Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6793 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-20
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, German, Italian, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Synopsis
Horror story which relates to the events of one dark night in July 1816, when Lord Byron's houseguests Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori, both fuelled by gothic novels, pornography, lust, alcohol and laudanum, conceived 'Frankenstein' and the 'Vampyre' respectively.

Customer Reviews

Lake Acid
Considering he's supposed to be 'obsessed with the image' Ken Russell's 'Gothic' is notable for what it leaves to the imagination. Russell is no tyro-hack, he's seen 'the Haunting' and 'the Innocents' and knows an in-tune audience will pick up subtle terrors which may (or may not) be glowering in dark corners, or in the dull recess of a guilty imagination.
Is that a branch scraping the window, or something much more sinister trying to gain access? Russell's anti-thriller gives no answers; even in a rather disquieting epilogue, where the excesses of the previous night are 'explained'.

Briefly: Don Boyd at Virgin Vision had a literate Steven Volk script on his hands. The core plot had Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, his pregnant lover Claire, and a snide, repressed biographer, Dr. Polidori all spending a Saturday night at a mansion in Geneva.
Now, thought Don, let's see what happens if we give 'em loads of drugs, vats of wine, throw in a thunder-storm, a haunting, some scene-stealing goats, and let 'em go.
Now, who do we get to direct? Hmm...

Russell doesn't disappoint (he NEVER does, all his films, good or bad, have got something of interest in them) and his screeching imagination is at full throttle here.
It's a memorably furious and gloriously upsetting picture. You can feel that creepiness as the protagonists decide to hold a séance, to call their darkest fears to exist in this world. Russell has a field day illustrating in detail what a houseful of stoned, tortured geniuses are afraid of in the depths of their debasement, with their guard temporarily down.

One grotesque tableau follows another, but Russell never makes it easy for the rattled viewer.
As to what's real and what's not, that's left open, as is the interpretation at the end. Was it really suggestion and hallucination?
This reviewer isn't convinced, and Russell's leaving only the vaguest of clues.

It also works on a madcap comedy level: if you sit and think about what you've just seen, you WILL laugh, as with many of Russell's movies.

There are many redolent Russell repulses to rejoice in: a gory stigmata, a make-your-own-mind-up abortion, leeches, rats, incest, slime... In fact, if you can think of it, it's probably here; dowsed in Thomas Dolby's vivid score and competing like crazy with all the other fierce imagery.

There's an attractive funeral pyre sequence, filmed in the Lake District and involving Shelley.
In his autobiography, Russell indicates this is how he would ultimately like to be 'disposed' of. Good idea, better than cold earth; hope the weather's good so the 40 piece orchestra, assembled by Melvyn Bragg, don't get sodden, as they play Liszt or the Who at full blast!

Performances are good, particularly Gabriel Byrne as 'mad' Lord Byron and Natasha Richardson as proto-feminist Mary Shelley (and I'd love to hear the advice mum Vanessa Redgrave gave her about working with Russell. She may proclaim 'the Devils' to be her best film, but she never worked with him again!), and I don't think Julian Sands performance as Shelley is as bad as reported either. It's not great by any stretch, but I've seen worse and he IS playing a highly strung (out!?), self-suffering waif-in-a-storm, zonked out of his literary brains.

'Gothic' isn't Russell's best film, but it is a good one. Compared to the output of most modern Hollywood directors it's a masterpiece. It has wild imagery, some very tender and moving moments, but most of all it has an atmosphere of utter dread, created masterfully by a visionary who knows instinctively how to use light and shadow, sound and silence, and Richard Branson's money to make a loonie entertainment about some of the worlds most respected and austere literary figures, verbally and physically abusing each other, raising the dead, ripping off their clothes and writhing round in slime.

A Ken Russell film, could it be anything else?

Gothic fantasy
Paul Ess has described this movie in detail, so my take on it will be more impressionistic.
Gothic is shot as a dream: a nightmare. In this respect it works well, it seems like a dream, it's a series of images/episodes that seem to point to a common theme - the inspiration for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
It is a sumptuous production: fabulous stately home with doric columns, rich red drapes, roaring fires, wine, high ceilings, ornate furnishings, dark shadows: it's an orgy of opulence. Ken Russell is very good at 'orgies' in a cinematic context.
However, Byron did not seem very Byronesque in Gothic, and there was far too much blood (seems to be an obsession of Ken's in this movie!).
And just as the dreams and fantasies were coming to an end, and I was waiting for a conclusion, the movie comes to an abrupt termination - did Ken run out of cash or inspiration!?
So, it's a great romp but it's an unfinished symphony...
JP :)

Ken Russell take at the Frankenstein franchise
I saw this some twenty years ago, and haven't seen it since. It is a very particular vision of the famous night when Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley spent a night in a country estate in Switzerland and decided to see who wrote the scariest story. Mary Shelley, of course, wrote Frankenstein out of that night. There are other movies on this subject - I think Roger Corman made one. Gothic is what one expects from Ken Russell - lurid, grotesque, hallucinatory, over the top. It hasn't been seen a lot since then, it hasn't become one of his classics, but it is a good film for those who like this sort of thing. And there is the addition of seeing the then young and upcoming English actors playing this - Natasha Richardson (as Mary Shelley), Gabriel Byrne (Lord Byron), Julian Sands (Percy Shelley), Timothy Spall. The scene that have stand most in my memory: Myriam Cyr's nipples turning into eyes.