#randyquaid

Frankenstein (1992)

★★½ Watched 24 Oct 2025

Here it is: the most expensive Frankenstein production since Universal’s heyday, and it certainly looks the part. Frankenstein (1992) boasts lavish sets, grand locations, rich period detail, and a top-tier cast that treats the material with real conviction. It’s handsomely directed, shot with confidence, and clearly made by people who wanted to elevate the story into prestige television.

Unfortunately, all that effort is in service of one of the weakest screenplays in any Frankenstein adaptation. The production values are enormous, but the script is an absolute mess, filled with narrative dead ends, strange digressions, and ideas that never develop or resolve.

The first major head-scratcher comes early: we see Victor experimenting by fusing animals together—a grotesque and intriguing idea that’s immediately abandoned once the Creature’s cloning subplot enters the picture. The two approaches have nothing to do with each other, and the film never explains why Victor suddenly switches from grotesque bio-splicing to full-on human cloning. It’s emblematic of the entire production; a series of fascinating setups that lead nowhere. 

The film’s biggest innovation is the notion that the Creature is a clone of Victor, and that the two share each other’s physical pain. In theory, this could have been brilliant, an almost mythic embodiment of creator and creation as one being. But the execution falters badly. Victor and his creation are played by different actors (Patrick Bergin and Randy Quaid, respectively), and they look nothing alike. The psychic link is used inconsistently, never defining its rules. At one point you can’t help wondering: if Victor feels everything the Creature does, why doesn’t he simply injure himself to stop the rampage?

The Justine subplot is one of the most bizarre reinventions of any version. What was a clean, tragic miscarriage of justice in Shelley’s novel becomes a convoluted web of miscommunication and metaphysical nonsense. Here, the Creature awkwardly tries to woo Justine, she flees in terror, William somehow dies during a horseback accident, and a priest assumes Justine must be possessed because she clutches William’s cross. This entire thread disappears without resolution when Justine kills herself. It’s so confused that the film’s most unjustly punished figure might actually be William’s horse, who inadvertently becomes the only innocent “character” condemned for the tragedy.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, is given far more agency than usual. She’s a nurse who actively assists Victor and even volunteers to be cloned herself. It’s an interesting change, but it also undercuts the impact of her later death. When the Bride is a willing participant in Victor’s hubris, we lose the tension between love and moral transgression that Shelley’s story thrives on.

Randy Quaid, of all people, turns in a surprisingly strong performance as the Creature, awkward neckbeard and all. His physicality is deliberate, his voice wounded yet intelligent. His scenes with the blind old man are genuinely tender, though the film again fumbles by refusing to let tragedy intrude. The Creature and the old man never have a falling out, no angry mob, no devastating rejection. So when the Creature later decides humanity is evil, it feels completely unearned. 

That’s the recurring issue here: the movie rewrites so much that the parts it keeps from the book no longer make sense. Moments of fidelity feel bizarrely misplaced because the story’s internal logic no longer leads to them.