1986

When a movie is rated R in 1986, you already know it is going to be a rough one. And this weird story did not disappoint, nor did it stray from the fact that rich white people are fucking crazy. In any time period.

We open in Geneva at a grand estate in the Summer 1816, where author/poet/sister-lover/all-around-sociopath Lord Byron has invited Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley (who is not Mary Shelley yet, but will be soon), her step-sister Claire (also Lord Byron’s lover), and his doctor Polidori. I never want to be at a party where a doctor his hired just to make sure people don’t die due to “creature” attacks or heart attacks during drug infused orgies.

Every single guest of the household is most definitely in the throws of a syphilis outbreak (except maybe the rats), and they exhibit beyond bizarre behavior that would make those people in The Invitation blush. As the night goes on, the thunderstorms become more intense, as well as the confessions.

Lord Byron may be bisexual, but he also likes to pretend he’s having sex with his sister via the maid in a mask. The doctor is definitely in love with Lord Byron and deals with it by drinking jars of leeches and giving himself a bit of stigmata. Percy Shelley has been spending far too time near the galvanizing plant and probably has the most fried brain of them all. Mary is there to hang out with her future husband and bipolar step-sister to make sure neither of them get struck by lightning or thrown in a stew by Lord Byron.

As the night goes on, and the orgies start to bore them, they decide to read from a book of German ghost stories, which is a phrase I never want to hear ever again. Through a haze of alcohol, morphine, probably absinthe, definitely hallucinogens, the group somehow thinks they have conjured up an evil presence that has taken over the house. It also provides the perfect setting for the appearance of monsters and ghosts and just gross jump cuts. There also seems to be a massive wolf problem on the property that needs to be addressed. Although, Lord Byron probably just wants to fuck a wolf too. Some of his fetishes would make the internet blush.

Is this what all parties are like at writers’ homes? I thought people just drank overpriced wine in turtlenecks and talked about tiresome details of totalitarian universes.

The movie ends with everything returning to “normal” and the talks of all their next projects. Where in Mary’s (almost Shelley) case is going to the Frankenstein. The maids and butlers are all polite, acting like nothing happened. Because i’m assuming this happens every weekend, and the rug cleaning bill is getting absurd.