| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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FRANKENSTEIN AND ME
Rating: 
Canada. 1996.
Director/Story – Robert Tinnell, Screenplay – Richard Goudreau & David Sherman, Producer – Richard Goudreau, Photography – Roxanne di Santo, Music – Norman Corbeil, Special Effects Supervisor – J.D. Street, Makeup Effects – Ted Haines, Production Design – Michel Marsolais. Production Company – Malofilm Communications/Melenny Productions.
Cast:
Jamieson Boulanger (Earl Williams), Burt Reynolds (Leo Williams), Myriam Cyr (Judy Williams), Ricky Mabe (Larry Williams), Ryan Gosling (Kenny), Roc LaFortune (Deputy Tom Gonzales), Louise Fletcher (Mrs Betty Perdue), David Deveau (Stan), Rebecca Henderson (Karen)
Plot: Young Earl Williams is getting in constant trouble at school for dreaming about monster movies instead of doing schoolwork. His mother wishes he would conform and take life seriously, however his father encourages him to be a dreamer. When his father dies of a sudden heart-attack, Earl comes under increasing pressure to take life seriously. But when a circus passes through town and a crate containing what is purportedly the Frankenstein monster falls off the back of a truck, Earl takes it with the intention of reviving the monster to life using harnessed electricity. But this gets him into considerable trouble with the authorities.
Frankenstein and Me is a real fan’s film. It could just as easily be titled My Life as a Famous Monsters Fan. Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958-82), which was for many years the only genre prozine out there, receives prominent mention throughout and its editor Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo as a priest at the funeral. The end credits thanks a checklist of genre names for inspiration – Ackerman, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Tod Browning, The Chaneys, Dan Curtis, Peter Cushing, Terence Fisher, Christopher Lee, Claude Rains, Fred Olen Ray, George Romero, John A. Russo, Tom Savini, James Whale and ‘Boris and Bela’. Included as well on the list are less well known names such as Anglo-horror critic David Pirie, Starlog magazine publisher Kerry O’Quinn, Midnight Marquee magazine editor Gary Svehla, even Universal horror musician Hans J. Salter, George Romero’s cinematographer Michael Gornick, and Hammer production designer and musician Bernard Robinson and James Bernard. The film also features some endearing pastiches of Frankenstein (1931), The Wolf Man (1941), The Brides of Dracula (1960) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), all done a la Bugsy Malone (1967) with adolescent actors.
The film is both a modernist deconstruction of the fanboy delights of Famous Monsters and Frankenstein, and one that also quite cleverly plays into the legend as well – there is a delightful throwaway coda right at the end just after the monster has been forgotten about, which shows that it was not a crazy dream after all. But as much as it is a genre homage, the film is an even better paen to childhood – of the pain of growing up a dreamer who is constantly being pressured to conform. Burt Reynolds plays rather well as the father who has never achieved the dreams of Hollywood he once had and who gently, warmly inspires his sons to be a dreamer too. For all the critical attention that focused on Reynolds ‘comeback’ role in Boogie Nights (1997) around the same time, this actually contains a far better performance. The film manages without a step wrong to get the childhood emotions down without sentimentalizing anything or simplifying the complexity of the issues. There is a very nice scene where young Jamieson Boulanger counters his mother’s entreaties to do what he is told in school by explaining that the teacher is not a good teacher, a scene that is praiseworth for its all too rare challenge to the conformist assumptions that underly all children’s films.
American-born but Canadian based director Robert Tinnell originally started out working on cheesy exploitation movies – he also produced Surf Nazis Must Die (1987). As a director he has made a number of these genre children’s films. Also worth checking out is Kids of the Round Table (1995), about a schoolkid finding Excalibur in the present-day, and in particular the fine ghost story Believe (2000), which features similar themes to this of an intelligent youth with a love of horror being forced to clamp down on his imagination.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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