Ken Russell’s exercise in. horror

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 7

Ken Russell’s exercise in. horror

hans petrovk

GOTHIC Directed by Ken Russell Screenplay by Stephen Volk They make us what we were not — what they will, And shake us with the vision that’s gone by, The dread of vanish’d shadows — Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? — What are they? Creations of the mind! The mind can make Substance... —“The Dream,” Byron, 1816. What really happened during that week-end in 1816 at the Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lac Leman, near Geneva, where the poet, Shelley, and his young lover, Mary Godwin, joined, the exiled Lord Byron to tell ghost stories? “Gothic” (Metro) will not really tell you, but Ken Russell’s exotic fantasy certainly weaves a weird and wonderful web of happenings around this situation, which has been waiting for a long time for someone to make a film about it. Stephen Volk, who wrote the original screenplay, puts these extraordinary, highly talented people in an ideal setting for a wild week-end of raving, drinking, fornicating and getting stoned. This was the party at which Mary (later Mary

Wollstonecraft Shelley) first told the outline of her horror classic, “Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus." On the same night another house guest, Byron’s foppish friend and physician, Dr Polidori, came up with an odd tale about a skull-headed lady who goes around peering through keyholes, named “The Vampyre,” which is claimed by some to be a precursor to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Little is really known about what occurred at this week-end, but out of it came two of the most potent characters of modern horror mythology. Allusions to earlier Frankenstein films abound throughout “Gothic.” As Shelley (Julian Sands) and Mary (Natasha Richardson) approach the grim villa in pelting rain, they may well be Brad and Janice reaching the haunted mansion of the modernday Dr Frankenfurter. The door is opened by a Riff-Raff-like butler, and standing on top of the staircase, to welcome them, is Byron (Gabriel Byrne) — or is it the good doctor, or Count Dracula? On second glance, there are shades of another poet: could it be Oscar Wilde?

The young couple are accompanied by Mary’s half-sister, Claire (Myriam Cyr), who has

the pop-eyes, dimpled chin and wild hairdo of Elsa Lanchester in “The Bride of Frankenstein.” It is Claire’s infatuation with Byron that has brought them to this imposing mansion.

Byron is characteristically broody and magnetic, introducing Polidori (Timothy Spall) with cruel dismissiveness.

It is clearly not a demure dinner party. Mary is worried about her relationship with the sexually enigmatic Shelley. Shelley, hypochondriac and addicted to opium, is splitting his affections between Mary and the voluptuous Claire. Claire, meanwhile, is pursuing the manipulative Byron. Byron, having just rejected his lover, Dr Polidori, is attracted to only Shelley. The favourite tipple of the group is laudanum, a tincture of opium usually drunk drop by drop in water. Shelley downs it by the glass, with results that can be imagined.

Russell shows him prancing naked on the roof of the villa in the middle of a thunderstorm, exulting in lightning as the motive force of the universe.

Volk is convinced that Mary based the character of Frankenstein on Shelley, who was drawn to the modern scientific ideas of his age — to theories of galvanism and the reanimation of corpses.

This period was at a crossroads of religion and science. Theology was being trampled by the Industrial Revolution. Man was rejecting God, saying he was in control of his own destiny now.

The likes of such intellectual tearaways as Byron, Shelley and Godwin could espouse themselves as free-thinkers. It is no accident that Mary’s Gothic novel, “Frankenstein,” with its fading supernatural overtones, is now seen as a forerunner of modern-day science fiction.

Anyway, back to the party. Inspired by lightning, Byron decides he wants to create not merely a ghost story, but an actual ghost. The group holds a seance around the skull of a monk who had sold his soul, in the best Gothic tradition, to the devil, bringing to life their deepest fears: Byron’s loathing of leeches; Shelley’s hor-

ror of being buried alive, and of breasts with eyes in them; Mary’s fear of finding out what she would have to give to bring back to life her stillborn child; and Polidori’s fear of God. It is these terrors that then haunt the villa for one wild night. If nothing else, Russell is visually striking, and in “Gothic,” Volk has given him every conceivable situation to set up and play with. The Villa Deodati has endless passages, attics and dungeons galore. Things in the cellar mutter and drip slime, doors creak, chains rattle.

Russell has managed to successfully pull off in this setting what Stanley Kubrick tried so hard, but failed, to do in “The Shining.” One need not worry that what happens in ‘Gothic” may not be historically true, Russell has □rilliantly used it as a /ehicle for his excesses, in his previous film, ‘Crimes of Passion,” he exploited wayward sex Jose to its limits. This :ime, he does much the same with passions in a Oothic setting;

As usual with Russell’s films, some people may oe discomfited by his imagery. It helps, therefore, to have a sense of numour, for cackling hilarity and madness is what his films are all about.