that scene

In my recent review of 2025's "Frankenstein" by Guillermo del Toro, I mentioned Kenneth Branagh's 1994 "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," a supposedly faithful adaptation of the book that nevertheless contains important changes that make it different from the original material. The specific scene I mention is the resuscitation of Elizabeth who, in this version (as in the book) is Frankenstein's bride for only a day before the monster finds her and rips out her heart. Frankenstein immediately grabs Elizabeth's body and runs to his lab. There, he takes off her head and hands and attaches them to the cadaver of a different woman before reanimating what is now Elizabeth.

What happens next is a real tribute to the acting prowess of Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Elizabeth, the bride killed on her wedding night. The reanimated Elizabeth, no longer able to speak but still somehow able to think with her revived brain, slowly comes to life in Victor Frankenstein's arms, and Victor coaxes his wife to remember herself and him. The Creature (Robert De Niro, cruel and vindictive) appears and demands that Elizabeth be his bride; he and Victor fight over Elizabeth, who becomes more distressed... and then, she looks in a mirror and sees the horror of who she is now.

Up to this point, the entire tableau has been nightmarish, but Elizabeth, not wanting to exist in this abominable condition, grabs an oil lamp and sets herself on fire. As the flames consume her, she runs through the castle, and everywhere she goes, the castle around her bursts into ridiculous flame before she launches like a fireball off a balcony and lands in the snow, inert and dead again as her body burns.

This running-through-the-halls scene could have been as tragic and horrific as everything that had come before it, but the special effects were a spectacular failure, and what started off as horror quickly degenerated into comedy as flames erupted cartoonishly around the fleeing Elizabeth. I found it to be such a waste, and of course, I have no blame for actress Carter, who does an excellent, brain-searing job with the material she's been given. She is absolutely the best thing about the whole sequence (in what was otherwise a poorly directed movie; Branagh was still in his early days a director), but the hilarity of a flaming Elizabeth lighting up the castle's interior with the explosive, fiery force of a military weapon is just too much. How can a scene begin so well and end so poorly?

See for yourself if you dare:

There's also a continuity error when Frankenstein first brings Elizabeth's body into the lab: at first, he lays her face-up on a lab table; a few seconds later, she's face-down, and Victor flips her to be face-up. What gives, Branagh?