He turns out to be one of those rowdy guests you find at every party -- smashing mirrors, windows, and furniture, and killing a few guests.Somewhere around here, Part One ended and Part Two began. Part Two was a mistake. The creature takes a back seat most of the time. Instead, enter Dr. Polidori (James Mason), no relation to the Polidori who shared that weekend with Shelley and the rest. Polidori informs Frankenstein that the BEST way to bring a fabricated body to life is by using chemicals, not electrical energy, and for a moment we expect them to begin arguing like two yentas over the back fence discussing a recipe.At any rate, Polidori enlists Frankenstein's help in creating a female body -- this time using HIS methods. She turns out to be Jane Seymour, which is a considerable improvement over Michael Sarazzin if you ask me, even though we don't get to see her wearing three or four bandages.There's a problem, however. If Frankenstein's monster was flawed in that it aged too quickly, Polidori's creature (whom Polidori names "Prima") turns out to be thoroughly cuckoo. She strangles a cat for no reason. Well, I guess there's ALWAYS a reason to strangle a cat, but some of her other behavior is just plain shocking. I forget most of the other things, but it doesn't matter. Seymour too interrupts a fancy ball, doing a charming, impromptu pas de seul.Now Victor Frankenstein begins to look upon Prima with more than the usual admiration a scientist feels for an invention. Who wouldn't? Elizabeth, now Frankenstein's bride, begins to get jealous -- and so does the original CREATURE, who wrenches off Seymour's head. What a dirty trick.They all wind up dead in the arctic. That includes Frankenstein's creature, although he's described as having an "iron body" impervious to cold and is shown to be immune to bullets too. But I guess he not only doesn't age well. He doesn't travel well either.The acting's not bad and the production values are good for TV. There are many cameos -- Gielgud, Wilding, Moorehead, Richardson, and others -- but the parts aren't substantial.It didn't really matter that the story didn't follow Mary Shelley's original very closely, although many of the issues it raised (science vs. theology) are still relevant. The main problem was that most of Part Two was unnecessary, almost redundant. In Part One Frankenstein invents a flawed male creature. In Part Two Polidori invents a flawed female creature. Almost everything between the end of Part One and the arctic climax could have been snipped out with little loss.Not a badly done movie, though. It's not trashy and it's not insulting. It's just without much significance. Worth seeing once.