Lisa Frankenstein

*SPOILERS WARNING* -also for those of you who are NOT fans of CAMPY movies this is not for you... sorry because- in my best hipster voice "this movie is 100% Camp bruh." Which for me and anyone else who loves over dramatics, theatrics, homages to the classics, and all things 80's it's an absolute treat!!

Let's Talk Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, Lisa Swallows... The Creature AKA actor Cole Sprouse (how did he still look so hot as a rotting corpse??) and much much more!!

For anyone who isn't super familiar with the origins of the story Frankenstein, it was written in 1816 by an 18 year old, Mary Shelley. Her mother passed when she was very young and her father remarried to a woman who would truly become an evil stepmother to Shelley. Her dad was a perfectionist and put a lot of pressure on Shelley to be great, only really paying admiration and attention when she was recognized for her achievements. She was a poetry writer but this tale wasn't spun off her own wild imagination originally... NOPE, it started with a dare! Her and some fellow scholarly writer friends had spent an evening reading spooky German ghost stories to one another (supernatural themes had just begun taking off at this time in history), and once finished with all the tales they dared one another to all write their own terrifying stories. Mary Shelley, is said to have had an incredibly hard time with this task and it wasn't until a nightmare plagued her one evening that the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his Creature would be born.

Sooo with a little history under our belts, lets dive into the similarities between Kathryn Newton's character Lisa and Mary Shelley herself!!! Lisa is also a girl with a dead mother... and an absentee father who marries a horrific evil stepmother. She's also a poetry writer, misunderstood, and has an edge for the dark and emotional. Sounding Familiar? Both girlies got some serious mommy and daddy issues... This is something I wildly respect from director Zelda Williams and writer Diablo Cody, both woman did such an excellent job incorporating not just themes from Shelley's original works but also including tidbits of Shelley's life into the life of the character Lisa Swallows. Leading one to wonder if Mary Shelley had been a teen in the 80's would she also be caught singing REO Speedwagon's “Can't Fight This Feeling” while her monster boyfriend plays it on the piano in an oddly touching yet hilarious moment?

Next lets talk body parts!? When The Creature find's himself reanimated into life and shattering a window to get to Lisa, he is missing a couple of things. First one mentioned is an Ear. Perhaps an homage to Van Gogh and his supposed reasoning of cutting his ear off for a lover as a gift. We see not entirely the same retrieval process but nevertheless the same sentiment. -If you count cutting the ear off your dead stepmother and sowing it on your soon to be lover as well... sentimental, then maybe just maybe one might be able to stretch the connection. It's also quite possible it was meant to be taken literally, the terrible stepmother never listening to Lisa, so tit for tat she lost her ear. But I'll leave it up for the watcher to decide.

Then we have a Hand -taken for it's wrongful usage, GROPING A DRUGGED LISA WHO SAID NO, surely it's new owner will put it to far more appropriate uses. Round of applause on that one people. (Pun of course intended.)

Lastly, but definitely not the least notable, good ole' Michael Trent, played by Henry Eikenberry, uhm how to put this- his Crotch Rocket? Second head? The one that does ALL the thinking? His penis ya'll, the man loses his penis and dangling pair of attachments... BUT IT'S IN THE NAME OF LOVE PEOPLE. Gosh. Love and no surprise here- Deflowering. Why else might one need to brutally hack off the member of their lovers desired sexual interest? On second thought, don't answer that.

And with that, we go from...

With just a few stitches and *ZAPS*⚡️ we have a completed Creature.

Right... Did I mention the electricity element was a faulty tanning bed set to MAX BRONZE, and not unlike an easy-bake-oven was used to 'cook' the scavenged parts onto The Creature and restore life into them for his use.

Okay okay, enough of the Romance. A terrible reviewer I'd be to you all if I didn't mention the gore... and how it was done with such blunt, bloody, zealous vigor and absolutely zero remorse! Most crimes of passion unfold that way don't they? I mean the number one weapon used was a red axe, something we see in all the other classic horror films. Do we see it being lunged into a persons back as they flee for their life? Surely we do! But how about to swiftly slice off a man's fully aroused cock and watch it fly through the air into a trash bin to be collected for ones own use later? No? I didn't think so...

While that scene was comedically written, it was also incredible at causing the viewer a mixed bag a big emotions. Slapping you in the face one after another and another. We feel betrayal at first, Lisa had accidentally found her step sister interlocked with her crush. Then The Creature makes his entrance unannounced guns-or well axe a'blaze and takes what will literally become his, and then goes to strike at Lisa's sister. Lisa stops him before her sister is taken out to. Leaving the viewer to be shell shocked in laughter from a crotch rocket taking flight, to sheer panic for Lisa's sister, to a strange sense of that was sweet of The Creature... I think? But before you have time to process any of it, everyone is on the move. Lisa and her blood soaked sister in pursuit of The Creature, and The Creature hoping to outrun the law. I truly commend both Cody and Williams on this scene, they leave the watcher both dumbfounded and on the edge of their seat, confused but excited on how this all unfolds.

Now every love story ends when the guy gets the girl, right? WRONG. How about she dies, but not in an oh no how tragic way (even though my crybaby butt did *almost* cry looking at Cole Spr- I mean The Creature's sad face). But that's besides the point. She dies. Yup, in a fiery blaze of ULTRA MAX BRONZE glory!! Noting the cops are hot on her trail, Lisa commits suicide in an arguably more tragically romantic way then Romeo & Juliet. Think more, Romeo woke up right in time to watch Juliet kill herself and cried knowing that was the only way she would really be free type energy. But it wouldn't be Lisa's style to leave us without at least a note...

Leading us to the true ending of the film! Where we finally after just shy of an hour and forty-five minutes hear The Creature speak. Not just speaking but reading Percy Shelley's, "To Mary." A love poem written to Mary Shelley from her husband. A perfect pick if you ask me. A love story tied to the woman who wrote the original. Serving in this case as the perfect closer as the camera pans down to a bandaged corpse of none other then Lisa, eyes flickering open on the last line of the poem, leaving the audience pleased to know that even in Death these two do not part.

"I shall see you to-night, my beloved Mary, fear not. I have confidence in the fortunate issue of our distresses. I am desolate and wretched in your absence; I feel disturbed and wild even to conceive that we should be separated. But this is most necessary, nor must we omit caution even on our unfrequent meetings. Recollect that I am lost if the people can have watched you to me. I wander restlessly about; I cannot read or even write; but this will soon pass. I should not inflict my own Mary with my dejection; she has sufficient cause for disturbance to need consolation from me. Well, we shall meet to-day. I cannot write, but I love you..."