Gothic

In 1816, Lord Byron is staying at a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva when Percy and Mary Shelley come to visit, accompanied by Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont. Byron's physician, Dr. Polidori, is also on hand. Over a stormy night, the group consumes alcohol and opiates and gives itself over to a session of storytelling and fear, each member trying to summon up private terrors. What begins as a game of invented horrors blurs into waking nightmare, and the guests find it increasingly hard to separate apparitions from what is actually happening around them in the house.

Ken Russell directed Gothic, his twelfth film in a run of fifteen, arriving between Aria and The Lair of the White Worm. Stephen Volk wrote the screenplay, and Penny Corke and Robert Fox produced it for Virgin Vision. Gabriel Byrne plays Byron, Julian Sands and Natasha Richardson play the Shelleys, Myriam Cyr is Claire Clairmont, and Timothy Spall appears as Polidori, with Alec Mango as Murray.

At 88 minutes, the British production dramatizes the gathering that is traditionally credited with inspiring Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's vampire tale. On TMDB it holds a rating of 5.7 from 199 votes, while critics' reviews give it a score of 6 out of 10 from 15 reviews, a modest spread that places the two groups closer together than is often the case.