#56-B: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

6.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

When the Bride from her slab began to rise

BEST LINE

"To a new world of gods and monsters"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

98%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"An eccentric, campy, technically impressive, and frightening picture, James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein has aged remarkably well."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate."

DIRECTOR

James Whale

MAIN CAST

Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Valerie Hobson

THOUGHTS

• To be frank(enstein), I was looking forward to this one, but I was kind of underwhelmed and I don't really understand why a lot of people think it's better than the original. A lot of it felt like a rehash and while there were some new things I did like (Dr. Pretorius, the titular Bride herself), the novelty of the original makes me rank it higher
• I'm also a little torn on the Monster starting to gain the ability to speak and communicate, even though this is taken from the book. While it gives him more depth, it also takes away some of the animalistic horror of the first movie
• For a character that has had such a lasting impact on horror and the general population's understanding of Frankenstein, it may be surprising for some of you to learn that the Bride of Frankenstein only comes to life in the last five minutes of the movie. Even still, I can understand why she's so memorable, and in ways that really only became apparent while watching the movie as opposed to just seeing pictures. The way that Elsa Lanchester plays her, all sudden, jerky movements and inhuman screams and hisses, really stays with you after the movie ends. And I'll admit, I also thought she was legitimately, if unsettlingly, attractive
• You'll be pleased to know that Mary Shelley finally gets her rightful acknowledgement as the author of the novel in this movie's opening credits - "suggested by the original story written in 1816 by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley". It also would have been even more noticeable if she wasn't credited, considering Elsa Lanchester actually has a dual role, playing her as a character in what I found to be a pretty clever little prologue. This is Lanchester's only official credit, though, as we also see "The Monster's Mate....?", a fun addition to the first movie's similar question mark credit of Boris Karloff as The Monster (Boris was the big draw for the sequel, though; the first credit we see is "Carl Laemmle presents KARLOFF in Bride of Frankenstein")
• Certain people get all up in arms when Frankenstein's Monster is referred to simply as Frankenstein, and as a card-carrying pedant myself, I've been pretty careful not to make that mistake. Frankenstein is the mad scientist, and the Monster is the big guy with bolts in his neck. It is fair to acknowledge, however, that this very movie does refer to the Monster as simply Frankenstein - explicitly in the prologue, and I would argue, also in the title itself. Some may say that the title still refers to the human bride of the human Frankenstein, played by Valerie Hobson in this one, but I think that's grasping at straws
• I alluded to this in my previous review, I first saw Young Frankenstein many many years before seeing either of these movies, and I rewatched it again recently. One of the greatest parodies ever made, in part because of how faithfully it recreates the look and feel of the originals, even using many of the exact same props as lab equipment
• Finally, I do want to mention that James Whale, the director of both Frankenstein and its sequel, was openly gay throughout his career, which was, as we know, incredibly rare back in the 1920s and 30s. Bride of Frankenstein has been interpreted as a distinctly queer film, and I recommend this article from Medium and this one from ScreenRant if you'd like to learn more

Up next: Another new one for me, and one that I know very little about, Wait Until Dark from 1967