Haunted Summer

After the royal botch job that Ken Russell did in Gothic on the true story of the Shelley-Byron ménage in the summer of 1816 (which would later produce Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's classic horror story Frankenstein), it's nice to see that Czech émigré director Ivan Passer had the presence of mind to rescue the names of two of our greatest romantic poets from sleaze oblivion. Which is not to say that this is the "bowdlerized" version. Hardly. The married 23-year-old poet Shelley (Eric Stoltz) eloped with 19-year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Alice Krige), and travelling with her sister Claire (Laura Dern), the scandalous trio hooked up with Lord George Gordon Byron (Philip Anglim) and his occasional lover and opium supplier Dr. John Polidori (Alex Winter) for a summer of free love, opium smoking, and debate over the existence of God. Except for the theological angle, it's a story that soap opera producers would drool over. Yet, unlike the Russell version, which left me feeling that I'd spent a couple of hours with perverse idiots, Passer's story captures the principals from several angles--the profane, yes, but also the sacred. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)