Released a few weeks ago on Shudder, A Nightmare Wakes<\/em> is the latest attempt to synthesize the life story of author Mary Shelley with elements of her most famous novel, 1818\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>. The film\u2019s Mary (Alix Wilton Regan) is imagining a conversation with Victor Frankenstein\u2014or is it Percy Shelley? In Unkel\u2019s film, Mary envisions the people in her life as the characters in the story she\u2019s writing, casting her lover (and eventual husband) Percy (Giullian Gioiello) as the obsessive scientist who brings a creature to life from an assemblage of dead body parts. Mary casts her stepsister Claire Clairmont (Claire Glassford) as Elizabeth, Victor\u2019s wife, and places herself in the role of the creature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Nightmare Wakes<\/em> takes place during the summer that Mary, Percy, Claire, poet Lord Byron and Byron\u2019s companion Dr. John Polidori spent on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, when Mary famously conceived the idea for Frankenstein<\/em> as part of a competition to write ghost stories. The origin story for Frankenstein<\/em> has proved nearly as enticing for filmmakers as the novel itself, incorporated into multiple films about Mary\u2019s life, from straightforward period dramas to horror hybrids like A Nightmare Wakes<\/em>. James Whale kicked off the trend in 1935\u2019s Bride of Frankenstein<\/em>, which begins with a prologue set on a stormy night at the home of Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Byron marvels at the ability of a quiet young woman like Mary (Elsa Lanchester) to compose such a horrifying tale. \u201cCan you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein<\/em>?\u201d he pontificates, as Mary sits meekly cross-stitching. But Lanchester brings a mischievous look to Mary, even as she plays coy. \u201cYou know how lightning alarms me,\u201d she protests, just before teasing that the tale everyone knows as Frankenstein<\/em> has more to it than previously revealed. Mary then begins to narrate Whale\u2019s sequel, which of course bears very little resemblance to Mary Shelley\u2019s actual novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In just that six-minute prologue, Whale establishes a template for future cinematic representations of Mary Shelley. He freely distorts the details of both Mary\u2019s life and her famous novel to suit his own stylistic ends, and he highlights a perceived contrast between Mary as a fragile young woman and the indelible horrors she created. Later in the film, Whale introduces another key element of Mary\u2019s movie mythology, when Lanchester returns, uncredited, as the title character, with her iconic shock of white hair, hissing and screaming at the monster (Boris Karloff). That bland and lovely brow has taken on a whole new countenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifty years later, three filmmakers took on the Mary\/Frankenstein<\/em> story almost simultaneously, in Ken Russell\u2019s Gothic<\/em> (1986), Gonzalo Suarez\u2019s Rowing With the Wind<\/em> (1988) and Ivan Passer\u2019s Haunted Summer<\/em> (1988). All three movies focus on the summer at Lake Geneva, with approaches that range from subdued (Haunted Summer<\/em>) to unhinged (Gothic<\/em>). Whether Mary is enjoying tea time or participating in a drug-fueled freakout, though, these movies all take a curiously dismissive attitude toward her writing talents, one that carries through to A Nightmare Wakes<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Rowing With the Wind<\/em> and Gothic<\/em> essentially blame Mary\u2019s creation of Frankenstein<\/em> for the misfortunes that befell her and her Lake Geneva companions in subsequent years, turning the act of writing into a sort of sinister summoning. This is depicted quite literally in Rowing With the Wind<\/em>, as Mary (Lizzy McInnerny) conjures up the monster (Jose Carlos Rivas) in physical form one night at Lake Geneva, and it continues to stalk her and her loved ones for years to come. She takes no satisfaction in writing the novel or experiencing its success, and like Victor Frankenstein, she\u2019s driven mad by pursuing the creature, attempting to stop it from killing again. \u201cHe\u2019s nothing but the fruit of my pretension and pride,\u201d she laments late in the movie, and Suarez frames the story with Mary, like Victor, chasing the monster to the barren arctic, and seemingly perishing there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Gothic<\/em>, it\u2019s merely visions of future misfortune that Mary (Natasha Richardson) conjures, as part of a surreal night of drug-induced hallucinations and paranoia. Percy (Julian Sands) and Byron (Gabriel Byrne) consume laudanum like it\u2019s water, while Mary remains comparatively sober, but they\u2019re all beset by demons over the course of their first night at Byron\u2019s Villa Diodati. One thing that all Mary Shelley movies have in common is that they\u2019re quite horny, and Russell, not surprisingly, leans into the debauchery. But even as he\u2019s creating striking images like a pair of breasts with eyeballs for nipples or the severed head of Polidori (Timothy Spall) looking up at Byron from the floor, Russell still places Mary in an inferior position to her male counterparts. \u201cI defer to the more experienced writers,\u201d she offers demurely when the idea of the story-writing competition comes up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mary of Haunted Summer<\/em> is even more demure, and Passer\u2019s film (based on the 1974 novel by Anne Edwards) is mostly a restrained period drama, with its Mary (Alice Krige) as the comparative scold of the Lake Geneva group. Claire (Laura Dern) throws herself at Byron (Philip Anglim)\u2014who\u2019s really the main character\u2014and both Byron and Percy (Eric Stoltz) eagerly smoke lots of opium, but Mary holds herself back. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that feelings can be manufactured in a pipe or bottle,\u201d she huffs. Krige makes her wet-blanket version of Mary more appealing than McInnerny\u2019s in Rowing With the Wind<\/em>, at least, although Anglim\u2019s irritatingly hammy Byron has nothing on the charms of Byrne in Gothic<\/em> or Hugh Grant in Rowing With the Wind<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even in a movie bearing her name, 2017\u2019s Mary Shelley<\/em>, Mary (Elle Fanning) still ends up largely defined by the men in her life, although at least screenwriter Emma Jensen and director Haifaa al-Mansour give her some time to herself before hooking her up with Percy (Douglas Booth). These filmmakers also finally take Mary\u2019s writing seriously, showing her scribbling away during nearly any private moment she can find, and giving her an actual point of view on her approach and style. \u201cAnything that curdles the blood and quickens the beatings of the heart,\u201d Mary confidently responds when Percy asks her to define her idea of worthy writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fanning, the only onscreen Mary who\u2019s the same age as the person she\u2019s playing (Mary was 19 at the time she wrote Frankenstein<\/em>), imbues Mary with more inner strength and creative vision than any other version of the character. At one point in A Nightmare Wakes<\/em>, Mary emerges from a reverie to discover that pages of Frankenstein<\/em> have been written seemingly by magic, but the Mary of Mary Shelley <\/em>works hard for every bit of prose she produces. The sojourn at Lake Geneva takes up only about 20 minutes of this movie, and there are no supernatural elements, aside from Mary\u2019s brief inspirational nightmare of the creature (here with Ben Hardy\u2019s Polidori standing in as Victor Frankenstein). Fanning\u2019s elegant performance aside, Mary Shelley<\/em> is a bit stuffy, veering too far away from the lurid lasciviousness of the \u201980s Mary movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Nightmare Wakes<\/em> veers right back, with 90 minutes of hysterical wailing, red blood mixing with black ink, and Mary\u2019s hallucination of Victor Frankenstein performing oral sex on the woman who created him. And yet it\u2019s a grim, gray slog, once again losing Mary the person to her famous novel and the other famous writers she associated with. \u201cShe lives!\u201d cries this movie\u2019s Victor, appropriating the famous catch phrase from Whale\u2019s films to refer to Mary herself. But the problem with all of these movies is that Mary is never truly alive onscreen, only exhumed in service of the iconic monster she\u2019ll forever be associated with. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/bride.jpg\")
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