Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.
Gothic - Noc hrůzy, Готика, 고딕, Gótika, avagy a szellem éjszakája, Gótico, 哥特风格, У готичному стилі
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We've all been there: you go to a friend's house in the country for a couples weekend orgy and drug party and the whole thing just turns weird and becomes kind of a nightmare and you end babysitting everyone else who took a way stronger dose than you did and are all freaking out.
It's a Ken Russell movie so the horniness levels are off the charts. You've got God Gabriel Byrne, perfect as debauched sex nerd Lord Byron. Timothy Spall mincing harder than anyone has minced before as sodomite doctor and Byron biographer Dr. John William Polidori. Julian Sands plays Shelley as one of history's biggest fuccbois, who spends his time in emo revery and hysterical ecstasy when he…
This is a love letter. This is for every reviewer who loves a director unabashedly, that feels a kismet with them, no matter where they go or what they do.
Ken Russell is a man who understands occult and the power of sex magic. A drive to succeed at arthouse horror in a time when exploitation reigned. Deeply understanding British history, lore, magic, and counterculture movements like a Alan Moore of cinema. The themes he plays with make my heart sing!
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how the film presents itself, it is not a biopic or retelling, it is an exploration upon the artist — sorry, let me put my wine glass down. It is Russell looking into the…
So I made a quiz: which member of the Geneva gang are you
1. What do you like doing in your spare time?
a. “Exercise”
b. Walking in graveyards
c. Travel
d. Writing
e. Mad science experiments
2. What’s your biggest fear?
a. Leeches
b. Childbirth
c. Rats
d. Being buried alive
e. My own demons
3. What would you do if you were trapped in a haunted house?
a. Seduce
b. Come up with a genre-defining book premise
c. Stir up drama
d. Have a breakdown
e. Get high with my friends
4. How would you define your sexuality?
a. Everyone
b. I believe in free love :)
c. Straight
d. Straight but I would go gay for a…
A fantastical retelling of arguably horrors greatest night, an opium laced fever dream with extravagant carnival ride situations of weird hedonistic hysteria turned up to (Ken Russe)11. Lord Byron goes down on Claire and she has a miscarriage and he has a bloody smiling face, a pair of nipples turn into blinking eyeballs, orgies, seances, paranoia induced freak outs, and that fucking little impish ghoul that appears in the movie poster shows up as well. Makes less sense as it goes, but who cares?
I finally watched this wide angled slice of insanity only a few years ago after continuously putting it off since the 90’s... and honestly it’s because Gothic was the movie at the video store who’s cover…
When you go out to Byron’s crib for just one drink and maybe an orgy but end up revitalizing the entire Gothic genre and making a significant contribution to the development of science fiction.
Leave it to Ken Russell to add a suit of armor with an engorged phallus to a Lord Byron bio-pic.
Damn I hate being the only sober person at the liquid opium party where a bunch of English libertines scare each other berserk with ghost stories.
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“There are no ghosts in daylight”
It wasn’t some monster or the opium that made them go stark-raving mad, that’s just what happens when pretentious Brits get together.
I did not like this.
Which is weird cause I usually enjoy Ken Russell films. But this left me more aggravated than anything. It’s just a bunch of incredibly irritating weirdos running around screaming at shadows. Not really what I wanted, you know?
It’s bizarre to think that this is based off a real night that ultimately birthed Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. That idea to retell that night as… whatever this film is, is certainly a strange choice.
I couldn’t stand these characters. Every single one…
a psycho-sexual feast situated in a painting-worthy environment, full of energy and vibrant hues. Its exploitative, fever dream-like nature rarely ceases, sometimes to the point of complete recklessness. Mainly delightfully nasty, although I haven't completely assimilated with Ken Russell's style just yet (aside from Altered States). Silly silly flick. Need to start working through his filmography more, as he clearly loves this whole occult business.
I hope this is the kind of stuff people watch and immediately think of me.
Utterly hypnotic from start to finish. I'm so so so so inlove with this film. I wish I could crawl inside Ken Russell's head, such a fascinating man. The whole cast is perfect but I've got to give my highlighted praise to Gabriel Byrne who completely embodies Byron. Need to procure this on blu ray asap.
The first time I saw this I was really too young to understand it or have any idea what it was really about. Then, after my horrendously awful acid trip from hell (see my Altered States review for details), I watched it again, but still didn’t really appreciate it because I was watching with a specific ulterior motive. So it wasn’t until after that that I finally watched it for what it actually is, which is a retelling of the wild drug-fueled night that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. Except this is a Ken Russell film, so it’s not exactly anywhere close to what actually happened, choosing instead to focus on bizarre trippy imagery, nightmare scenarios, and lots of people…
the psychick evocation of unconscious horrors, wind-swept drapery and frilly fripperies, decorated-bodice concealing heaving-flesh, the occult imagination spread through teeming sex, greco-roman enlightenment losing ground to irrational-feudal romance, secrets and dark arts most foul, vampyres and spectres at the door, knock knock, byronesque baroque decadence, intellect grown rotten on the vine of its own vanity, daimonic curse, feminine hysteria, satanic sodomy, blow out the candle, follow the shadow, into the crypt, lie with the corpse, let the madness in! 👻👻👻👻👻
