Doomtomylo
a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
Ersbel Oraph
The Victorian X-men! Vioence, scientist nonsense, superstition, and doubtful morals. Some 40 years ago it would have been a visionary comic book. Today it is just one of many stories, all so uniformly different.
targe1314
What to make of this series...When it is truly good, it is DREADFULLY GOOD... and when it is bad, it is TRULY DREADFUL.Even describing it is difficult. Is it British version of American Horror Story? No. It is not very scary, and oftentimes rather boring.Is it a series of short stories woven together to form a string of Penny Dreadfuls as the title suggests? No, not that either, which is too bad, that would have been very good.Is it a Steam Punk monster investigation bureau flick? No, not that either, although it strays in this direction in it's meanderings, which also, would have been good, in its own right.What does shine out from it's near perpetual nighttime scenes, which occasionally get absolutely maddening (I swear I've stared at a completely dark screen in this show for 15 to 20 seconds, with only the occasional half a face or one hand showing up.) DO NOT watch this during daylight...is character development.Character development is top notch, other than some exceptions (Dr. Jekyll being a major disappointment int his regard....) with Eva Green pretty much carrying the show on her demonically-possessed shoulders. The crazy invented language dialogue they made her memorize alone is astonishing to watch.This show presents humans as the true monsters, and monsters as the pale catch-ups. Just do a body count of people horrifically murdered in Season 3 by humans compared to the monster body count to verify this.The Bride of Frankenstein is presented as a drop dead gorgeous voluptuous blonde who get's a hate on for men as her former prostitute memories come back. There's nary a neck-bolt or lighting streaked hair-do in sight. Making her a tad more horror-ful while still having a naughty dark goth girl side would have done wonders for suspension of belief. Her fated non-partner The Monster, otoh, is rather tragi-comically done up as a sort of pale-blue Goth version of Ozzy Osbourne, complete with goth makeup and long flowing black metal head hair, and it was trying at times to keep from laughing when he was attempting a serious shot at poetry. I kept waiting for him to whip an electric guitar out of his cloak and launch into a lick of Crazy Train.The cowboy gun-totin' werewolf get's a classic 1950's Wolf Man getup which is also quite comical to observe.Perhaps the show stealers are the coven of satanic witches, who can shape shift into strange, almost alien, vampire like creatures covered in satantic tattoos. These at least bring the right formulae of dread and danger countered with astonishing beauty. That they are dispatched almost casually in their battle royale is a great insult to the horror gravitas they brought to the series.Dracula shows up much too late and much too lamely, imo. There is zero dread to him and his warehouse of vampires comes across as so many easily killed rat-people as seen in your standard zombie horde to be massaquered with bullets in Walking Dead.Our misguided steam punk monster killing team wanders aimlessly over the fog shrouded London landscape (or very weirdly, across the cowboy deserts of the US) blindly committing acts both fair and fowl, leaving us in the end unsure of who really to root for, and finally, not caring in the slightest who lives or dies.Despite all this the show does hook one in, with excellent sound and music atmospherics, costuming, and acting. Perhaps all my critiques above was the point after all. Humans are the truest and evilist of all monsters. We all stagger in a miasma of moral ambiguity, there is no shining victory at the end of the battle, just blood, bodies, and regrets.
