I’ve been looking forward to Victor Frankenstein, mostly due to the involvement of screenwriter Max Landis, but also because I have a serious affinity for the Mary Shelley story (I prefer it much more than its peer Dracula). This new incarnation takes a novel approach and turns Igor into an equal to Frankenstein. Most people think of Igor as Frankenstein’s hunchbacked assistant, but that’s due to an amalgamation of Fritz from the original Universal film and Bela Lugosi’s excellent character Ygor from Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. So it’s nice to see this character get a proper introduction into the Frankenstein mythos (excluding Marty Feldman’s Eye-gor).
As far as how the movie looks, I still feel mostly positive. The dialogue seems appropriately cheeky coming from Landis (there’s even a reverse Young Frankenstein quip in this), and this thing has a fantastic cast consisting of James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe, and Andrew Scott. I’m still unsure of the film’s tone and style though. There were some decidedly Van Helsing-ish bits of flighty action spattered about, and it doesn’t look like horror is what this is aiming for at all. Still, I can appreciate a return to the campier aspects of the Hammer films, and that’s what this looks to be going for.
But the real winner looks to be some of the effects and how they’re playfully used. That bit with the detached eyes in a tank? Very cool! And this movie has a zombie chimp trying to beat down Daniel Radcliffe. It’s really hard not to like that.
Victor Frankenstein hopes to reinvigorate the corpse of this story (seriously, what was the last good Frankenstein movie? Comments and forums, away!) on November 25th.
UPDATE: Here’s the UK trailer, which sells the movie a lot more straight. I like this trailer much more.
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