For a period in the late '80s and early '90s, Kenneth Branagh was heralded as Laurence Olivier's heir apparent, on stage and in film. Then came 1994's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and our country's love affair with Branagh came to an abrupt halt. Audiences began to realize that maybe Branagh wasn't the greatest actor in the world after all. Heck, he probably wasn't even the best actor (or writer) in his first marriage. Branagh went on to have a supremely checkered career littered with questionable choices and terrible movies, not unlike, you know, Laurence Olivier.
In his initial burst of critical acclaim, Branagh was hailed as Olivier's creative progeny, but by the time Robert De Niro's Creature in Frankenstein was lunging at Branagh's mad doc in slow motion like a WWE grappler leaping off the top rope to deliver a devastating body slam, Olivier was no doubt ready to rend his garment in anguish and cry out in a hilariously unconvincing Yiddish accent, "I hafff no son, creative or otherwise!" Yes, not even death can keep Olivier from overacting.
Frankenstein wasn't a career killer necessarily, but it helped put an end to Branagh's wonder boy status and strangled in its infancy a trend towards classy, highbrow adaptations of classic horror novels that kicked off with Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. These films flaunted their ambition and literary pedigree in their titles. Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were no garden-variety spookfests. No, these were serious, cerebral movies about hideous reanimated ghouls and immortal blood-sucking fiends for discriminating audiences who cared about books and interesting films. The horror movie had officially gone upscale. Yet by the time famous monsters like The Mummy and Dracula were reintroduced in The Mummy and Van Helsing, aspirations to art had been abandoned and popcorn escapism was again the order of the day.
Between the iconic 1931 film version of Frankenstein and Branagh's adaptation, the character of Frankenstein's Monster morphed from a figure of fright to a figure of fun. These days, Frankenstein's Monster belongs as much to comedy as horror. Popular culture is filled with comic variations on Mary Shelley's most famous creation. Even the name "Frankenstein" has taken on a comic air. Like Hitler, it can easily come off as unintentionally humorous in the wrong context. Just as it's hard not to giggle when John Cusack cheerily says "C'mon, Hitler. I'll buy you a glass of lemonade" in the historical drama Max, it's difficult to hear Branagh introduce himself as "Victor [pregnant pause] Frankenstein" and not think of Phil Hartman's monosyllabic monster hanging with like-minded souls Tonto and Tarzan or Brian Stack's Frankenstein wasting a minute of everyone's time on Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
These comic Frankensteins have little to do with the philosophical, cerebral creature in Shelley's book and a lot to do with the Boris Karloff classic. Branagh's adaptation distinguishes itself from the overflowing canon of Frankenstein movies in part by its fidelity to its source material. Here De Niro's creature suggests John Hurt in The Elephant Man more than Karloff. He's a gentle soul whose grotesque exterior hides a sophisticated mind and a very human yearning for affection and validation. Then the killing starts. Hey, nobody's perfect. As Aimee Mann could tell you, it's rare that you ever know what to expect from a guy made of corpses with bolts in his neck.
Branagh's version similarly deviates from the Universal Studios classic by retaining Shelley's original framing story, which finds the not-so-good Doctor running into an arctic exploration team headed by Aidan Quinn while searching for his woebegone creation in the frozen North. In these opening scenes, Branagh and Quinn strive to out-crazy each in a veritable Overacting Olympics.
The film then flashes back to Branagh's happy childhood as the beloved scion of a prominent doctor and an overly affectionate mother. "You are the handsomest, kindest, cleverest, wonderfullest boy in the whole world," mommy dearest assures her beloved baby boy as they wrestle around on the floor. Dr. Frankenstein, meet Dr. Freud. I suspect Branagh's mom might have whispered similar praise in his ear at an impressionable age. That might explain his curious need to film himself shirtless and wet as often as possible. Branagh's blissful idyll is interrupted, however, by the death of his mother during childbirth. A grief-crazed Branagh broods, "Oh mother. You should never have died. No one need ever die." This is what English majors might call "foreshadowing".
Mommy isn't the only familial-type figure toward which Branagh feels a queasy sexual attraction. Early in the film, he's introduced to the woman who will grow up to become Helena Bonham Carter and told "you must think of her as your own sister." Alas, Branagh has what might be deemed an Ozark conception of what siblinghood entails. It isn't long until the hormonal twosome become brother and sister with benefits.