A young man gives life to a statue with disastrous results.A young man gives life to a statue with disastrous results.A young man gives life to a statue with disastrous results.
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This is a remarkably circumstantial review of a film that all accounts seem to agree is lost although it is true that stills survive and a fairly full contemporary description. But from there, to talk of Standing's "standout performance" and how "much of the film drags".... I confess myself mystified If this curious Welshman knows something that nobody else knows he should perhaps reveal it to the world and not keep it to himself there in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It would be rather something to have rediscovered the first full-length feature version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
The "stocky and coarse-featured" Mr. Standing was one of an incredibly distinguished family of British actors of whom the patriarch was his father Herbert. His brothers Jack, Guy, Herbert Jr, Aubrey and Wyndham were also actors, as were the grandchildren Kay Hammond, Guy Standing Jr., Joan and Jack Standing Jr. while the representative in the current generation is actor John Standing (properly Sir John Ronald Leon Standing, 4th Baronet), long well known to British theatre and television audiences but whom, despite the critics, cinema connoisseurs will know from Peter Greenaway's 1999 film 8½ Women (all mention of which is bizarrely missing from the Wikipedia article on the actor).
The "stocky and coarse-featured" Mr. Standing was one of an incredibly distinguished family of British actors of whom the patriarch was his father Herbert. His brothers Jack, Guy, Herbert Jr, Aubrey and Wyndham were also actors, as were the grandchildren Kay Hammond, Guy Standing Jr., Joan and Jack Standing Jr. while the representative in the current generation is actor John Standing (properly Sir John Ronald Leon Standing, 4th Baronet), long well known to British theatre and television audiences but whom, despite the critics, cinema connoisseurs will know from Peter Greenaway's 1999 film 8½ Women (all mention of which is bizarrely missing from the Wikipedia article on the actor).
A couple of old press cuttings and a handful of stills are nowhere near enough for anyone to adequately judge a film, and since this seems to be all the evidence of Life Without Soul's existence, any in-depth reviews of the film must be taken with a few sackfuls of salt.
According to Phil Hardy's Encyclopaedia of Horror, this first full-length feature of Frankenstein apparently featured an outstanding performance by Percy Standing as the creature, the actor convincingly conveying the embodiment of a man without a soul. A shame that we will never be able to judge for ourselves, unless someone discovers a copy hidden away in a vault somewhere (Thomas A. Edison's 1910 version of Frankenstein was considered lost until a nitrate print was discovered in the mid-'70s, so anything is possible I suppose).
According to Phil Hardy's Encyclopaedia of Horror, this first full-length feature of Frankenstein apparently featured an outstanding performance by Percy Standing as the creature, the actor convincingly conveying the embodiment of a man without a soul. A shame that we will never be able to judge for ourselves, unless someone discovers a copy hidden away in a vault somewhere (Thomas A. Edison's 1910 version of Frankenstein was considered lost until a nitrate print was discovered in the mid-'70s, so anything is possible I suppose).
Did you know
- Alternate versionsReleased with new footage by the Raver Film Corp. in March 1916.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Cinemassacre's Monster Madness: Top 10 Lost Horror Films (2017)
Details
- Runtime1 hour 10 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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