Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

One of the greatest sequels, horror films, Universal monster movies, and classic Hollywood films ever made, Bride of Frankenstein pulls off the almost impossible trick of amplifying the camp and comedy elements that were a small part of Frankenstein without diminishing the horror or sacrificing any of the emotion. And James Whale was one of the greatest visual stylists in the first century of film.

Whale was a gifted director in multiple genres, including musicals (the most famous being Show Boat), comedies, adventures, melodramas, thrillers, romances, and war movies, but his enduring reputation as one of the great classic Hollywood directors was primarily earned by the four horror movies he made for Universal (Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein). Whale was also openly gay, which was a brave, unusual, and potentially career-damaging way of living in '30s and '40s Hollywood (or '30s and '40s anywhere), and it's not hard to see gay subtext (or just plain text) in his films, making him a pioneering figure in queer cinema. After a handful of box-office disappointments in the late '40s, Whale was unable to find employment in the film industry for the rest of his life. This seems like an extraordinarily harsh penalty for a man who made multiple enduring classics that were hits with both critics and audiences. It's not a stretch to suspect that the commercial flops were a convenient excuse for keeping an out gay man out of the business. I wish he'd continued to work independently, but that's a tough life, too.

Both Mary Shelley's novel and Whale's 1931 film adaptation end definitively and poetically, so the idea of a sequel seems like a misguided undertaking. Whale lets us know right off the bat that he's fully aware of that and that he's up to something tonally different with a campy, funny prologue (filmed with an elegant, gliding camera) involving Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley, once again together on a dark and stormy night. Elsa Lanchester pulls double duty as Mary and Frankenstein's bride, and she steals the movie with her brief but memorable performances at each end of the film. A hilariously over-the-top Gavin Gordon as Lord Byron can't get over his disbelief that the gentle, afraid-of-storms Mary could write such a chilling tale as Frankenstein. Mary tells him there is even more to the story than the novel, and a rapt Byron and Percy take seats next to her as she unfolds the rest of the Frankenstein saga after a brief recap of the first film's highlights.

The action picks up immediately after the first film's ending, with most of the cast returning in the same roles. Dwight Frye is a notable exception. His character died in Frankenstein, so he's playing a different, though equally ill-fated, person in the sequel. Boris Karloff's monster and Colin Clive's Dr. Frankenstein also died in the first film. What the sequel proposes is that they did not. Both survive with minor injuries, and Frankie's monster goes on another village rampage, though he's only trying to find a place in the world where people will stop screaming at him and chasing him with burning torches. It's banal to say it out loud or on paper (though Whale does a beautiful job turning it into visual poetry), but man is the real monster in these movies.

Dr Frankie is semi-ready to move on from the playing God business, marry Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson), and concentrate on more ethical, run-of-the-mill science experiments, though recent monster-based events have made Elizabeth roughly 15% crazy. The future looks semi-bright with the occasional thunder shower until Dr. Pretorious (Ernest Thesiger) shows up. Pretorious makes other mad scientists look like mild-mannered accountants, but he's a crafty bastard. He has also created life, but the proportions are wrong. His people were grown in petri dishes "from seed" (eewwww), but they're only action-figure size.

Pretorious wants Frankenstein to join forces with him and create a woman. A full-sized woman! To quote They Might Be Giants, "she's actual size but she seems much bigger to me." You can tell Frankenstein wants to do it. The passion for creating life in the lab is still there, but his conscience stops him. Like I said mere words ago, Pretorious is a crafty bastard, so he has ways to get Frankenstein on board with 1935's hottest science collab. Eventually, Operation: Bride of Frankenstein is a go.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein's monster is on a dark night of the soul. He has several unpleasant run-ins with people before finding a friend in a lonely blind man (O.P. Heggie). He also discovers that he's a bit of a party monster. The old man introduces him to the joys of cigars, wine, and music, and he simply can't get enough. He also loves biting into a hunk of bread, but he still understandably hates fire. This monster is alright. I like the cut of his jib. Things go south when a couple of villagers show up and spoil everything for everybody. One of these villagers is played by a very young John Carradine. The monster, on the road again, eventually crosses paths with Pretorious, and things heat up, bride-wise, as most of our principal characters come together in a thrilling finale.

Elsa Lanchester's bride is only onscreen for a few minutes, but it's enough to create several of the most iconic images in film. She looks amazing with her B-52's beehive-on-an-incline electro-shocked hair with a gray corkscrew swirl, jawline stitches, and dark lipstick and eyebrows on her pale face, and her movements and facial expressions are mesmerizing. I love her performance and look so much. I was tempted to illustrate this post exclusively with stills of the bride, but I stopped myself at three images.

Everything works beautifully in this movie. It exceeds expectations and transcends sequel-itis. It has a real emotional core existing alongside the comedy and horror, and it turns loneliness, isolation, outsiderdom, alienation, and unrequited yearning into visual art. Whale's style is an eye-popping blend of previous decades' silent film imagery, the then-current innovations of contemporary Hollywood, and a way-ahead-of-its-time sensibility whose tendrils keep extending into modern culture. I've been watching a lot of Dragula lately, and this movie shares some DNA with the drag monsters appearing on the show. I love, love, love Bride of Frankenstein. My only question is, what eventually happens to Pretorious's tiny people, grown from "seed"?