Frankenstein! Beyond green skin and neck bolts, what else comes to mind? Environmental degradation? The technological singularity? Vicious high school cliques? FilmBar and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination are hosting film screenings of “Unexpected Frankensteins”: movies that capture the themes of Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece, without relying on the pop-culture depictions of a mad scientist and his Gothic monster. Introduction and Q&A by a local scholar followed by the film screening.
In an attempt to discover what awaits us after death, med-school buddies Nelson Wright (Keifer Sutherland), Rachel Mannus (Julia Roberts), Joe Hurley (William Baldwin), David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon), and Randy Steckle (Oliver Platt) concoct a plan to temporarily “flatline” themselves one at a time, stopping all brain activity, to briefly experience death before being resuscitated. A number of them are “killed” and brought back with vivid memories of their past, and the experiment is deemed a success. However, it seems as though they may have gotten more than they bargained for when their past literally comes back to haunt them.