Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on BFI Player Classics

Watch this video and more on BFI Player Classics

Start your free trial Learn more

Already subscribed? Sign in

Gothic

Thriller & Mystery • Fantasy, History, Horror, R

Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) promises his guests a night of horror only a mad poet can deliver and after partaking in hallucinogens, the guests tell ghost stories while exploring the dark corridors of his home - and of their minds. If any director is suited to retelling the wild night that conjured the creation of Frankenstein, it's British cinema's enfant terrible of exuberant flamboyance, Ken Russell, who doesn't disappoint with this highly stylised and chilling origin story of gothic horror.

Tags
Byron, George Gordon (1788-1824), Shelley, Mary (1797-1851), Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Cast
Gabriel Byrne Lord Byron
Julian Sands Percy Bysshe Shelley
Natasha Richardson Mary Godwin
Myriam Cyr Claire
Timothy Spall Dr. John Polidori
Crew
Ken Russell director

Up Next in Thriller & Mystery

  • 71
    1:39:18
    71

    71

    Jack O’ Connell (Unbroken, Starred Up) plays a young British squaddie is caught behind enemy lines in bomb-torn Belfast, who has to navigate his way home while avoiding the competing attentions of rival IRA factions, dangerous loyalists and sinister secret agents.

  • Silent Scream
    1:25:06
    Silent Scream

    Silent Scream

    1963: When Larry Winters violently murders a Soho barman in cold blood he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Within ten years he is addicted to prescription drugs and feared as Scotland's most violent inmate. After being transferred to the experimental Barlinnie Special Unit, Winters finds new an...

  • The Man Who Haunted Himself
    1:33:52
    The Man Who Haunted Himself

    The Man Who Haunted Himself

    Conservative executive Harold Pelham (a harrowing and atypical performance by Roger Moore) is involved in a car accident and declared momentarily dead. When he's eventually released from the hospital, Pelham discovers that an exact double of him has recently been seen in places that he's never be...

×