I remember seeing the VHS box for this at the video store. The multi-color stitched together eyeball was an effective way to sell Frankenstein as a visual. I never actually watched it until now, but the odd thing is that it seems to be out-of-print or only available on DVD. No streaming services seem to have it and the best I could do was find a low quality DVD rip on YouTube.

This has to be the weirdest movie I’ve encountered recently. It’s directed by old school horror director/schlock horror producer Roger Corman, so the expectation is that it will be horrific and probably schlocky. But then you’ve got John Hurt, Raul Julia, and Bridget Fonda in the cast, so it appears that it wants to be taken seriously.

The premise is also a bit odd. John Hurt is Dr. Buchanan, a scientist in 2031 who develops an energy weapon that destroys things by sending them to alternate dimensions or something. Upon testing the weapon, a time rift cloud appears causing disruptions in the space-time continuum. While driving around, Dr. Buchanan and his fancy electric robot car are pulled into the time rift cloud and sent back to 1817 Switzerland where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.

At times, the movie felt a little like Back to the Future, and other times it felt like an awful sci-fi horror attempt at mixing elements of past and future.

The gore was limited to a few scenes where the monster was ripping limbs off and not much else. The third act was where the whole thing fell apart as it kept dragging until the final ambiguous scene where the monster becomes “unbound” and Dr. Buchanan maybe returns to the future.

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