Creature Designers – The Frankenstein Complex, 2015.
Directed by Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet.
Starring Rick Baker, Joe Dante, Guillermo Del Toro, Phil Tippett and Tim Woodruff Jr.
SYNOPSIS:
Documentarians Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet interview Hollywood special effects and make up artists to explore the ‘Frankenstein Complex’ of creature design in filmmaking.
“Now I know why Frankenstein goes crazy and screams ‘It’s alive!'” This early statement from one of the many subjects of Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet’s Creature Designers – The Frankenstein Complex neatly summarises the ostensible themes of the duo’s documentary: obsession, meticulous craftsmanship, and the relationship between creator and creation, ideas that tie directly back to the eponymous monster of Hollywood’s most enduring horror icon.
Indeed, the raison d’etre of The Frankenstein Complex is its exploration of the parent-child dynamic between the skilled crafts people and their monstrous creations; fans of creature design will already be familiar with the interview subjects, who include Rick Baker, Tim Woodruff Jr, and Phil Tippett among their number. Time and again, Penso and Poncet’s subjects allude to the creation of their work as a process of reproduction; their monsters are, as one designer puts it, “a way for men to give birth”. This analogy is perhaps a little extreme – especially given the horrific nature of the creature designers’ little darlings – but it undoubtedly demonstrates the depth of passion and care that goes into the creation of the Gremlins, Critters and interplanetary Things of the silver screen.
It’s a shame, then, that this depth is rarely reflected in the documentary itself, which while reliably entertaining and even fitfully illuminating, suffers from an undisciplined structure and a hazy focus. Indeed, at times The Frankenstein Complex’s reliance on broad overviews makes it feel more like a feature-length DVD featurette than a full documentary. Newcomers to science fiction and horror will undoubtedly find the numerous anecdotes and insights fascinating, but genre aficionados will almost certainly be familiar with the majority of the content on offer here.
Part of the problem is that the film doesn’t know what it wants to be, splitting itself between a chronological history of the development of special effects in film, a study of the psychology behind creature design, and an expose of Hollywood studios’ questionable treatment of the crafts people in their employ. Stop-motion animator Phil Tippett’s heartbreaking account, for example, of his breakdown after being passed over for the effects in Jurassic Park is an incredibly moving account of the human cost of the relentless march of technology, but is only briefly touched upon by the film. An anecdote about the physical effects artists being unceremoniously scrubbed from the risible The Thing prequel is similarly truncated, with no meaningful comparison of the CGI rehash with John Carpenter’s classic 1982 version. One can’t help but wonder here whether the film’s vanilla tone is indicative of a reluctance to upset its patrons, but even as a history of special effects, The Frankenstein Complex is disappointingly shallow, alluding to the greats – Lon Chaney, Jack Pierce, Ray Harryhausen – but never fully exploring their legacy or discussing their work in the context of contemporary effects artists.
Conspicuous by their absence, too, are many iconic monster designs that really deserve proper discussion: HR Giger’s xenomorph is barely mentioned, and the work of Rob Bottin is noted but the man himself is missing. For a film calling itself The Frankenstein Complex, there is sadly very little complex about its analysis of one of filmmaking’s richest and most fascinating crafts.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Christopher Machell
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published August 14, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
