IT'S ONLY ME, BUT:
A Customer Review by jmmckeown
THE ORIGINAL FRANKENSTEIN SHOULD OF LOOKED SO GOOD. GO STING. THE DOCTORS MAKE A BRIDE FOR FRANKENSTEIN. BUT THEN BECASUE SHE IS SO BEAUTIFUL, AND THE PERFECT WOMAN, THEY DO NOT GIVE HER TO HIM. DR. fRANKENSTEIN WANTS HER FOR HIMSELF. THIS CAUSED ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS/ANGER FOR THE BIG, UGLY FRANKENSTEIN. DR. FRANKENSTEIN LIVES TO REGRET BUILDING THE PERFECT WOMEN. JM
UNINTENTIONAL HILARITY OF THE HIGHEST ORDER IN THIS MISBEGOTTEN 80'S REMAKE.
A Customer Review by T. M. Anderson
The history of rock, from Elvis to Madonna, is a l-o-n-g parade of singers certain they have a date with destiny -- movie stardom -- but don't. Sting, ludicrously self-enamored and hammy, is Dr. Frankenstein in this remake of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, material which was handled more deliberately wittily in 1935.
On a stormy night in a lab, Sting twirls dials and pulls switches while his assistant Quentin Crisp, purses his lips as they try to animate a mate for monster Clancy Brown who, in chains, yells, "For me! For me!" Crisp, in his only line, snaps in reply, "Don't be impetuous!"
Things run horribly amok, so Sting and Crisp think their new female creation is dead -- but no, she only seems that way because she's played by Jennifer Beals, the media-created "star" of FLASHDANCE. Beals bats her mascaraed lashes -- which, for her, is positively animated -- to signify she has come to life, then spurns Brown, who brings down the lab and shuffles off into the stormy night. Before you can say, "Pygmalion," Sting, all Byronic and foppish, is staring at his comely creation, and muttering, "She might be made into anything." Tomorrow's Malcolm McDowell today, Sting flares, "I might make the new woman . . . a woman equal to ourselves!" Exactly.
Beals is soon walking stark naked around the castle, to the horror of maid Geraldine Page, who teaches her manners while pulling vinegary faces, undoubtedly because Sting is leaving so little scenery for her to chew. Beals becomes the belle of the ball thrown by countess Veruschka, at which she and Cary Elwes eye each other -- till Beals sees a kitty and lets fly with mad screeching. ("You never told me about cats," she explains to Sting. "I thought it was a tiny lion.")
Meanwhile, her soulmate, Frankenstein's monster, has been befriended by little David Rappaport, with whom he becomes a stellar circus attraction, but keeps longing for Beals and she, unknowingly, for him. When Rappaport dies, Brown tells Beals he's going far away and she says, "Like the Congo, you mean? Or like America?" He gives her a memento, Rappaport's souvenir medallion of Venice, where he dreamed of going. Now Beals spits at Sting, "I have a life of my own -- you didn't create me!" Replies Sting, "As a matter of fact, I did. I sewed you together out of corpses. And I can uncreate you, too."
Finally, overcome with lust, Sting chases Beals through the castle and leaps on her. You'll cheer when the monster hurls Sting to his death on the roof below, but don't miss the finale in which Beals rides a gondola in Venice, for it's cut in such an odd way that we think Brown at one time might have been shown riding with her. What a finish that would have made.