Creature designers: The Frankenstein complex (2015)

	Also Known As: Le complexe de Frankenstein (original)
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Gilles Penso, Alexandre Poncet
	Actors: -
	Country: F
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 29.10.2016, Cinema CASINO, GIFFF2016
Synopsis: Injecting life into cinema monsters has always been a challenge and passion for some visionary film makers and artists.
Review: Watching this documentary is a bit like watching the bonus features on a Blu-ray which I usually like to do, except that this time the makers were not limited to showing extracts from the movie you have just watched, or from other movies by the same studio. Here we could see interviews by a whole variety of historical contributors to the field of monsters creation in Cinema. The documentary starts with very interesting thoughts about Monsters: why are they part of the human psyche and what makes a good movie monster: for example it has to fit in its environment and we have to picture it at rest, as we are tought by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Mimic, Hellboy 1-2, Pacific Rim). Then the documentary shifts more towards a review of the history of special effects: from guys in suits to stop motion, optical effect, animatronic and finally digital effects, losing a bit of its thoughtful approah for a more mechanical review. So it loses a bit of interest and originality but for a special efffects freak like me it is very informative, and I loved to see SFX geniuses (that I all knew) talk about the creation of classic movies (that I have also all seen, several times). Note that the both directors are editors in my favorite magazine Mad Movies, and Poncet recently produced a dedicated documentary Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan and Penso directed it.
Rating: 6 /10