Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night examines the storied event that brought Mary Shelley and her literary companions together – an event that is now embedded in canon as the genesis of some of the modern gothic literature. The lines are drawn to the “Year Without a Summer” – the year 1816 – when gloomy weather forced a number of people to dedicate their summer vacays inside homes Aronofskys last word suggests a violent story to encore its appetite starting with them.
The camera cuts back to scenes from the past interspersed with superimposed insightful commentary that are strategically positioned throughout the film, historical reenactments also serve to ignite drama, as with those scenes that featured Leonard Kerpel’s music and voice. Although these witnesses were seen in a previous episode, vivid memories remain of young Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) who was left a widow and brought a little child into the terrifying world of writing as a grown up. She managed to write a novel before Frankenstein was published – so it was not for nothing. Her fellow American Percy Bysshe Shelley was torn between poetry and the desire to be understood, between romantic love and the disintegration of tumultuous relationships. Mary’s husband, Lord Byron, had an inborn sense of imbalance caused by depression, which was why he constantly invited the company to engage in horror stories to keep his mind occupied. There’s bubbly rage waiting to unleash from John Polidori A violent and cringy tale is opened up in front of us, we’re all familiar with the polymathic doctor but few have ever wondered where his foreign descriptors came from.
The film bravely elaborates on the romantic and the philosophical of the group and how such intricacies came to bear on their writing. The dreadful scenes are vividly enacted with tempests, candle lit rooms and eerie music which aim to recapture the forlorn and abominable spirit of the summer in question.
In the course of the unfolding narrative, viewers are provoked to ponder upon the great significance of these two works that not only shaped the gothic style but also centred on the deeply rooted issues of the human will, death and the strange. This documentary-drama is an asset for those interested in literature and in depth analysis of these young geniuses on a passionate hot summer night which changed the course of their lives.
