Director Ken Russell's Films are Nothing if Not Hallucinatory Hubris, Visually Stunning Excesses of Something Out of a Nightmare or Drug Induced. He Usually Ignores the Winds of Caution and Throws it Out and Makes Some Sensitive Viewers Throw Up, or At Least Throw Up Their Hands.Russell is Not an Easy Take, Not a Friendly Filmmaker and has Many Detractors. This One is No Exception. Bringing to Life, Stillborn Some Say, a Night of Real Life Eccentrics Like Byron Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Dr. Polidori.It is a Wild Weekend with Enough Bizarre Occurrences and Beholding Behavior to Fill a Gothic Novel. Hardly Any of it is Real and Comes from the Fertile Imaginations of the Party Goers. The Cast is Wonderfully Weird with Gabriel Byrne Leading the Pack of Misfits with Timothy Spall, Julian Sands, and Natasha Richardson. Thomas Dolby Provides the Intentionally Anachronistic Score.Overall, There is Nothing Quite Like a Ken Russell Film and His Fans will Probably Adore this One. Others Not So Much. It's Not Made for the Mainstream Who are Quick to Point Out How Much They Hate Him.It's Fascinating, Fun, Horrifying, Disgusting, Decadent, and Delightful. Especially If You Like to Wallow in the World of Drugs and Misanthropic Madness.

Should have been a comedy poking fun at the British class system, instead it's an all too earnest "film" about "important" historical personages. Tries to be dark and mysterious but the movie only achieves hokey and lame. Tries to invoke the heady words wrote by Byron and Shelley but the dialog comes off forced and overly fanciful. All the acting is so operatic, unnatural, rather than adding to character it makes everyone's performance appear hammy. The movie tries to display the free-love orgies Lord Byron and his pals supposedly engaged in, but tragically becomes the funniest part of the film. Just a lot of silly talk, uninspired nudity, and junior-high school haunted house quality horror.

Ken Russell hit his stride as a visualist in the late 80s with his sexual horror romps "Lair of the White Worm" and "Gothic". "Gothic" covers the story the Romantic Poets Lord Byron & Percy Shelley, Shelley's wife Mary as well as their companions and the evening that lead to the creation of Frankenstein and the Victorian vampire tale. Russell uses an 80s MTV aesthetic combined with lavish period set pieces and bizarre horror elements to create a rock star world that the poets would have surely be drawn to if they had lived 150 years later. On top of this Russell successfully integrates Henry Fuseli's ( an early love interest of Mary Shelley's mother) painting masterpiece "The Nightmare" into his film. This piece of art caused such a sensation when unveiled in 1782 that it can really be considered the first great horror franchise so it's very cool to see it come to life on screen and such surrealism sets Gothic apart from "Haunted Summer" and "Rowing in the Wind".... 2 pretty good contemporary efforts that also cover Byron and Shelley's Swiss exploits.

Percy and Mary Shelley visit Lord Byron's Swiss retreat to stimulate their calloused nerve ends in a wild orgy of free sex, laudanum, and the sort of Freudian psycho-sexual hallucinations only true poets can conjure. All for nothing, since in his attempt to duplicate the unbridled amorality of the evening director Ken Russell throws in everything except a reason for making the film in the first place. Supposedly Mary Shelley was inspired afterward to write her novel 'Frankenstein', a fact simply mentioned in passing after everything is revealed to have been nothing but a collective bad dream. Like its characters the film is self-absorbed to the point of unintended parody, with lots of florid emoting, profound dialogue, and nauseating, drug-induced imagery meant to either shock or titillate the viewer. A generation (or two) ago it might have been considered a 'heavy trip', but in these jaded days the strongest reactions will likely be fatigue and embarrassment. A bad dream is, after all, nothing but a bad dream.