Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.
Direction
Ken Russell at his most unrestrained and visually berserk.
Production
Surreal mansion-as-fever-dream production design.
Acting
Gabriel Byrne's Byron is magnetic, monstrous, mesmerizing.
Director
Ken Russell
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real 1816 Villa Diodati gathering actually happened — Byron's doctor Polidori invented the vampire genre that same weekend, while Mary Shelley dreamed Frankenstein.
Ken Russell made this after studio battles on Crimes of Passion; it's essentially his revenge — an uncompromising, hallucinogenic middle finger to restraint. Natasha Richardson's film debut.
GB
