The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s revisionist reimagining of classic monster movie Bride of Frankenstein, looks like a lot of fun. Set in the 1930s, which is when the original movie came out, The Bride! shifts the action from somewhere scary in Europe to Chicago and repositions Frankenstein’s monster and a (formerly) dead woman as a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-style gangsters. Jessie Buckley stars as the eponymous Bride, while Gyllenhaal’s Dark Knightco-star Christian Bale plays the monster.
But this isn’t the first Frankenstein movie with a Dark Knight connection. That honor belongs to director Stuart Beattie’s critically despised 2013 movie I, Frankenstein, which starred Aaron Eckhart — The Dark Knight’s Harvey Dent — as the monster. The movie holds an oddly impressive five percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so most people don’t consider it a “good” movie, but I, Frankenstein has become a bit of a cult classic just for how bizarre it is. And now, whether it’s because of The Bride! hype or the film’s quiet-yet-powerful fanbase, I, Frankenstein has become a hit on free streaming service Tubi.
What Is ‘I, Frankenstein’ About?
When you hear “Frankenstein,” you probably don’t think of 1930s Chicago gangsters like in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s upcoming movie. But you’d probably think of that long before you thought of the eternal, Underworld-style conflict between demons and gargoyles (which are actually angels?). That’s what I, Frankenstein is about, with the story establishing and then dismissing the usual Frankenstein plot points — Doctor Frankenstein makes a monster by stitching together parts of dead bodies — pretty quickly. Immediately after that, the creature (known as “Adam”) is roped into this demon/gargoyle battle and then spends 200 years patiently waiting until he can start wearing a hoodie under a blazer.
Bill Nighy plays a head demon guy, Yvonne Strahovski plays Adam’s love interest (she’s an electrophysiologist, which is funny), and Miranda Otto and Jai Courtney play big-shots in the gargoyle army. The demons and gargoyles all transform into prosthetic-covered monster forms, but Eckhart just has some Frankenstein-y stiches and stuff on his face. The idea, presumably, was that you don’t put that face and that chin in a movie unless you want people to see it. Even Two-Face kept half of his face clean.
Bonkers Lore and an Unforgettable Ending Made ‘I, Frankenstein’ a Cult Classic
One mark of a good cult classic is a fantasy movie that has buckets and buckets of complicated mythology, and I, Frankenstein is no slouch in that department (and, of course, none of it has anything to do with the actual gothic horrorbook). For example, Adam doesn’t kill demons, he “descends” them, which means they get sent to Hell. And when a demon kills a gargoyle, they “ascend” them, which means they get sent back to Heaven. Adam has special weapons that can descend demons, and he teams up with the gargoyles to use them to stop the demons from taking over the world with reanimated corpses.
But the thing that makes I, Frankenstein secretly great is its ending, which could’ve been a massive, culture-altering moment if anyone had actually seen or liked this movie when it was in theaters: The demons try to possess Adam, because he’s just a reanimated corpse and has no soul of his own, but they fail because he actually developed a soul while fighting to save humanity. Standing on a rooftop, he gives a very Dark Knight-esque monologue about how he will continue to fight the forces of evil and declares that his name is now… Adam Frankenstein.
In other words, in a devastating slam on the pedants of the world who live to point out that “Frankenstein” is the name of the doctor and not the monster, this monster’s name is Frankenstein. Suddenly, referring to the stitched-up corpse monster as “Frankenstein” is actually correct, which is just beautiful. How could someone not like a movie where that happens?
Find out for yourself by watching I, Frankenstein on Tubi.
- Release Date
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January 24, 2014
- Runtime
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92 minutes
- Director
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Stuart Beattie
