I’m going to diversify things up a little here today and throw a lady monster in the mix. Darkness Falls is the story of a young boy Kyle who is terrorized by, of all things, the Tooth Fairy. This isn’t your grandma’s Tooth Fairy I’m talking about either, or the Tooth Fairy from that other horror movie The Tooth Fairy that came out in 2006. The undead creature haunting this picture is Matilda Dixon, and she wins the award for most complicated back story of any monster, ever. Matilda’s legend begins when she was a kindly old spinster woman in the town of Darkness Falls (sounds like a cheerful place) where she was loved by all the children for paying them money for there baby teeth that had fallen out. What she did with those teeth is anyone’s guess, but she was eventually caught in a house fire and her face was burned so badly that she hid her face behind a porcelain mask. On top of all that, she was blamed for the disappearance of two children and hanged by the towns people. As Matilda swung by her neck, she cursed the town that her spirit or corpse, or something would keep taking teeth, I guess. I’m actually not sure, the legend gets kind of confusing there, but the point is that she is now a ghostly monster that takes teeth, wears a mask, hates light, and will kill anyone that looks at her. So the story proper starts a century or so after all that stuff when young Kyle (Joshua Anderson) looses his last baby tooth. He accidentally sees the Tooth Fairy and runs to get his mother. Kyle’s mom tries to tell Kyle that he’s just imagining things at that his room is perfectly safe, but then she gets snatched up by Matilda and killed off screen.

Skipping ahead twelve years, we find grown-up Kyle (Chaney Kley) still traumatized from his almost being killed by a monster experience and on a heavy regiment of medication. Caitlin (Emma Caulfield) was Kyle’s childhood friend and calls him in regards to her younger brother Michael. (Lee Cormie) It would seem that Michael is suffering from night terrors, but Kyle realizes that Michael has gotten on the bad side of the Tooth Fairy as well. Kyle heads back to his old town of Darkness Falls to help Michael. He is eventually arrested by the local authorities under suspicion that he is insane and possibly killed his own mother all those years ago. This puts Kyle in a bit of a pickle and he struggles to convince everybody that the Tooth Fairy is coming to kill little Michael, and him.  Although the film did get a theatrical release, this is a direct-to-video quality movie at best that stars nobody you’ve ever heard of and has barely enough scares to keep a horror fan interested the whole way through. The effects are pretty good, but the story is just so banal and, worse yet, the lore about the killer just makes no sense. Where did Matilda find the supernatural powers to will a curse on a whole town? Do the collected baby teeth give her arcane powers? I don’t get it.

Several legends of the common monster stable originated in European folklore, so it is oddly fitting when the creatures that American film industry have made popular become the focal point of a European production. Such is the case with Neil Marshall’s horror film Dog Soldiers, which has no shortage of -Spoiler Warning- werewolves. The film starts off with a young couple out for a romantic camping trip far from civilization, which in horror movie terms is pretty much a huge neon sign reading “Please attack us.” Sure enough, a big wolf hand reaches into the tent and makes short work of the two. Not too far away in the woods, a man is trying to escape from pursuers, but is eventually taken down. The man is Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd) and this was an exercise to test his resourcefulness for the British special forces. Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) is considering letting him join his team, but denies him entry, and beats the tar out of him, when Cooper refuses a direct order from Ryan to shoot one of the dogs that tracked him. Many months later, Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his team, of which Cooper is a part, are dropped off in the same area of Scotland for a military training exercise where they must locate an opposing team of soldiers. All goes well, until night fall, when a mangled deer carcass is dropped into their campsite. The next day, the team sees a flare shot from another part of the woods. When Sergeant Wells’ team makes it to their new destination, all they find at the abandoned post are some weapons, some random organs and gore, and Captain Ryan in desperate need of medical attention.

Everyone should be getting a solid Predator vibe from the situation at this point. Ryan confirmed that something slaughtered his team and that they need to leave right away. The team tries to stabilize Ryan and call for extraction, but to no one’s surprise, communications are down. Communications always go down. The squad moves out, but they are being stalked by something, and Wells is caught and mortally wounded by one of the creatures. Cooper rescues him and in spite of Well’s orders to the contrary, picks up the injured Wells and continues to run away from what ever is chasing them. When they attempt to cross an isolated road, the soldiers almost get flattened by a woman in a jeep. She quickly tells them to get in, as if she is aware that something is amiss. She introduces herself as Megan (Emma Cleasby) and assumes that the soldiers were called in to take care of the creatures in the woods. She takes what’s left of the team to a cabin where she has been researching the disturbances in this area and, as the soldiers fortify the cabin and tend to the wounded, tells them that she believes the creatures to be werewolves. This film is kind of a low budget derivative of movies like the aforementioned Predator as well as Aliens (once they get to the cabin for their stand-off) but while feeling familiar, it manages to have its own flavor too. The characters are all well rounded enough to be interesting and the action is shot well enough to be genuinely exciting when the wolves start breaking into the house to pick off the soldiers one by one. Practical effects are used for the wolves, which I like, but the werewolf suits must have been heavy and stiff, because the on screen monsters are rarely dynamic.

In most movies that involve a monster of some sort, you usually get a story that revolves around one type of creature or ghost or alien. Rarely, a monster movie will have two or three different varieties of creature, but in the science-fiction comedy Evolution, you get an entire ecosystem’s worth of imaginative creatures. Ivan Reitman, most well known for directing Ghostbusters, took a serious and straight-forward script about an unusual alien invasion and turned it into a humorous outing in his own style. It begins with a meteor from the unknown reaches of deep space crashing to earth in the Arizona right on top of Wayne’s (Seann William Scott’s) car, turning it into a smoking hole in the ground. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) a professor at the local community college finds out about the meteor impact and suggests to his friend and geology professor Harry Block (Orlando Jones) that they check it out. Ira takes a sample from the meteor and discovers it contains nitrogen-based single-celled organisms of extraterrestrial origin. Upon showing Harry his discovery, the organisms have changed from single to multi-celled organisms. After a return trip, this time toting some students along under the guise of a field trip, they find that the tunnel in which the meteor has crashed into is completely overrun with the ever evolving creatures, this time having developed as far as flatworms and fungus that convert our atmosphere into gases that the creatures can metabolize. However, just when these two think they have the greatest discovery in history on their hands, the U.S. Military swoops in to take over the operation.

It turns out that Ira used to work for General Woodman, (Ted Levine) the guy in charge of this operation. Although Ira and Harry try to get in on the investigation, Woodman and one of the scientists involved with the project named Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) successfully bar Ira from the project due to his previous failures as a government scientist. While all this is going on, those alien creatures have turned the tunnels under Glen Canyon into their own constantly developing home. Many of the monsters are using the mine shafts to escape into the surrounding areas and have a few run-ins with the locals. There is a four-legged fish that jumps out of the water to attack a man at a golf course, a frumpy little frog that bites some woman with a mouth on its tongue, and a flying dinosaur type monster that becomes tolerant to Earth’s atmosphere and lays siege to a mall. It is here that Ira and Harry meet up with Wayne and try to contain the rampaging aliens, loading up with shotguns to take out the flying dinosaur thing. The appeal of this film, to me anyway, comes form the sheer variety and creativity of the creatures being showcased. The core premise of the story lends itself to the writers and special effects team creating a huge number of monster-based gags and set pieces that are each unique and escalating in scale through the movie’s running time. The actual plot of the movie, however, has some logical holes in it and the comedy is hit or miss most of the time. The actors do a good job in their respective roles, but it feels like we are being rushed through the story at break-neck speed, like there were too many ideas that were squeezed into the script. The ending is also hard to believe, as the solution to the alien problem is entirely based on a hunch that just happens to work. But still, it’s hard to find more monster bang for your buck than in this film.

In 1922, during the German Expressionist movement of early silent cinema, director F.W. Murnau released the horror film Nosferatu onto an unsuspecting audience. The film’s image of the Dracula fill-in Count Orlock, portrayed by actor Max Schreck, became an iconic staple of horror movie history. Almost eight decades later, director E. Elias Merhige brings a secret history of the classic film’s creation to the screen in Shadow of the Vampire. The film opens with an intertitle card explaining how Marnau (John Malkovich) was unable to secure the rights for Dracula from Bram Stoker’s estate, but went on with the production under a different name. On a sound stage in Berlin, Marnau is filming the first scenes of his production Nosferatu with German actors Gustav von Wangenheim (Eddie Izzard) and Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack). After the shoot, the movie’s producer Albin (Udo Kier) discusses the crew’s plan to film much of the picture on location in a castle in Slovakia. There is also talk of the actor that Farnau has found to play their vampire. Max Schreck is apparently a method actor that will only appear in character, in full costume and make-up, and at night. Once the cast and crew has moved to their new location, they film the first scene in the castle where Count Orlock (Willem Dafoe) slides forth from the shadows much to everyone’s horror. All are impressed by the actor’s look and commitment to his character, but after the scene has finished, the camera man wanders off, then is found ill.

It turns out that Marnau is a stickler for making the film as real as possible. To this effect, he has secretly made a deal with a real ancient vampire to play Count Orlock in his picture. While many of the shots go quite well, with actors and crew alike finding Orlock’s performance to be very effective, the vampire is picking of members of Marnau’s production staff and draining them of blood between takes. Marnau confronts Orlock on this matter, reminding the Count that he had promised not to harm his people. It turns out that the only person that Orlock really wants is the star actress Greta Shroeder, whom Marnau is willing to sacrifice to finish his film. This movie adds another layer of fear, insanity, and off-beat humor onto the classic film from which it is derived. I would consider both Marnau and Orlock monsters in this picture. Marnau is driven mad by his own production, trying to wrangle his actors, crew, and an undead being which he finds out, much too late, that he cannot control. It seems that Orlock tries to keep his own vampire impulses in check, for a while, but eventually realizes that the person with whom he as made his deal holds little to no sway over his actions. Marnau turns a blind eye to death after death, so long as he can still make his masterpiece.

Few films have explored the terrifying notion of a possessed appendage. The Crawling Hand was entirely centered around the disembodied hand of a dead astronaut being controlled by an alien consciousness. In Evil Dead 2, Ash dueled with his own hand that had been infected by evil spirits. And, in 1999, audiences were introduced to the next evolution of the demonic limb in the horror comedy Idle Hands. Devon Sawa plays the improbably named Anton Tobias, the epitome of the stoned, high-school slacker that were so very prevalent throughout the nineties. The local news is buzzing with unsolved murders, but this is the least of Anton’s worries, as he is out of weed. He visits his friends Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson) who convince him to smoke a mixture of oregano and nutmeg. Anyway, after all this dumb-fuckery, Anton discovers the bodies of his own parents, then murders Mick with a broken bottle and Pnub with a circular saw blade. Anton is horrified that his own right hand is commuting the acts of its own volition. As he tries to calm himself down with some television, he flings his pet cat out the window and across the street. While trying to locate his frazzled feline, he runs into his neighbor and long time crush Molly (Jessica Alba) and somehow manages to strike up a romance with her in spite of his murderous hand trying to attack her. He agrees to go to their school’s Halloween dance as her date, but first Anton must clean up the mess of corpses he has at home.

During all of this, Vivica A. Fox as the druidic priestess Debi LeCure has been investigating murder cases that she believes are related to demonic possession. While marking out locations on a map, she finds the murders have been in places that form a giant pentagram over the area. She heads to Anton’s neighborhood, where she hypothesizes that this evil spirit will choose a soul to take back to hell with it. Meanwhile, Anton had spent the rest of the day burying his mother, father, and two stoner buddies in the back yard. But, it would appear that Mick and Pnub are not finished quite ready to leave, as their bodies rise from the dead. They both explain that passing into the afterlife was simply too much work, and they would rather hang around Anton’s house and get high. Anton decides that he no longer wants to be host to a killer limb, and cuts his own hand off. Unfortunately, the hand is still possessed, and now much harder to keep track of. Horror comedy is probably one of the hardest genres for a writer and director to balance correctly. In the case this film, the comedy is pretty good with our pot-head three amigos of Sawa, Green, and Henson. They play off of each other pretty well and have a genuine chemistry that is fun to watch. The problem comes in the horror elements of the movie. Early on, when the evil hand is still attached to Anton, the notion of his character committing grizzly acts of violence and not having any way to stop himself is a fairly disturbing idea. The monster is part of him, so anything it does, Anton is also partly responsible. Once the hand is removed, however, it becomes a much less interesting concept. It’s hard to make such a small monster threatening in any believable way without it being part of a swarm. I have the same problem with Chucky from the Child’s Play movies. Any healthy adult could take such a small attacker and punt it across the yard with little effort.

This film starts with a little educational text stating that the South China Sea hides deep chasms that have never been explored by man, and that numerous ships have mysteriously vanished in those areas of the ocean for decades. If only we could find a way to surrender this movie to the depths of the ocean for all eternity. If I had to pick only a few words to describe the plot of Deep Rising, those words would be derivative and over-written. One piece of the story starts on a small boat captained by John Finnegan (Treat Williams) who is not out crab fishing but shuttling a band of black ops mercenary types to some obscure point in the middle of the ocean. The mercenary group is led by Hanover (Wes Studi) and is composed of half a dozen or so soldiers too bland to be memorable, although I did see Jason Flemyng and that guy that played Kano in Mortal Kombat in the mix. The black ops team turns hostile on Finnegan’s crew when the ship’s wormy mechanic Joel (Kevin J. O’Conner) finds live torpedoes amongst the weapons. Another part of the plot involves the massive luxury cruise ship Argonautica (which is a titanically stupid name for a boat) and a foxy thief named Trillian (Famke Janssen). She tries to break into the Captain’s quarters to get at his safe, but is caught by the ship’s owner Simon Canton (Anthony Heald) and locked in the galley freezer. Someone on board the ship disables several vital systems including, of course, communications, then a large something attacks the cruise liner. All of the passengers start to stampede in an attempt to escape, and we are treated to a scene where a terrified woman is violently pulled down a toilet.

Finnegan damages his own boat by colliding with one of Argonautica’s speed boats, that was made entirely of C-4 judging by how it exploded. Plot A meets up with plot B as the damaged little boat find the disabled cruise ship in the middle of the stormy seas. Hanover’s commando unit deploys on board the Argonautica, taking Finnegan and Joel with them to gather engine parts. Hanover had intended to rob the wealthy passengers then sink the ship, but all of the passengers have disappeared, except for Trillian, whom they find locked safely away in the freezer. The team also locates Simon as well, who it turns out had disabled his own ship and hired Hanover and company to sink his multi-million dollar cruise ship so he could collect the insurance money. You see what I mean about this being over-written? We don’t need all this forced subterfuge and intrigue just to get all the characters stranded on a boat for a monster to attack. When the monster, a giant mollusk of some sort finally does show up, it makes short work of most of the remaining cast, usually picking them off one-by-one a la Alien or Predator, two much better movies that I wish I were watching instead. While the awful writing effectively torpedoes the good ship Deep Rising before it leaves port, some entertaining bits can still be salvaged from the wreckage. The cinematography employed here is consistently much better than this movie deserves, like an amazing part near the beginning that zooms in from a wide shot of the cruise ship and follows a man through a door to the ballroom. Famke Janssen’s and Kevin J. O’Conner’s performances are also enjoyable, even if O’Conner’s screaming gets a little grating near the end. The monster is an original idea as well, as it only appears as tentacles with gnarly teeth and hooks when first seen. It isn’t until the end of the film that we get to see the full and somewhat badly rendered giant demon-octopus-thing in all its glory.

Remember when we had movies about museums that didn’t involve Ben Stiller? I do. The Relic, a techno-thriller from the late nineties is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs. Some critics described the film as Alien in a museum, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Directed by Peter Hyams, probably best known for Timecop, the film largely takes place, unofficially, in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) is an evolutionary biologist who is developing a new method of mapping genetic codes, but is in danger of loosing her funding to a rival scientist, Greg Li (Chi Muoi Lo). As such, Dr. Green spends most of the movie either pissed-off or terrified. In order to stay afloat, she must prepare herself for the museum’s opening of their “Superstition” exhibit. Her office receives a package from Dr. Whitney, another researcher whom Margo does not like, who has been studying tribal practices and rituals in Brazil. All the crates contain are a ton of plant leaves with a peculiar fungus on them, and a stone idol of a god or spirit called the Kothoga. Before disposing of the leaves, Margo uses the fungus to test her DNA mapping device. That night, one of the museum’s security personnel is violently decapitated while he was smoking weed in the bathroom. This brings in local homicide detective Vincent D’Agosta (Tom Sizemore) who sees a connection between this murder and several bodies that were recently found on a freighter that just returned from Brazil.

Vincent pleads with the museum’s curator Dr. Cuthbert (Linda Hunt) to postpone the the upcoming Superstition Gala until he can solve the case, but it’s simply to important for the museum’s continued funding to reschedule. Vincent continues his investigation, even after police arrest a potential suspect, and begins to question Margo on the recent activities of Dr. Whitney and the nature of his research. Vincent is a very superstitious guy, so there is very little that he isn’t likely to believe. After running her test on the strange fungus, Margo discovers a beetle that ingested some of the fungus and mutated into a feral super-beetle as a result. At the exhibit opening, with all of Chicago’s wealthy and elite making appearances, the thing that used to be Dr. Whitney reveals itself, and goes on a bloody rampage. It may be cheesy, it may be predictable, but I like this movie anyway. It has a classic set-up that starts with a mystery about a few deaths or disappearances, and ends with a motley group of survivors, isolated and helpless, that have to face down a big-ass monster. A big, empty museum feels like a perfect horror setting in which to have this story unfold. The Kothoga creature has a unique design, being a combination of insect and reptile, and is brought to life through a combination of practical and computer generated effect. The CG stuff looks pretty dated, but they keep the monster in the shadows enough so that it’s not a deal breaker. This is a surprisingly well made monster flick, perfect to watch late at night while munching on some popcorn.

Is it Full Moon Studios time again? Already? Yep. This is another film from the not-so-proud direct to DVD tradition. But I have to warn everybody, this one makes Subspecies look like an Oscar winner. While the box art shows Zarkorr the invader, a giant dragon-like monster that shoots lasers from his eyes and wrecks cities for kicks, we rarely ever get to see it in the film.  A giant monster wrecking stuff is not in and of itself a bad premise for a movie, but we soon move on to introduce this film’s worst element, the plot. Earth has been chosen by a collection of intelligent alien races, which we never actually see, to undergo a test. The aliens release a massive, planet crushing monster, Zarkorr, and contact one representative of the human race that they choose based on being the most average human specimen they can find. That average human is Tommy Ward (Rhys Pugh) a postal worker who likes to watch old cartoons that are probably in the public domain. The aliens pick a bizarre method of contacting Tommy using a mental projection that he sees as a tiny teenage girl. She tells Tommy that no weapon on Earth can harm Zarkorr and he must find a way to defeat the monster, or all life on the planet will be destroyed. Obviously, the alien conglomerate that devised this test is composed entirely of huge douche bags, as even if Tommy is manages to solve this test, Earth will have already suffered many casualties and millions of dollars in property damage.

Tommy, being the quintessential average-joe, has no idea how to fight or defeat this creature. On the local news, he sees an interview with Doctor Stephanie Martin (De’Prise Grossman) an expert in cryptozoology. How one can be an expert in an unofficial field largely considered to be pseudoscience is anybody’s guess. Tommy drives down to the T.V. station and tries to tell Dr. Martin about the monster being a test that the aliens told him he needs to defeat to save the world, and when she refuses to help him, Tommy kidnaps her at gun point. Tommy barricades himself in the women’s bathroom with the doctor, who still refuses to answer his questions, and the police show up to defuse the situation. When Tommy explains the alien test and how he must defeat Zarkorr, one of the officers, George (Mark Hamilton) actually believes his story makes perfect sense and turns his gun on the other officer to aid Tommy in his mission. As you can see, the writing for this film is a completely convoluted nightmare that writer Benjamin Carr probably hammered out in one drug-fueled weekend. The plot occupies this strange paradoxical state of being completely convoluted and hard to follow, but at the same time is so thin and contrived that it might as well not exist at all. The only thing the plot does is waste time between the scenes of Zarkorr trashing model cities, and while that is fun to see, it does not justify the 80 minutes you will throw away watching this thing.

H.P. Lovecraft is called the father of modern horror and is credited with creating the Cthulhu Mythos and the ‘weird fiction’ sub-genre. Although there have been several adaptations of his various stories (most of them directed by Stuart Gordon) the highest any of those films have ever climbed in the mainstream consciousness is the movie Re-Animator, and that’s not a very well-known film. In 1995, the fans of John Carpenter (one of the more iconic horror directors working today) were treated to the giant H. P. Lovecraft tribute film In the Mouth of Madness. The movie opens with Sam Neill as a raving lunatic in a straight-jacket being dragged into a padded cell. Doctor Wrenn (David Warner) is called in to find out what made Sam’s character, named John Trent, go insane. John, who has covered himself and the walls of is cell with the images of crosses, sits down to tell Wrenn about his most recent case. John was a private investigator that specialized in cases of insurance fraud, and he was called in to investigate the disappearance of a best selling writer named Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) who vanished with the manuscript of his latest book. Trent is convinced that this is not a real missing person’s case, but a publicity stunt and, through some diligent research, discovers clues in the cover art of Cane’s previous novels that create a map to the fictional town of Cane’s stories called Hobb’s End. Trent departs to locate the town, which he believes is real in spite of it not existing on any map, with Cane’s agent Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) who is interested in locating the manuscript.

While Linda is driving at night, she experiences all kinds of crazy occurrences like passing the same young bicycler several times, and aging each time, and seemingly driving through the sky. Somehow, she stumbles across Hobb’s End, where even more bizarre tings are happening. The two visit the Black Church, a dark monolithic structure mentioned in many of Cane’s stories that is entirely out of place in a small New England town. Their, after many of the townsfolk show up with weapons, Sutter Cane appears in the church, and sends some primeval attack dogs on the town’s people. As Linda and John try to come to terms with the strange scene they just experienced, Linda comes clean with John, saying that this was originally supposed to be a publicity stunt to promote his new book, but the town and its residents are not supposed to exist. The people, places, and creatures from Sutter Cane’s fiction are coming to life in the real world. As one of John Carpenter’s entries in his unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy, it’s a safe bet that this film won’t end well. The earlier parts on the film rely on a lot of shock scares involving John Trent having vivid nightmares about people turning into gnarly-faced monsters. The whole crux of the movie relies on a blurring between the lines of the movie’s meta-reality, which is pretty much the same as our own reality, and the fantasy world of Cane’s creation, which draw heavily on H. P. Lovecraft for inspiration with all kinds of hideous slime beast and tentacle demons that, wisely, only show up on screen for a few select seconds. The sparseness of the monsters makes their brief flashes on screen much more memorable.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is considered to be the first science fiction novel ever. The monster from this story is the first fictional creature to be created not from mysticism or occult rituals, but from scientific hubris. There has been a legion of film adaptations of this story, in fact, one of Edison Studios’ first motion pictures is a retelling of the Frankenstein tale. There have been many other attempts to translate the tale to film since, the most famous of which is the Universal Studios version from 1931, but in 1994, Kenneth Branagh directed what is possibly the most faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel. The movie begins with a voice over quote written by Mary Shelley talking about ‘speaking to the mysterious fears of our nature’ or some such, then opens to Captain Robert Walton (Aidan Quinn) leading an expedition to the north pole and getting many of his crew killed in the process. Once the ship is trapped against and ice flow, he sees a shape moving against the horizon. This is Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) and once he is brought on board, he begins to recount the story of his life and why he has traveled to the Arctic Circle, and spares the audience no detail in the process. My guess is, in the name of ‘faithful adaptation,’ almost no detail from the book is left out of Victor’s life story. This results in the first half-hour of the movie being all over the damn place as the editor tries to move through all this exposition as quickly as possible. The first quarter of this movie is seriously one eighties power ballad away from becoming a montage. As we sprint though Victor’s early years, we learn that his dad (Ian Holm) is a highly respected doctor, his mother (Cherie Lunghi) died while giving birth to his younger brother William, (Ryan Smith) and that he has fallen in love with his adopted sister Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter who’s hair, as usual, is out of control) but Victor must finish medical school before they can be married.

While at the University, Victor befriends and learns from Professor Waldman (John Cleese) who is studying the effects of galvanism (chemically induced electrical reactions) in activating dead muscle tissue. Victor, who has had a big problem with mortality ever since his mommy died, takes this idea and runs with it, completing Waldman’s research after the Professor’s untimely murder. He raids several morgues and even poaches Waldman’s brain to construct a body that he brings to life with electric eels in a tub of boiling amniotic fluid. Victor accidentally almost kills his new creation (Robert De Niro) who then flips his shit and chases Victor around trying to attack him. Frankenstein renounces his monster and goes for an ax to undo his mistake, but the creature escapes into the night. While this movie does have some flashes of brilliance and some truly gruesome elements, it lacks the visual creativity and consistency of films like City of Lost Children to stand out as the scientific nightmare that it should have been. Robert De Niro’s performance as the monster is the strongest in the whole production (most of which is done through facial expressions and body language) but his look comes off as nothing more than a patch-work version of Sloth from The Goonies and lacks any kind of iconic visual presence. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing but respect for Kenneth Branagh as an actor and a director, but he was just out of his element in this movie.