Weird Wednesdays: Gothic

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Content warning: when dealing with the works of a provocateur, one must often discuss the unpleasantries of the world, in this case including suicide and miscarriages. To leave these out of this writing would be to not accurately represent the piece at hand, unpleasant though the subjects may be.

The pop culture zeitgeist is a funny thing. Sometimes studios will release dueling titles sharing big concepts like “big volcano movie” or “asteroid will destroy Earth” hoping to outdo each other, and occasionally you get something less commercially-minded but still curious in their almost hivemind-like conception. In the mid-’80s, there was a clear fascination with the legend of the Summer of 1816, wherein writers Mary Godwin (later to be Mary Shelley) and Percy Shelley visited the estate of Lord Byron, accompanied by Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont and Byron’s personal physician, Dr. John Polidori. The five of them were said to have placed a bet as to who could conjure the scariest tale, and after one long night of hedonistic madness, two stories survived the insanity: Dr. Polidori’s The Vampyre, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Legends of this night led to three films made in short succession on the topic, the first of which being 1986’s Gothic, from director Ken Russell.

Russell seems a perfect match for Gothic, a legendarily temperamental provocateur who loved to shock, with films like The Devils, and confound, often with surreal, sometimes phantasmagorical imagery as in Tommy. Occasionally he would combine both sensibilities in a title like Altered States, and through pure bombast find himself a mainstream success, an artist who will not be ignored. While I would argue that the aforementioned titles are all classics in their own way, Gothic nails the bombast without quite having the same impact as his finest work. What works best is the cast, starring Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, and Miriam Cyr as Claire Clairmont. Byrne looms large as a figure who fancies himself a legend, a Marquis de Sade for a new generation. He brings his guests to hold a seance around a human skull, explore their sexual curiosities, and partake in laudanum, setting in action the hallucinogenic horrors that await our authors. 

What makes or breaks the experience is the willingness of the viewer to join in on this ride. For me this is made easier by another chance to spend more time with the recently, tragically departed Julian Sands, who is as good here in full madness mode as he ever was, and I believe we as an audience were done a disservice in that there is no adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles where Sands played Lestat, a role that I argue was practically written for him. Watch the Warlock movies and tell me I’m wrong. Furthermore, seeing a younger Timothy Spall at his most unhinged is fascinating. Miriam Cyr, while good, gets the short end of things to do here, leaving Richardson to hold things down in a stoic and mature performance, often feeling like the only true “adult” in a party filled with maniacs, despite having partaken in the same opiate as everyone else.

To describe the plot itself would feel more like a list of things as they happen. Percy ends up naked on the roof. The friends play hide and seek in the huge estate. Polidori falls victim to his own guilt over his homosexuality, making multiple attempts on his own life. Mary finds a monster in the barn. Claire has a seizure, and it is also revealed that she is pregnant with Byron’s child, which she miscarries later after denying his request that she have an abortion. Mary also has visions of miscarriage, and frankly this plot thread feels like the most irresponsible in the movie. An all-male writer/director duo using something so devastating for cheap shocks rings hollow in a movie where the other horrors at hand are realistic visions of the classic painting The Nightmare and Percy’s ongoing fear of a woman with eyeballs in her breasts, which eventually we see played out in full. Eventually Mary has enough and crushes the seance skull, threatening to skewer Byron with a bone shard. Eventually the sun rises, everyone sobers up, and Mary Shelley goes on to essentially create the science-fiction genre, a tale of giving life to the dead, no doubt informed by a life filled with tragedy. Polidori died young (eventually by his own hand), as did Mary and Percy Shelley, several of their children, and Lord Byron himself. Only Claire Clairmont lived a long life, yet she remains the most tangential to this story in all tellings.

Gothic is a fascinating watch, to be sure, especially with a packed Weird Wednesday crowd on a well-preserved 35mm print. That said, it depends entirely on the viewer as to whether or not this is a brilliant, hallucinogenic trip into madness, or the equivalent of showing up to a party where all your friends have already taken their substances of choice while you choose to remain sober and watch over them to make sure nothing too stupid happens. I find myself in the middle, leaning slightly toward the positive side. While it’s not as profound as it thinks it is, the visuals are undeniably fascinating and watching a truly talented cast let go of all their inhibitions for 90 minutes is a true joy. For Ken Russell fans though, this feels like a half-measure to the truly brilliant Lair of the White Worm from 1988.

Also from 1988 are two other wildly different interpretations of this same concept. Ivan Passer’s Haunted Summer, a later release from The Cannon Group, better known for ninja movies, Chuck Norris flicks, and Charles Bronson shoot-’em-ups, finds itself leaning more towards romantic drama rather than hallucinogenic horror. Alice Krige is perfectly cast as Mary Shelley, Eric Stoltz as Percy less so, but passable. Bill and Ted/Freaked star Alex Winter plays wildly against type here as Dr. Polidori, Laura Dern stretches her more theatrical legs as Claire Clairmont, and Philip Anglim, a less familiar face, holds things down well as a more arrogant Byron. A perfectly inoffensive take on the material that does nothing particularly interesting visually, nor terribly new with the script, it feels not dissimilar to watching a bunch of fine American actors (save for South African Krige) put on their best British accents for what could have been a stage play. It’s perfectly fine, but perfectly forgettable.

1988 also gave audiences a Spanish production from director Gonzalo Suárez called Rowing with the Wind, arguably a more accomplished take on what Haunted Summer tried to accomplish. Featuring a young Hugh Grant as a magnificently arrogant Lord Byron, the same year that he also starred in Russell’s aforementioned Lair of the White Worm. This is also where he met Elizabeth Hurley as this film’s Claire. Lizzy McInnerny and Valentine Pelka play the Shelleys, and ​​José Luis Gómez plays Dr. Polidori. While the whole cast feels far more natural than that of Haunted Summer, it’s truly Hugh Grant’s show, a figure that looms large in the lives of the Shelleys. What sets this apart, besides some truly beautifully shot scenery, is that this tale extends beyond the bet, and the Summer of 1816 itself. We see the years after, as tragedy befalls Mary again and again, as she sees a vision of her infamous monster looming large, not treating Frankenstein as a callous reaction to miscarriage, but her seemingly endless misfortunes. Still more a slice of life than a traditional narrative, this is the only take on the material that truly gives these real people characteristics beyond the archetypes that define them historically, and while none of these are a definitive work, Rowing with the Wind is certainly the most pleasant surprise of the three.

Gothic, however, is the spark that started this fire, so to speak, and it is not to be missed, purely as a visual feast and a document of madness, a reminder that those who purport themselves to be of high society are just as susceptible to their base emotions as anyone else. We all live, we all die, we all love, we all create, and we all do stupid things. Ever so occasionally, one of us may be an equal mix of brilliant and lucky, leading us to create a work of art that changes the trajectory of literature forever.

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