Haunted Summer [VHS]
by Ivan Passer
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Alex Winter, Alice Krige, Eric Stoltz, Laura Dern, Philip AnglimDirector: Ivan Passer
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 106 minutes
Release Date: 1994-12-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Media Home Video
Studio: Media Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Haunted Summer [VHS]
Movie Review: My favorite Mary Shelley film
Summary: 4 Stars
I've seen almost every movie made (there are quite a few) about the summer of 1816, and the most famous literary house party in history. This one is the best. Lord Byron is superbly portrayed by Philip Anglim, whose dark and brooding "Satanic majesty" also shows us the vulnerable, heartbroken man behind the cynic's mask. Eric Stolz' Shelley is a child of light, a perfect Sixties hippie, a "man of testicle" whose radical politics, open sexuality and easy acceptance of feminism put him centuries ahead of his time. Alice Krige renders a Mary who is the Mary Shelley of her biographers, Shelley's muse--serene, lovely, self-possessed. (My only quibble with the casting is that Krige, lovely and talented as she is, is still not convincing as a 19 year old, which is what Mary was when she sat down to write "Frankenstein".)
Which brings me to the one serious--nearly fatal--flaw of this movie. There is not even a hint of the famous night of June 16, when Byron challenged everyone to write ghost stories and Mary was inspired to write "Frankenstein". From that night we got two of the most enduring creatures of horror in English literature: the Frankenstein monster, and the vampire. John Polidori, who here gets the ONLY honest treatment of him I've ever seen on film, was Byron's personal physician. When Byron abandoned his "ghost story" after ten paragraphs, Polidori took it up, completely rewrote it, and reinvented the vampire in Byron's image. "The Vampyre" was published several years after "Frankenstein", and became immensely popular. It influenced all subsequent ideas about vampires--the dark, brooding Byronic aristocrat who seduces women is based on Byron himself.
That night of June 16, when the challenge was issued, should have been in this movie. It forms the whole basis of Mary Shelley's enduring fame; it gave us the vampire we know today. There is no reason to have left it out. It means there is no context to this movie, no way to assess the lasting importance of the ideas that these five were dealing with. The radical politics, the shared educational philosophy, the debate over whether evil exists and whether man is innately good, coupled with the personal issues of pregnancy and abandonment highlighted in this film, were all part of the mix that went into "Frankenstein". But unless those issues are tied to the art that expressed them, the film sort of flounders around without a point. Why should we care about these people? What made them so important? We get a couple of snippets of Byron and Shelley's poetry, but nothing whatsoever of "Frankenstein". The novel is never mentioned in the movie, and only referred to in one caption at the end (complete with the usual error of calling the Monster by his creator's name). No doubt the director and writer assumed their viewers would be as familiar with the background of "Frankenstein" as they were; unfortunately, I don't think that was the case.
Matters are not helped by a subplot involving opium which is, IMO, just silly. Ignore it, and listen instead to the extemporare poetry, the trips to the lake, the table talk between two of the greatest poets in the English language.
If you are at all familiar or interested in these immortals, this is a great and interesting film. See it. Read their books. Check out their legacies:
Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)
Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
The Vampyre (Forgotten Books)
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