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Rated: R; Genres: Drama, Horror; With: Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder
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Horror and schlock-for many viewers, the two words go together like Astaire and Rogers. Decades of exploitative trash featuring copulating teens dispatched by masked maniacs have all but wiped out the memory of a time when no, actually, that's wrong. Even White Zombie was originally subject to as much derision as any slasher flick. So much the better-respectability is something that no decent horror movie should stoop to. The makers of recent horror movies masquerading as prestige items-Merchant Ivory chillers, if you will-could learn a lot from Picasso's dictum that good taste is the chief enemy of creativity. These big-budget films boast Shakespearean actors (including such Merchant Ivory alums as Helena Bonham Carter and Anthony Hopkins) declaiming on fussily art-directed sets with cinematic artistes behind the camera. This week brings to video one such project, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994, Columbia TriStar, R, priced for rental), directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. The movie's direct antecedent, BRAM STOKER's DRACULA (1992, Columbia TriStar, R, $19.95), was directed by Francis Coppola, and Branagh's movie was made under Coppola's auspices. But while Branagh likes to flaunt his erudition, Dracula, for all its highfalutin airs, brings out the lusty vulgarian in Coppola. As in Merchant Ivory's A Room With a View, sexual repression is a big theme, but instead of prim Englishwomen fainting at the sight of blood, there's Winona Ryder gasping at erotic engravings and Sadie Frost enjoying her ravishment by a lupine Dracula (Gary Oldman). All of which confused Stoker fans-none of that stuff is in the book. With Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, once again the author's name is part of the title, and once again, it's a cheat. Branagh and screenwriters Steph Lady and Frank Darabont add a lot of back story, boost the romance, try to bolster the ''pioneering scientist'' theme by introducing such elements as acupuncture, and present a monster (Robert De Niro) who looks like a punch-drunk boxer after he's been tossed into a wheat thresher. Branagh, to his credit, doesn't shy away from gore, but for every disarming moment, there are at least three where he lays on the portent with a trowel. What really puts this movie in the Merchant Ivory realm, though, is its scrupulous high-mindedness. Older horror movies often merely suggested such issues as medical ethics and the nature versus nurture debate and were more effective as a result. By announcing, in effect, ''This isn't just another dumb carnage fest,'' Branagh ends up undercutting the primal power of his material. For all this, Branagh's recasting of the tale isn't nearly as egregious as director Franc Roddam's The Bride (1985, FoxVideo, PG-13, for rental only), which wallows in its pretensions, what with the fancy typestyle of the credits and the lush fruitiness of Maurice Jarre's score. Here, Frankenstein (Sting) concocts a mate for his creature (Clancy Brown, whose remarkable performance suggests a better movie), a ''bride'' seemingly assembled entirely from American corpses, without stitching-Jennifer Beals looks great and talks just like a Yale undergraduate. It's clear that Roddam was going for a gothic, Bronte- esque romance; what he got was a misshapen lump. The supposed cachet of The Doctor and the Devils (1985, FoxVideo, R, priced for rental) is derived from a 1940s Dylan Thomas-penned script. Actually, he could have more profitably spent his time drinking. It's a stodgy, unfocused ) variation on the true story of Burke and Hare -19th-century grave robbers and murderers who supply corpses to a surgeon. Director Freddie Francis, the cinematographer behind many great British thrillers, is not a big horror fan, and it shows. He's particularly detached here as he's under the impression that he's working with a ''literary property.'' As the murderers, Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea carry on like a couple of musical-comedy roustabouts, and Timothy Dalton's Dr. Rock is aptly named. But taking the high road doesn't always mean a muddle. The Company of Wolves (1984, LIVE, R, for rental only), directed by Interview With the Vampire's Neil Jordan from a script by Jordan and literary sorceress Angela Carter, has prestige, but thankfully, no politesse; Jordan and Carter are a couple of highbrows who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. From its very first image-a German shepherd sniffing a rotting doll in the woods-the film weaves a skein of poetry, brutality, wisdom, and humor as a young girl's dream generates tales within tales within tales, culminating in a wicked retelling of ''Little Red Riding Hood.'' Wolves' fantastical, scary universe is a place never visited by the other tony horror movies, which rarely do more than tart up their proper English drawing rooms with Halloween decorations. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: C+ Bram Stoker's Dracula: B- The Bride: C- The Doctor and the Devils: C- The Company of Wolves: A


Posted Apr 28, 1995
 

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