FRANKENSTEIN (2007)

Do we really need a new Frankenstein film ? Well, after seeing this new production made for British television you'll probably say no. To be honest, while I watched it I was quite enjoying it but I realised later that the pleasure I got was not because it was particularly enthralling but I was carried away doing that old fan thing of picking out all the in-jokes. Written and directed by Jed Mecurio, himself a former doctor, this modernised version of Mary Shelley's classic has Dr.Victoria Frankenstein injecting her dying son's DNA into some artificial flesh she is growing in the lab where she works for Dr.Pretorius. Her assistant is an oriental named E. Gore.......get the idea ? Yeah, that's about as subtle as it gets. Some of the scenes are nicely handled (I particularly liked the death of Dr.Waldman) but none of them are very original. The monster (played by Julian Beach) looks remarkably like a malignant E.T. and any thought I had that this was accidental was soon dispelled when the film blatantly rips of the garden shed scene from Spielberg's film. I admit to laughing out loud at the way Mecurio manages to explain why it becomes necessary to fit a bolt in the creature's neck. Performances are not noteworthy with Helen McCrory rather colourless as Frankenstein and the usually reliable Neil Pearson totally miscast as Dr.Waldman. If you are not a regular Frankie fan then you may really like it and if you are a follower of the genre you may be entertained just picking up on all the references and shouting at the screen that Kevin Connor and Luke Goss, amazingly, did it a lot better a few years back. Rating *