Horror in fancy clothes: the 1990s cycle of prestige monster movies

Horror has always flirted with respectability, at least when mainstream film studios get involved. While the last decade has been a fertile one for the genre, not enough kudos has been given to the the curious crossover between the period drama and the horror film that occurred in the 1990s.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and its sweep at the Oscars set the scene for horror to be attractive for ‘serious’ actors. With lavish period dramas all the rage, there was a pocket of gothic sensibility that allowed for films like Interview with the Vampire (1994), with Tom Cruise, no less, in the lead, to become a huge box office success. 

One studio in particular, Sony Pictures, tried to capitalise on this by greenlighting four lavish, big-budget new takes on (mainly literary) horror staples within the span of a few years: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), Wolf (1994) and Mary Reilly (1996). Today only one of this gothic quartet is remembered fondly. The others are most often discussed as odd missteps for their respective directors or even extravagant flops. But together they make up a fascinating moment when one studio made a concerted effort to raise the cachet of horror cinema.

After the unsuccessful release of The Godfather Part III (1990), Winona Ryder, who’d had to exit the production due to ill health, had a meeting with director Francis Ford Coppola to dispel any ill will. She gave him a script for Dracula by relatively newbie writer James V. Hart. Already a fan of Stoker’s 1897 novel, Coppola was excited to bring an angle that he and Ryder both thought had been forgotten by previous adaptations – that of doomed love. In his hands, Dracula would surface the love story between Count Dracula and Mina Harker, an epic affair that would transcend time, geography and logic. The resulting film is pure gothic opulence, featuring extravagantly detailed costumes by Eiko Ishioka. Coppola applied a century of filmmaking tricks, including reverse motion, front projection, forced perspective, slanted sets, multiple exposure and shadow puppetry. He refused to use any optical or CGI effects.

The film would be a box office hit, grossing more than $215 million. It won three Oscars and helped launch a hit single for Annie Lennox. Three months before the film was released, Coppola was already at work on the next in what he imagined to be a gothic trilogy. But he handed over directorial duties of his next prestigious literary adaptation to 33-year-old Shakespearean upstart Kenneth Branagh, who would direct and star in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). 

Fresh off his second Bard adaptation as director, Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Branagh positions Victor Frankenstein as a sort of gothic hunk, shooting himself shirtless whenever possible and abusing the 360 tracking shot. There are traces of genius – the inspired casting of Robert De Niro, for one, as well as the heavy, grotesquely detailed makeup the actor wears as the creature – but the rest is a bizarre combination of operatic corpse reanimation, yelling and a semi-incestous central romance. Although a decent hit on a global scale, it failed to connect with American audiences in the way that Dracula had, grossing only $22 million at home. Branagh, having positioned himself as the ultimate auteur, shouldered most of the blame. The film’s screenwriter, Frank Darabont, who’d written and directed The Shawshank Redemption that same year, has described the film as “the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen”. 

That same year, Mike Nichols would release his own attempt at a contemporary gothic, Wolf (1994). Already the beneficiary of a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony (with an Emmy to follow), Nichols’ decision to follow the likes of Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Regarding Henry (1992) with a high-budget wolf picture, having never shown any prior interest in the genre, baffles to this day. Wolf uses the wolfman myth to explore masculinity in crisis, co-starring two leading men who had come into the film scene brandishing a sleazy sex appeal. There’s Jack Nicholson, ageing out of his bat-out-of-hell charisma and cashing in on the prestige of his early, kinetic work; and the floppy-haired James Spader, who had found his footing in independent films and in desperately, sometimes deviantly, horny roles.

In the film, after Nicholson’s weak-willed publishing house editor Will Randall is bitten by a wolf he develops keen senses, ambition and a no-bullshit attitude. He leaves his cheating wife and out-manoeuvres the protégé who got him fired. 

Even though these films give precedence to romance, the female characters – Ryder as Mina Harker and Sadie Frost as Lucy Westenra in Dracula, Helena Bonham Carter as Frankenstein’s sister/bride Elizabeth, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the saturnine love interest in Wolf – are elevated arm candy, delighted to please and protect their supernaturally troubled paramours. In Wolf, Spader’s character aggressively tries to rape Pfeiffer after he is transformed into a lycanthrope, and in Frankenstein the creature literally tears Elizabeth’s heart out of her chest on their wedding night to force Victor to make him a mate.  

The exception, and the film that ended this brief trend, is Mary Reilly (1996). Based on an acclaimed 1990 novel by Valerie Martin, it expands the story of Jekyll and Hyde from the point of view of Dr Jekyll’s maid, who develops a crush on the mad doctor and his crooked other self. Directed by Stephen Frears, who picked up the mantle after both Roman Polanski and Tim Burton exited the project in turn, the film recycles some of the creative team from Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

The friction between the leads John Malkovich and Julia Roberts is palpable (reportedly, they did not get along off-screen either), which makes it awkward when they are supposed to lean into the desires awoken in Mary by Mr Hyde. In one scene, Mary dreams of having her back licked by Hyde, and the amount of time given to Malkovich darting his tongue around makes the moment genuinely disturbing.

These films live in an uncomfortable no-fans-land: their pedigree is off-putting for genre aficionados and the gore is too much for prestige drama habituals. When the teen-focused postmodern thrills of Wes Craven’s Scream arrived in 1996, the genre went off in a completely different direction, leaving this brief cycle of gothic dramas as a weird anomaly in horror history.

Seen today, there’s still something refreshing about the seriousness with which these films approach their respective mythologies. Although they don’t skimp on gore or spookiness, they are as interested in the crisis of faith and humanity of their antagonists. The results may be patchy, but it was the first time there was a notable effort by a major studio to ‘elevate’ horror.

In Dreams Are Monsters: A Season of Horror Films is in cinemas across the UK and on BFI Player now.