Gothic
Description
"Ken Russell's wildest film yet."
—William Wolf, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
"Lock up the kids and blindfold your granny; Ken Russell is at it again."
—Peter Travers, PEOPLE
"...as ghoulishly funny and frenzied as a carnival ride through the 'Marquis de Sade's Tunnel of Love.'"
—Vincent Canby, THE NEW YORK TIMES
"The thinking man's 'Nightmare on Elm Street.'"
—VARIETY
Powerful. Intense. Outrageous. KEN RUSSELL, eccentric director of ALTERED STATES, CRIMES OF PASSION and TOMMY, brings his nightmare vision of one frightening episode in history to life with GOTHIC. Marrying historic fact, fiction and modern horror, Russell's wonderfully excessive film spins a haunting tale of fear, fantasy and ecstasy into every unpredictable corner of the imagination.
1816. A sprawling villa in Switzerland is the setting for a stormy night of madness. On this night of the "Haunted Summer," five famous friends gather around an ancient skull to conjure up their darkest fears. Poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley; Shelley's fiancée Mary Godwin; Mary's stepsister Claire Clairemont and Byron's friend John Polidori spend a hallucinogenic evening confronting their fears in an orgiastic frenzy of shocking lunacy. Horrifying visions invade the castle—realizations of Byron's fear of leeches, Shelley's fear of premature burial, Mary's fear of birthing a stillborn child—all brought forth in a bizarre dreamscape. They share the terrifying fantasies that chase them through the castle that night.
The events of that night later inspired Mary Shelley to write the classic "Frankenstein" and Dr. Polidori to pen "The Vampyre," which became the basis fro the creation of Dracula. One stormy night, and two legends were born, in GOTHIC.
VHS Release Year
Distributor
Vestron VideoBarcode
028485152151