Director Ken Russell applies his trademark excess to this surreal, experimental examination of the creative dementia shaping Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story is embellished from events that allegedly took place at the Swiss villa of Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) on the night of June 16, 1816. Byron's guests include poet Percy Shelley (Julian Sands) and his future wife Mary (Natasha Richardson); Marys half-sister Claire (Myriam Cyr) and Byron's leech-happy personal physician Dr. John Polidori (Timothy Spall). Byron promises them a night of horror like only a mad poet can deliver -- after partaking of laudanum and other hallucinogens, the guests tell ghost stories while exploring the dark corridors of his home. From here, Russell dives headlong into madness, discarding plot structure in favor of fever-dream set pieces in which the guests confront living manifestations of their own fears and insecurities -- creative, mortal and sexual. The raging Romantics are also given to lengthy discourse on the nature of fear and the fine line between creative genius and insanity.