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
Video
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