hugoconductshugo

The music transforms this entire movie from camp to something approaching the sublime. "Frankenstein's Theme", which is looped over and over the Criterion menu, is so Godd*mn haunting that I spent weeks tracking it down over the internet and listen to it incessantly. The music is the perfect complement to the retro-Hammer production design and costumes. It's so heartbreakingly mournful that it casts a spell over the whole movie, manufacturing pathos for the shots of the children watching the Doctor (their father) and creating a sense of inevitable doom over the whole film. Brilliant! See the movie and hear it.

I'm a big fan of the director's but had never seen this one until the other day (the VHS re-release "director's cut" or whatever). The other user comments had let me to expect an amateurish curiosity, but I found it polished and feel no need to make any excuses for it (perhaps the new release is a cleaner print).

It's pretty sly, the acting's not bad and I found the film most remarkable for its restraint and subtlety. I'm not sure I buy the idea that the parasites are a metaphor for Americanization - Cronenburg's concerns are, I think, more personal and abstract than such a reading gives him credit for.

The movie is deliberately paced and the shock/gore factor is relatively low. I found it to be a modest footnote in a career that later bore stranger, richer fruit.