Classic Movie Review: Roger Corman's 'Frankenstein Unbound'

Frankenstein Unbound, where have you been all my life? How have I gone 30 years without experiencing your glorious insanity? Frankenstein Unbound is a 1990 sci-fi-time travel-horror movie from the gloriously diseased mind of Roger Corman. The film stars John Hurt as Buchanan, a modern day science millionaire who accidentally destroys time, leaving time unbound, if only for him and his future car. What? That's the plot!

Buchanan is thrust through the clouds in his silver 60's Batman inspired Camaro with K.I.T.T from Knight Rider powers, and lands in 1817 where he encounters Dr Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and author Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda). In this universe, Shelley’s Frankenstein was based on a true story you see. Trapped in the past, Buchanan encounters The Monster (Nick Brimble) and sets about trying to stop Victor from playing God a second time in order to make the Monster a bride.

Along the way, an inordinate amount of time is spent by Buchanan trying to stop the execution of an innocent woman we barely meet whose been accused of a murder clearly committed by the Monster. This bizarre and underwritten plot takes up nearly the entire middle section of Frankenstein Unbound and ends in almost comic futility with the girl’s death by hanging while Buchanan gets beaten up for the umpteenth time by the rube locals of this village.

On the bright side, when Victor is tossed into the lake and has a bizarre, poorly shot and borderline unwatchable dream sequence where he imagines himself as both creator and monster, wearing blackface for some reason, as the Doctor, not the Monster, Victor awakens to the sight of Mary Shelley. He decides, “screw the space time continuum” and proceeds to show Mary his car and even uses his car’s built in printer to print a copy of Mary’s next book. She’s not written yet, you see.

The two proceed to have a desperately unsexy-sexual encounter after Mary explains that while Lord Byron (Jason Patrick) and Percy Shelley (INXS singer Michael Hutchence, in glorious fop mode), preach free love, she practices it. Dear reader, I do adore the lovely Bridget Fonda but goodness me, I truly enjoyed giggling at the expense of her wonderfully terrible and quite slippery English accent. I can only imagine that Roger Corman decided voice coaches were not in the budget.

The plot takes a turn when Victor Frankenstein’s fiancee is murdered by the monster and Victor drafts Buchanan into his scheme to restore her to life as the Bride of Frankenstein. This is after some brilliantly terrible gory fight scenes that look like a terrible impression of the work of Tom Savini. Rubber chests are torn open, rubber heads are ripped from rubbery bodies, it’s all quite hilariously low rent and I was living for it.

Watching John Hurt toss his dignity to the wind as he attempted and failed to keep up with Raul Julia’s intense campiness is a lot of fun. My head canon for Frankenstein Unbound is that Roger Corman believed this was his shot at respectability, a period piece and auteurist masterwork that would transform his reputation. He hired real actors and raised the budget and this time people would have to take him seriously.

And yet, he still ended the movie by having John Hurt murder his approximation of Frankenstein with lasers that he controls using The Clapper. As in Clap On, Clap Off, The Clapper. The film doesn’t name check The Clapper but John Hurt does clap to fire his lasers so either Corman saw the product on TV and liked it or The Clapper was his vision of future technology and he was sadly unaware of its status as a laughingstock of late night TV products.

Frankenstein Unbound is only the second funniest Frankenstein movie on the Halloween 2020 edition of the Everyone is a Critic Movie Review Podcast. We’ve paired Frankenstein Unbound on its 30th Anniversary weekend with Mel Brooks’ glorious Frankenstein comedy, Young Frankenstein. Listen to the Everyone is a Critic Movie Review podcast on your favorite podcast app and follow the show on Twitter at @CriticsPod. Follow me on Twitter @PodcastSean.