Writer's Critique - My Problematic Relationship with Some of my Favorite Authors

Just a weird vent.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - First, the one of these things that’s not like the other. I claim to love Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but what I really love the idea of a feminist icon in the industrial age writing against social norms. Yes, I adore the short story the “Yellow Wallpaper”. Even more, I love that it intrigued my niece who at the time was extremely anti-reading. YES! Catch the attention of another generation of women! You go, Perkins Gilman! Keep encouraging us to stand up for our medical rights and vote (she was, naturally, a suffragist).

I own a book of her short stories which are pretty good. Most of them are average stories of the time period with some underlining themes of socialism and reform. However, I’ve also read Moving the Mountain, Herland, and With Her in Ourland, her three feminist utopian novels. The trio of stories are a bit bland, definitely taking some framework from Thomas More’s original Utopia where it it more about over-explaining how a perfect society could work over giving barely any character development or plot. Still, the books present interesting ideals of family, work, and government as well as gender roles (imagine the Barbie movie, except with lots of offspring and very strict rules). While she does touch on sexism and equality, these books also discuss eugenics and racism. Like, a lot.

Academically and historically, I want to say I love Perkins Gilman. Yet, in my heart of hearts, I know she is quite cringe worthy. Just can’t have nice things sometimes.

Shirley Jackson - I love her unreliable narrators and subtle creepiness. However, my love of Shirley Jackson was nearly squashed before it began by over saturation. In high school, my honors English class read “The Lottery”. There was an instant attachment there. My young mind whirled with this exciting alternate reality and gruesome normalcy.

Then, my first year in college, we read it again. I remember the instructor being so excited to see our reactions to the ending and I confess to faking it to make her feel better (insert innuendo here). This time, the bloom was off the rose and I was less intrigued by the tale. By the fourth and fifth times I was forced to re-read it, I started to blame Shirley Jackson personally.

Despite my enjoyment of the 1963 film The Haunting (if you mention the 1999 version, you are dead to me), I would not read the book The Haunting of Hill House until I was much older. I did not start to collect her books and read others until I was in my late-twenties and through my thirties. It’s rather annoying how school actually turned me off of an author I love for almost a decade.

Mary Shelley - Anyone who has seen my house knows that it is full of references to Universal’s Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. These films coming in second after my love of the original Mummy, but they make less decent merchandise of that one. I know a lot of details of Mary Shelley’s life and family. When I was in my preteens, I already knew the tale of the dark and stormy night when she was dared to write a ghost story by Lord Byron. Between my boyfriend and myself, I think we’ve seen or read almost every dramatization of that night (by the way, if he dies before me I’ve already been told that I can’t keep his calcified heart like Mary did with Percy Shelley’s). I dressed up as her once for a spirit day where I work. Mary Shelley is featured on tee-shirts and notebooks that I own. I’ve even read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Okay, that’s a partial truth. I never actually finished this revered early piece of feminism by Shelley’s mom, but I’ll get back to it someday. I also own multiple biographies of Mary Shelley and watched many a documentary of her life. If I clearly was so obsessed this author, why do I say that we have a troubled relationship? Because for the longest time I claimed hated the book Frankenstein.

That’s right. The first time I actually read it was probably high school. *Side note: I wasn’t being forced to read it. I had independent study in an English class reading it so I thought I might as well figure out what they were talking about. I remember it was difficult to get through with all of the philosophy and the journal style prose, especially since at that age everything in my life was about Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My eighteen year old mind gave thanks to the episode of Wishbone in which the little dog played the mad doctor since it gave me a better background for understanding the book.

This having been said, if anyone said anything bad about this novel, I defended the crap out of it. If you told me that you hated how depressing it was, I retorted with reasons for each tragedy in the development of the creature’s character. When someone mentioned they were disappointed by the the creature’s wide vocabulary, I would violently exclaim the importance of him being so intelligent. And I would take it personally when others could not finish the book (even though I’m pretty sure I put it down and picked it back up again in my first reading).

The only time I didn’t defend the story was when my dad came to me after watching the Kenneth Branagh film. My bedroom door was pushed open with an irritated swing and he stood there looking aggravated. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Is that how the book ends?”

I nonchalantly shrugged at him. “Except for Elizabeth being brought back to live, pretty much.”

His eyebrows and rose and he spat, “That’s stupid.”

I didn’t argue with him. He’s my dad and he’s never really been a fan of the classics with the exception of Muppet Christmas Carol. By the way, I own that movie on a lovely Arrow bluray.

Anyway, by the time I was in my late twenties, I finally read Frankenstein again, deciding I’d been too young to judge it. Despite the utter hopelessness of the story, I loved it and have read it a few times since. The mother of science-fiction horror has a special spot on my bookshelf and my boyfriend bought me a fancy Penguin Cloth-bound edition covered in anatomically correct hearts. I also own copies of The Last Man, Lodore, and several of her short stories. That doesn’t mean my love of the Universal horror films has waned. I know there is no Bride in the book, but she’s too cool not to have all over my house.

Do any other people have strange reader-author relationships?

Mary Shelley: Movies about Writing

Now to go from the batshit to the attempts at historically accurate on the same topic. Mary Shelley was a movie I never saw before this because I heard it actually wasn’t that accurate (for example, only 6 minutes into viewing I noticed that they completely removed Fanny, the third Godwin sister which is so unfair).

As this one is more about Mary’s life, it has a larger cast than the other movies I watched. Elle Fanning play the titular character who has already begun her attempts at writing even before meeting Shelley (attempts which her father criticizes as unoriginal). Bell Powley is Claire Clairemont, Douglas Booth is Shelley, Tom Sturridge is Byron, and Ben Hardy is Polidori. Since the night in Switzerland is only a part of this film you also see Mary’s best friend Isabel (Maisie Williams), her father (Stephen Dillane), and her despised step-mother (Joanne Froggatt - who outside of Downton Abbey always seems to play antagonists). Thomas Hogg (Jack Hickey) gets to be in this one too who was a friend of Shelley’s.

The movie starts with Mary sent away to Scotland when she and her step-mother butt heads more than usual. She and Isabel share a love of the supernatural and a bond since both lost their mothers at a young age. The house welcomes Percy Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to recite their poems at parties. The attraction is instant and yet no one is shocked by their flirting. Shelley shows up at Mary’s home in London to become a student of Mr. Godwin and discuss the scandalous ideals of Mary Wollstonecraft. Let the philosophizing begin!

Mary takes a break from her own writing when Shelley shows up and still doesn’t pick up a pencil when Shelley’s wife makes an appearance. When the pair elopes, they of course take Claire with them. This more than any other film focuses on how close Claire and Mary were. This is heartbreaking since the real women fell out in the last few years of Mary’s life. Despite the lack of writing on Mary’s part, she and Claire are devoted to reading and supporting Shelley’s own attempts to be published. When Mary finds out that she’s pregnant, she worries about being a mother and that she’s moving further away from her goals of writing. There is also the whole Shelley wanting to bang Claire thing and thinks Mary should be free to bang his friend Hogg that gets in the way of Mary’s new relationship. Then Lord Byron enters the picture.

After the death of their first child and an escape from Shelley’s debts, they go on the fated trip to Geneva. Here the story will seem familiar. Once more, the second child William is written out, but the manipulations of Lord Byron’s are left in. The opium, the drinking, and the free love commence. Polidori is used more as a talking head who befriends Mary and acts as her sanity in the midst of Byron and Shelley’s “creative process”. Oh hey, this movie does talk about the connection between the painting “The Nightmare” and Mary’s mom.

The ghost story competition is used as high point where both Byron’s cruelty to Claire, the death of Shelley’s wife, and Mary’s renewed interest in writing all come together on one dark night. Polidori is picked on for his Vamyre novella so Mary doesn’t present her book idea, still Byron says he “looks forward to reading her work someday”.

Something I will give this film a lot of credit for it how it actually shows how science and the death of her children, not just ghost stories, inspired Frankenstein. The movie also deals in her own depression and the doubts of a teenage girl trying to build her own life. They give her more independence from Shelley, a realization that she loves him, but her own autonomy is more important than his philosophy and excuses for behaving however he wants.

More importantly, the Mary Shelley movie is more about her writing her book than any other film about her and her depressing life. She has a period of being cut off from Claire and Shelley in which she uses all of the pain she’d experienced in a short life to write the tale of the lonely creature. This also leads into the tale of the publishing which in itself was depressing. Just like in real life, it took her a year to find a publisher and Shelley had to write a preface meaning lots of people then thought he’d secretly written it. There is a nice outburst from Mary about how she wonders the meaning of writing her great work if she can’t have credit for it. It’s a fair question. Is is more important just to be in print or to get credit?

BFI Films owns this image… I think

Rowing with the Wind: Movies about Writing

Have you ever said to yourself - gee, I wonder what it would be like if Hugh Grant played Lord Byron? What? You haven’t! Too bad. It happened. Rowing with the Wind was a 1988 Spanish film with a mostly English cast distributed by an American studio. “Too many cooks! Too many cooks!” Besides Grant as Bryon, the movie stars Lizzy McInnerny as Mary, Valentine Pelka as Shelley, Jose Luis Gomez as Polidori (making him way older than the rest of the group), and Elizabeth Hurley as Claire. Yes, children of the 90s, this when Grant and Hurley met. They also make William Fletcher, Byron’s valet, a major character played by Ronan Vibert.

The film opens with Mary on a ship in icy waters writing the same scene into Frankenstein. Then there’s an abrupt transition to Shelley asking Mary’s father for permission to make her his mistress while Mary, Claire, and their sister Fanny watch through a keyhole. Despite Mr. Godwin’s rejection of this plan leads to the group escaping to Lake Geneva so Claire can tell Lord Byron that she’s pregnant. Poor Fanny gets left behind. For those of you who don’t know, Fanny was Mary’s half-sister, the illegitimate child of famed writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who’d been adopted by Godwin when he became her step-father. She committed suicide the same year Mary ran off with Shelley which is thrown in as a random tragedy instead of being the senseless horror that it should have been in Mary’s life.

Byron is suffering from ennui when the group arrives so he accepts them as perverse entertainment with the usual cruelty to Claire and Polidori mixed in. Shelley starts freaking out before the drugs have even been passed around. There’s a lot of easy to look up facts that are inaccurate in this version, but at least it includes mention of the storytelling night. Still, not much is stated about how not just Frankenstein was developed that night. How about a little love for the Vampyre, movie makers! It deserves more love than Byron and Shelley’s philosophies that fill up half of these movies.

This film does go beyond that summer of creation, but in more of a creepy, supernatural way. Mary’s writing is a larger part of the actual story. She’s begun her novel and starts to feel like the creature is haunting her and those around her. After Polidori drunkenly attempts to talk to her in the middle of the night while she’s working, he hallucinates a scarred man in a coachman’s coat is playing pool with him. The next day he’s found hanged near the billiards table (THAT NEVER HAPPENED! The doctor died 6 years later).

Mary pauses the book as she and Claire each give birth to children, but she’s still followed by her creature. She begins to worry about curses and insists they go to Italy for both Shelley’s health and to try to stop her father from demanding money from them. In Italy, the creature kills Mary’s son William, Claire’s daughter is taken away by Byron and dies, Mary grows jealous of Claire, and (gasp) Mary receives poor reviews for her novel Frankenstein! Mary decides she must destroy the creature before it destroys her! Very dramatic.

This one is more of tragedy meeting art in an awkward, historically inaccurate way. There’s no mention of Mary’s other kids or other books. It’s all sadness and Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a little conceited to think every terrible thing to happen in the 19th century was the result of one book you wrote. C’mon Mary, get it together, girl.

Haunted Summer: Movies about Writing

Oh, Alex Winter. Why are you here? Then again, thank you for being here. It makes this film more interesting.

This is actually the third time I’ve seen this movie and it was all pretty much new to me. That’s how memorable it is. First, this Mary Shelley story is based on a novel by Anne Edwards written in 1972, not a historical source. Our key players this time are Alice Krige as Mary, Philip Anglim as Byron, Laura Dern as Claire, Eric Stoltz (yes, 80s teen actor Eric Stoltz who shows off all of his, cough, talents) as Shelley, and Bill S. Preston Esquire as Dr. Polidori. The producers are the infamous Golan and Globus under their company Cannon. If you know not of this duo ridiculous films - LOOK THEM UP! Do it now! Especially some of their 80s magic. I’ll wait.

Yep. The American Ninja films, Superman VI, and the Masters of the Universe films - all their fault! I should be ashamed of how much this company shaped my childhood, but I have no shame. The 80s were a weird time, man.

Haunted Summer pretty much starts by establishing that Mary and Claire are both sleeping with Shelley and are both aware/fine with it. Sisterly sharing, I guess? The poetic lifestyle they are embracing not only includes free love, but drugs, hallucinations, and cruelty disguised as friendship. Toxic relationships alert!

They meet with Byron through Claire’s obsession and love affair, starting with a luncheon before moving onto the villa where most of the film takes place. Just like in Gothic (see other blog), Byron is figure within and yet outside of the group. Their leader who everyone except Mary is in love with. Mary is fascinated by him like a character study, but not obsessed with him like the others. They fight over his attention and grovel at his feet when he’s cruel. I do like how the Dr. Who episode made him more of this figure within his own pompous mind instead of it being his actual role. Mary’s son William is not a part of this story, but Byron’s relationship with the group is changed by the announcement of Claire’s pregnancy. He forces Claire to give up the baby to him, but end their relationship.

Politics and philosophy are also brought into this version, referencing both of Mary’s parents and how their “radical” views shaped her and put her on the path to “revolution”. Interestingly, Byron shows off Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare painting to the group (the same one used as a visual source in Gothic), but there’s no mention of the fact that Mary’s mother knew Fuseli personally.

Now the writing parts. Mary is making her first attempts at prose while on this trip and she complains of how “muddled” her words are. Shelley keeps promising her that her ability will grow with practice. Studying Byron and how he mistreats both Claire and Polidori starts to give Mary nightmares of a large, deformed man in a coachman’s coat stalking the house.

SPOILER ALERT:
There’s no night of storytelling where she comes up with Frankenstein. Mary decides that Byron will experience her terror firsthand. She and Polidori drug the lord and the doctor wears a monster mask. He chases Byron through an underground cave and the next morning when Mary reveals the trick, Byron tells her that all monsters have some sadness. Oh and then they sleep together because that’s what this movie is. For once, Shelley is the only one who doesn’t sleep with Byron!

This is a blog about writing, however, other than Mary being inspired to create a human monster from watching Byron (and out of place scenes of her scribbling while Shelley sleeps naked - too much Eric Stoltz!) there isn’t much about how that night in 1816 inspired her creative process. This was more about creative people goofing off and calling it art.

Doctor Who (The Haunting of Villa Diodati): Movies about Writing

I’ve covered the night of literary birth before when I wrote a blog about Gothic.

First, the cleanest version of the night Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Doctor Who can’t have opium dreams and seductions by Lord Byron after all. This one starts with Mary (Lili Miller) as more of a child-bride, excited by flights of fancy and horror stories. Most of the time, she’s depicted at the logical one amongst the party, but in this case the logic comes later.

Because it is Doctor Who, there are aliens. The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) takes her three companions to the night when the famous ghost story writing challenge is supposed to take place. However, they find the party missing Percy Shelley and busy playing parlor games. This episodes does have a great joke in which one of Doctor Who’s companions, Yaz, commands, “No one snog Byron!”

The strangeness of the episode starts with poltergeist activity and disembodied hands trying to choke people. Percy Shelley has been troubled by visions of a dark figure over the lake and attempts to get to him seem stopped by the villa itself. Dr. Polidori is controlled by an outside force during a bought of sleepwalking which helps the Doctor figure out how the house is tricking them, but also includes another fantastic joke where Byron tries to hide behind Clare when startled.
I also like how the history of the time is added into the episode, how “the year without a summer” played a role in the famous villa holiday and, how it’s effecting the alien presence in the episode. What is “the year without a summer” you may ask? It’s just that. A volcanic errupti0n changed the world’s climate and left most countries in a famine. It’s quite fascinating, yet sad. Look it up.

The alien in question turns out to be an incomplete Cyberman. That’s right. Use the famous Doctor Who villain that is a murdered human body reused by technology in an episode about the author of Frankenstein. Derivative? Probably. But I’ll take it. There is a focus on Percy Shelley’s writing and how the Cyberman has a psychic link to both him and his poetry. And I’ll end the summary of the episode there so you can see the end for yourself.

Being Doctor Who, there is an attempt to give all characters more emotional insight. They of course include the mental health problems of Dr. Polidori and the nasty self-indulgences of Byron. But Claire Clairmont, Mary’s step-sister, is viewed as more of the lost, insecure, and anxious teenager she more than likely was than an instantly mad woman obsessed with Byron.

As for Mary, the episode focuses much more on her relationship to the other character and to her son William than to her writing. Motherhood has made her more mature and determined, more worried about her baby than herself. It’s difficult to watch knowing that William dies as a toddler.

Even though there is little link between Mary’s writing and the night that is is made obvious, the episode includes many visual connections for Frankenstein fans. A great coat like the one the creature wears. A disappearing child in the clutches of a monster. The soul within a horror.

And the doctor has a great speech about how literature effects history. “Words matter.”

Gothic: Movies about Writing (Copy)

And now for something completely batsh*t.

Long before I ever actually read Frankenstein, I was weirdly knowledgeable about its creator, Mary Shelley. And therefore, when I was flipping though late night television long ago and probably watching channels I wasn’t supposed to be, I discovered a young Natasha Richardson running panicked down a hallway while Julian Sands made out with Gabriel Byrne. They addressed each other as Byron, Shelly, and Mary, so naturally I kept watching. What I had stumbled upon was 1986’s Gothic directed by Ken Russell, a man who had to have been high most of the time (and if he wasn’t, the inside of his brain must’ve been a scary, brightly colored place).

This is meant to be a horror movie, but the monsters are pretty obviously the result of a bad trip.

There are several films that attempt to capture the idea of Mary Shelley winning the famous “let’s tell ghost stories” night against Byron, Shelley, and John Polidori (more about them later), but this is the only one that really focuses on the amount of opium likely ingested that night. This is NOT A CHILDREN’S FILM. Hell, I don’t this film is probably appropriate for most adults.

The madness open with Percy Shelley rowing Mary and her step-sister, Claire, to the shore of Byron’s villa. The moment he exists the boat, ye olde fangirls chase Percy up the lawn i hopes of tearing his clothes as a souvenir. You know, that whole poets being the rockstars of their day comparison. I don’t care how popular, I don’t think anyone every squeed at a poet. Sorry poets.

The characters/historical figures are established by extremes in the first 8 minutes. Byron is a lustful rogue who instantly makes Mary uncomfortable. Percy is a ridiculous child who just wants the attention of those around him. Claire is a wild thing determined to keep up in her recent and abusive affair with Byron. John Polidari, Byron’s person doctor, is just weird and uncomfortable with a sense of being both as lustful as Byron yet sexually harrassed by him (everyone man in this is established as bi from the get-go). And finally Mary, the quietest and most sensible of the group.

They decide to play a game in the giant house where the director fills the set with obvious sexual allegories, clockwork figures (that are very obviously people in costumes) and annoyed servants. The game is ended abruptly with Percy crawling out on the roof in the midst of a lightning storm and reminding Mary of her father’s favorite theories about electricity.

Drunk, high, and in hopes of an orgy, the group starts to read aloud from a book of ghost stories (while Percy makes out with Mary and feels up Claire at the same time…yep, you read that right). The stories instantly show Parallels to Mary’s future such as doom for Percy near water and the loss of a child. It feels like most movie versions about this night like to do this, Make it seem like Mary cursed them all for tragedy by writing Frankenstein. Nevermind that this whole group suffered from mental illness that was added to with booze and opium.

Byron decides they should “conjure” a ghost which Mary is unnerved by due to her own desires to bring her recently stillborn baby back to life. Even though they declare that they will make up their own ghost stories you never really see this - just more orgies, Claire having a seizure, Byron ordering a half-naked maid to pretend to be his half-sister, and Mary realizing that Percy is infatuated with Byron.

Here, I finally make a writing observation besides the poet thing. Percy Shelley is portrayed in Gothic as both being fascinated and attracted by Byron, but also as if he wants to be Byron. Sometimes writers think that by mimicking the behavior of their literary idols it will improve their craft. You know those people who only use a typerwriter and drink rum because Hemmingway did the same. Or only use a quill pen and hide oneself in a room because Emily Dickinson was a shut-in. Or pine after a girl named Laura because that’s what Petrarch did.

From that point, the movie 45 minutes of nightmare fuel involving more sex, miscarriages, boob eyes, near suicide, mud baths, philosophical conversations about death and homosexuality and religion, and Frankenstein’s creature following Mary around the house until she sees an image of her son William dead (which really did happen). The characters argue whether this is all the result of their minds or a creature of the night.

The end of all of this crazy is the idea great literature and horror comes from nights of great f*&%ed-up events. A part at the end involving modern tourists informs the audience that from Polodoiri’s obsession with blood and Byron came the novella the Vampyre and Mary’s insistence to bring back the dead came Frankenstein.

Once again, a movie about writers relies on the idea of their biography being directly linked to their works. Only in this case, it involves a lot of Julian Sands being naked and, at least for me, that does not inspire much in the way of literary genius.

By the way, despite my sounding so critical of this bizarre film, I do own it.

I’m too lazy to check who owns this. Just don’t sue me, please.

Theme in June

June is going to be all Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley based movies/tv episodes. It was going to be May. Why May? Because that’s when she started writing Frankenstein, of course. I would have focused on a man-made terror if it meant I didn’t have to hang out with Byron. So why not May and instead June? Because my blogs will be delayed for a month because Phoenix Fan Fusion is back! Yes, we have our "legally can’t call it Comic Con” back this year and that means a lot of planning and a lot of taking vitamin C.

Gothic: Movies about Writing

And now for something completely batsh*t.

Long before I ever actually read Frankenstein, I was weirdly knowledgeable about its creator, Mary Shelley. And therefore, when I was flipping though late night television long ago and probably watching channels I wasn’t supposed to be, I discovered a young Natasha Richardson running panicked down a hallway while Julian Sands made out with Gabriel Byrne. They addressed each other as Byron, Shelly, and Mary, so naturally I kept watching. What I had stumbled upon was 1986’s Gothic directed by Ken Russell, a man who had to have been high most of the time (and if he wasn’t, the inside of his brain must’ve been a scary, brightly colored place).

This is meant to be a horror movie, but the monsters are pretty obviously the result of a bad trip.

There are several films that attempt to capture the idea of Mary Shelley winning the famous “let’s tell ghost stories” night against Byron, Shelley, and John Polidori (more about them later), but this is the only one that really focuses on the amount of opium likely ingested that night. This is NOT A CHILDREN’S FILM. Hell, I don’t this film is probably appropriate for most adults.

The madness open with Percy Shelley rowing Mary and her step-sister, Claire, to the shore of Byron’s villa. The moment he exists the boat, ye olde fangirls chase Percy up the lawn i hopes of tearing his clothes as a souvenir. You know, that whole poets being the rockstars of their day comparison. I don’t care how popular, I don’t think anyone every squeed at a poet. Sorry poets.

The characters/historical figures are established by extremes in the first 8 minutes. Byron is a lustful rogue who instantly makes Mary uncomfortable. Percy is a ridiculous child who just wants the attention of those around him. Claire is a wild thing determined to keep up in her recent and abusive affair with Byron. John Polidari, Byron’s person doctor, is just weird and uncomfortable with a sense of being both as lustful as Byron yet sexually harrassed by him (everyone man in this is established as bi from the get-go). And finally Mary, the quietest and most sensible of the group.

They decide to play a game in the giant house where the director fills the set with obvious sexual allegories, clockwork figures (that are very obviously people in costumes) and annoyed servants. The game is ended abruptly with Percy crawling out on the roof in the midst of a lightning storm and reminding Mary of her father’s favorite theories about electricity.

Drunk, high, and in hopes of an orgy, the group starts to read aloud from a book of ghost stories (while Percy makes out with Mary and feels up Claire at the same time…yep, you read that right). The stories instantly show Parallels to Mary’s future such as doom for Percy near water and the loss of a child. It feels like most movie versions about this night like to do this, Make it seem like Mary cursed them all for tragedy by writing Frankenstein. Nevermind that this whole group suffered from mental illness that was added to with booze and opium.

Byron decides they should “conjure” a ghost which Mary is unnerved by due to her own desires to bring her recently stillborn baby back to life. Even though they declare that they will make up their own ghost stories you never really see this - just more orgies, Claire having a seizure, Byron ordering a half-naked maid to pretend to be his half-sister, and Mary realizing that Percy is infatuated with Byron.

Here, I finally make a writing observation besides the poet thing. Percy Shelley is portrayed in Gothic as both being fascinated and attracted by Byron, but also as if he wants to be Byron. Sometimes writers think that by mimicking the behavior of their literary idols it will improve their craft. You know those people who only use a typerwriter and drink rum because Hemmingway did the same. Or only use a quill pen and hide oneself in a room because Emily Dickinson was a shut-in. Or pine after a girl named Laura because that’s what Petrarch did.

From that point, the movie 45 minutes of nightmare fuel involving more sex, miscarriages, boob eyes, near suicide, mud baths, philosophical conversations about death and homosexuality and religion, and Frankenstein’s creature following Mary around the house until she sees an image of her son William dead (which really did happen). The characters argue whether this is all the result of their minds or a creature of the night.

The end of all of this crazy is the idea great literature and horror comes from nights of great f*&%ed-up events. A part at the end involving modern tourists informs the audience that from Polodoiri’s obsession with blood and Byron came the novella the Vampyre and Mary’s insistence to bring back the dead came Frankenstein.

Once again, a movie about writers relies on the idea of their biography being directly linked to their works. Only in this case, it involves a lot of Julian Sands being naked and, at least for me, that does not inspire much in the way of literary genius.

By the way, despite my sounding so critical of this bizarre film, I do own it.

I’m too lazy to check who owns this. Just don’t sue me, please.