Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julian Sands), Mary Godwin Shelley (Natasha Richardson) and other literary luminaries gather at a Geneva villa on 16 June 1816 for a night of weird frenzy during the storm that inspired Shelley to write Frankenstein.
There are eerie séances, orgies galore, thunder and lightning, rats in the wine cellar, mind-blowing hallucinations – all laid on thick and eloquent by director Ken Russell who wallows in the excess. Yet it’s all just so much garish gibberish – uninvolving and hard to sort out.
Byron
Gabriel Byrne
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Julian Sands
Mary Godwin Shelley
Natasha Richardson
Claire Clairmont
Myriam Cyr
Dr Polidori
Timothy Spall
Murray
Alec Mango
Fletcher
Andreas Wisniewski
Rushton
Dexter Fletcher
Justine
Pascal King
Tour Guide
Tom Hickey
Turkish Mechanical Woman
Linda Coggin
Mechanical Woman
Kristine Landon-Smith
Young William
Mark Pickard
Director
Ken Russell