To frighten us, to fire our imagination, a screen nightmare must seem totally real. Ken Russell's expensive-looking tall tale about Shelley, Byron and their ladies conjuring up demons of the mind all through a stormy night is plainly such arrant nonsense, like a pretentious surrealist painting come to life, that it never raises more than the occasional visual shudder at some grisly detail. We're bombarded, in fact, with so many horrific images, each intended to offend the sensibilities and revolt the eyes, that the director never gives the central idea a chance to grip. The cast does its best, although in the cases of Julian Sands and, surprisingly, Natasha Richardson, that isn't terribly good. Richardson's Scots accent came and went as regularly as the audience where we saw the film, who were perhaps supplying an answer to Timothy Spall's Dr Polidori's plea 'Is there no escape from this madhouse? ' No, this is no living nightmare. More like Monty Python's Life of Byron.

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