Fresh! Check out the '80s movies (and more!) that inspired 'Lisa Frankenstein'
It was 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein that lit the creative spark for Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to write Lisa Frankenstein, but it was the vibrant ’80s that inspired the direction the teen horror comedy would take.
When Cody first heard that Universal Pictures was developing a new film based on James Whale’s 1935 black-and-white classic, she revisited a story idea she had been pondering for some time – that of a paranormal love story – and found herself inspired to create “Lisa Frankenstein,” her unique spin based on the classic tale. And as she pondered the exact shape her script might take, she found inspiration in an earlier off-beat spin on Frankenstein mythology, the 1985 John Hughes film Weird Science, a movie the screenwriter says “loomed large” in her childhood.
In Lisa Frankenstein, it’s 1989 and Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), an awkward 17-year-old, is trying to adjust to a new school and a new life after her mother’s death and her father’s hasty remarriage. Despite the unwavering support offered by her plucky cheerleader step-sister Taffy (Liza Soberano), Lisa only finds solace in the abandoned cemetery near her house, where she tends to the grave of a young man who died in 1837 – and whose corpse she unwittingly reanimates (Cole Sprouse). Feeling obligated to help the poor soul regain his humanity, Lisa embarks on a quest to breathe new life into her long-dead new companion. All she needs to succeed are some freshly harvested body parts and Taffy’s broken tanning bed.
Besides Weird Science, here are the other ’80s inspirations for Lisa Frankenstein.
TONE AND COLOR PALETTE
Beetlejuice (1988), Heathers (1988), plus Death Becomes Her from the early ’90s!
For the overall tone, director and self-professed “horror nerd” Zelda Williams knew exactly the tone she wanted to strike, which reminded her of movies that she’d grown up loving, bracingly original dark comedies including Tim Burton’s afterlife farce Beetlejuice, the Meryl Streep-starrer Death Becomes Her and the wildly subversive high school-set satire Heathers. “I wanted this movie to be funny, but I also wanted it to feel like it was funny in a less modern way,” Williams says, “I wanted it to be a silly, vibrant escape.”
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Williams was excited to go back to the year 1989 to stage the unpredictable action that unfolds on screen, though rather than remaining entirely faithful in her depiction of the era, she wanted the film to take place in “a sort of warped, John Waters meets Nightmare on Elm Street version” of 1989.
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), Miami Vice (1984 - 1989)
To help communicate the look and feel of the movie as she envisioned it, Williams created a lookbook with her own drawings and sketches as well as references from movies including Pedro Almodóvar’s 1989 classic. “That movie was a very specific reference, and he uses very strong primary colors throughout,” says production designer Mark Worthington.
For the Swallows’ home, the main inspiration was Miami Vice. From the wallpaper border adorning the walls to the sea foam-colored exercise bike in Lisa’s room, Worthington layered the house in the tropical pastels that were all the rage in 1989, thanks in part to the stylized color palette of the hit cop series. “Janet’s [Lisa’s stepmom] space is a symphony of pink, mauve, and seafoam green,” Worthington says.
COSTUME, HAIR AND MAKE-UP
Day of the Dead (1985)
For the Creature (Cole Sprouse), Williams says, “I didn’t want to do too much modern magic and lose the fact that ultimately, you are watching an actor do something interesting in a costume. I wanted the same sort of feeling I got watching the character of Bub in George Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ when I was growing up, where the zombie makeup never felt quite as important as the actor doing all this wonderful exploratory work underneath it all… The audience is supposed to fall for him, too, in a way, and the tactile, in-person feeling of the makeup in this really helps that.”
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Say Anything (1989)
As part of their preparation and research, costume designer McLaughlin Luster and her team revisited movies including Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Say Anything. “You want to see movies filmed in 1989 because you’ll see how [people] really dressed, especially if you look at the extras,” says the costume designer.
For Lisa’s costumes, Heathers was most influential. “They wanted her to go kind of Goth and dark, but I had to keep it still in the late eighties,” says Luster, “so I would take framed pictures of Winona Ryder in the off-the-shoulder shirt with the suspender kind of dress [she wears in ‘Heathers’ for a scene in which her character is attending a college frat party], and Lisa ended up in a look like that.”
Cindy Crawford
Supermodel Cindy Crawford inspired Taffy’s (Liza Soberano) makeup. Says head make-up artist Remi Savva of Soberano’s character Taffy, Lisa’s stepsister: “We wanted her to look the opposite of Lisa.”
River Phoenix
For protagonist Lisa Swallow’s high school crush, “intellectual punk dreamboat” Michael Trent (played by Henry Eikenberry), director Williams’s pegs included River Phoenix, who became a household name in Hollywood with 1986’s Stand By Me.
MUSIC
Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon (1984)
When it came time to choose the 1980s power ballad that Lisa Swallows sings in one of the movie’s most memorable set pieces, there was only one song that spoke to director Williams: Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon. “This movie isn’t a musical, but having one funny, sweet musical moment feels very fitting,” says the director. “The lyrics are so comically on point with the plot of the movie that it basically feels like it was written around it.”
Says screenwriter Cody as one of her reasons for setting the film in the ’80s, “I also enjoy the Goth and post-punk music of the late ’80s so I knew we could put together a great soundtrack.”
Lisa Frankenstein, directed by Zelda Williams (daughter of the late Robin Williams and herself part-Filipina) and distributed by Universal Pictures International, opens in cinemas on February 7.