Film Review: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Sequels are often considered worse than the original films, but there are always exceptions to this rule. Those exceptions might include even the original films that are considered classics or milestones in cinema history, like Frankenstein, the 1931 horror film directed by James Whale. Four years later, Whale directed a sequel under the title The Bride of Frankenstein, which is often considered the best horror film of the 1930s and one of the best horror films ever made.

Like the original film, The Bride of Frankenstein was based on Frankenstein, the famous 1818 novel by British author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, with scriptwriters William Hurlbut and John L. Balderstone using some of the motifs not used in the previous film. The plot begins exactly where the original film ended, with Whale finding an ingenious way to update the audience that might not have seen the 1931 film. It is a short prologue scene set in the 1810s featuring Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (played by Elsa Lanchester) discussing her novel with her husband Percy Shelley (played by Douglas Walton) and friend Lord Byron (played by Gavin Gordon); during it, Mary Shelley describes how the mad scientist Henry Frankenstein (played by Colin Clive) created a monster (played by Boris Karloff) from dead people's body parts, which, once given life, began a murderous rampage in the village in the Bavarian Alps. The monster apparently perished in a mill fire, surrounded by villagers, but Shelley tells that the "story isn't over". The first scenes show that the monster actually survived; the villagers are again terrorised by its murderous rampage. In the meantime, Henry Frankenstein, who barely survived, is resentful over his playing God and would like nothing more than for the nightmare to end, especially because it endangers his fiancée Elizabeth (played by Valerie Hobson). He is, however, soon visited by Dr. Septimus Pretorius (played by Ernest Thesiger), a former mentor who has his own ideas about creating artificial life and wants the two of them to work together to create an artificial woman. When Frankenstein refuses, Pretorius finds an ally in the monster, who in the meantime has learned to speak by living in a hut with a kind blind hermit (played by O. P. Heggie). The monster wants a female companion, and Pretorius, in order to force Frankenstein to cooperate, instructs the monster to abduct Elizabeth.

Frankenstein was a big hit for Universal Pictures, and producer Carl Laemmle Jr. wanted to start working on a sequel almost immediately. Whale was much more hesitant, and it took years of convincing and a promise of creative freedom for him to agree. The resulting film was worth the wait. Whale had improved his directing skills, while Hollywood had made significant technical progress in four years. Bride, while remaining in the German Expressionist style of production design, covered by the cinematography of John J. Mescall, looks much more polished. The story, despite turning the finale of the first film into a not particularly convincing cliffhanger, is also more interesting, and the characters are more complex. That includes the cast, which does a better and, in many ways, physically more demanding job. The most important cast member, Boris Karloff, returns; he delivers another great performance, this time with even more demanding makeup necessary for his character to talk. Colin Clive again shines in his role, although in subsequent years he had to struggle with alcoholism and health issues. Health issues of Mae Clarke, the actress playing Elizabeth in the original film, forced Whale to cast the British Valerie Hobson in that role; she did a much better job. Ernest Thesiger, Whale's old acquaintance from the British stage, is a great addition, and he plays the most monstrous character of them all – the ultimate mad scientist, whose desire to create artificial life and play God might be a cover for some unspeakable perversions and who, unlike the remorseful Frankenstein or the monster who isn't guilty for being what it is, doesn't have any redeeming qualities. Thesiger plays such a character in a very effective way, allowing the audience to enjoy Pretorius' lunacy. The best acting performance in the film, however, is given by Elsa Lanchester, the actress who appears relatively briefly in a double role – as Mary Shelley in the beginning and as the Bride near the end. Although her latter performance is brief, it is almost as iconic as Karloff's character in the series. For Lanchester, who would have many great character roles in her career, Bride represented what could be described as the pinnacle of her career.

Whale also used the opportunity to play with his style of direction, which becomes more unusual as the film approaches its famous Gothic climax in the castle. Whale employs unusual shooting angles and gives away the influence of Soviet montage theory. He also infuses the film with plenty of dark humour, especially in scenes with the hysterical woman played by Una O'Connor. The scene in which the monster finds a kindred spirit in the blind hermit is both funny and poignant. Like in the 1931 film, Whale keeps a rapid tempo, and the running time is relatively short. But the audience can find plenty of new things to like – special effects depicting "homunculi" or artificial little people created by Pretorius and an extremely effective music score by Franz Waxman (which was later used in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon film serials). Many film scholars and critics in later years, on account of Whale's homosexuality, tried to find a gay subtext in the film's content, which was a view generally rejected by Whale's friends and acquaintances. Whale had to make his film under the yoke of the newly enforced Hays Code, and any "spicy" content had to be smuggled onto the screen in ways that allowed various interpretations. The Bride of Frankenstein, like the previous film, turned out to be a massive hit. Whale, however, didn't participate in six more films in the series produced by Universal, and all of them proved inferior to this work. This guaranteed the status of The Bride of Frankenstein to remain high. The film was given homage in Mel Brooks' classic parody Frankenstein Junior in 1975 and its production was partially reconstructed in Gods and Monsters, a biopic dedicated to Whale, in 1998.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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