Northanger Abbey (1986)

Northanger Abbey (1986)
by Giles Foster

Northanger Abbey (1986)
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VHS Tape Cover Information

Actor: Geoffrey Chater, Googie Withers, Katharine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Robert Hardy
Director: Giles Foster
Cinematographer: Nat Crosby
Editor: Robin Sales
Producer: Louis Marks
Writer: Jane Austen
Writer: Maggie Wadey
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 88 minutes
Release Date: 1998-11-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Bfs Entertainment
Studio: Bfs Entertainment

VHS Movie Reviews of Northanger Abbey (1986)

Movie Review: Not worth the time to watch
Summary: 2 Stars

Sorry, I know this was shot in 1986, but I don't remember the rest of the films shot that year being THIS technically terrible. The bad effects and film quality are so distracting, it actually makes the movie almost laughable. Not a good quality in any film, let alone a period piece.

I'm not as familiar with this Jane Austen work as some of her others, but if her leading lady is as dreamy as portrayed here with so much internal fantasizing going on, you're going to need a special director to pull it off. I assume she was meant to be portrayed as highly creative, idealistic, unprepared for any sort of reality - instead she seems like a ridiculous, immature twit - or maybe that was the acting. I'd also be surprised if JA created her characters with so little depth or provided them with short, insipid text.

Honestly, I'd try another version. I'm glad there are some because I'd written this one off. Not worth the money, or even the time, to watch.

Summary of Northanger Abbey (1986)

Jane Austen goes Gothic in this darkly dramatic rendering of her Northanger Abbey, a novel that wasn't published until after her early and sudden death. Austen pokes fun at her peers in this story, in which her heroine, Catherine Morland (Katharine Schlesinger), is hopelessly addicted to macabre romance novels that wreak havoc on her imagination. She comes from a large, but loving family, and she's taken, as a companion, to the decadent society of Bath. There, she meets the duplicitous Thorpe siblings, Isabella (Cassie Stuart) and John (Jonathan Coy), and the kindly Tilney sister and brother, Eleanor (Ingrid Lacey) and Henry (Peter Firth). The Tilneys also have an elder brother, the snobbish soldier Frederick (Greg Hicks), and an oddly eerie father, General Tilney (Robert Hardy). Needless to say, all this provides plenty of fodder for fantasies and Catherine comes up with many, even imagining all sorts of evils on a visit to the Tilney family home, Northanger Abbey. The soundtrack is more than a little melodramatic, but it's best to think of it as a humorous touch rather than a serious, punctuating one. --N.F. Mendoza

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