Frankenstein Unbound 1990

In 2031, Dr. Joe Buchanan and his team push a radical project: a weapon that uses an energy beam to erase whatever it targets, with the bold claim that wars could end without harming the environment. The promise is immense, but the prototype is dangerously unstable. Unpredictable side effects ripple through the world, triggering erratic weather systems and tearing at the fabric of space and time, causing people to vanish without a trace. On the ride home from the testing facility, Buchanan himself is pulled into one of these dangerous rifts, setting off a chain of events that will bend reality in ways no one could have foreseen.

Buchanan and his futuristic, computer-controlled car reappear in a small Swiss village in 1817. There, he encounters Victor Frankenstein, and the two men strike up a conversation about science over a quiet dinner. It isn’t long before the night reveals a grim backdrop: Frankenstein’s younger brother has recently died, and a local trial is underway to determine the guilt or innocence of the nanny accused of murder. Amid the whispers of a mysterious monster said to haunt the woods, Buchanan becomes intrigued by a keen young observer who turns out to be Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the author who would later write about such beings. Mary’s skepticism about monsters contrasts with the village’s fear, yet she is drawn to the questions of fate and proof that haunt them all. The trial culminates with the nanny being found guilty and sentenced to die on the gallows, and Buchanan grows convinced that the true killer may be something far beyond human.

As the narrative unfolds, Buchanan persuades Frankenstein to reveal a difficult truth, urging him to acknowledge the living proof of a crime that the world refuses to admit. Frankenstein resists, and Mary—torn between the allure of knowledge and the weight of her own destiny—chooses not to involve herself more deeply. Left to his own devices, Buchanan makes his way to Frankenstein’s workshop, where he finds the doctor in the midst of a tense exchange with the creature that has become central to their destinies.

The tension escalates when the monster discloses a devastating motive: Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth Lavenza, has been claimed by the monster, who declares that if a mate cannot be produced for him, he will deprive Frankenstein of one himself. Faced with a choice between power and conscience, Frankenstein asks Buchanan to apply his knowledge of electricity to twist life itself. Buchanan guides the creature to run cables to a weather vane on the roof, while secretly rerouting some of the power to the energy beam in his car.

Thunderous lightning relentlessly strikes the tower, and the battery powering the laser charges to its breaking point. At the climactic moment, the revived corpse on the operating table stirs to life, and the beam fires with devastating force, annihilating the castle. Yet the victory is pyrrhic: the blast opens another space-time rift that sweeps Buchanan, Frankenstein, and the two members of the monstrous pair far into a distant future.

The travelers land on a desolate, snowbound mountain where civilization seems lost. The monster and Frankenstein attempt to seduce a lone woman toward them, but she asserts her own agency by forcing Frankenstein to shoot; enraged, the monster kills Frankenstein and trudges on into the raging blizzard. Buchanan tailors his pursuit, determined to prevent the creature from reaching a city where more harm could follow.

Their chase culminates in a cavern filled with computers and machinery—the city’s central brain—where the machines awaken with a clipped, almost sentient chorus. A voice intones, “Welcome back, Dr. Buchanan.” The monster explains that this cavern is the last bastion of a ruined world, and the fight that follows is a clash of tech and will. The security systems lash out, and the monster is burned to death by lasers. Buchanan trudges toward the nearby city, the weight of what transpired pressing on him as the snow swirls around him.

In a final, haunting echo, the monster’s voice lingers: he cannot truly be killed, for now, he is unbound.