Annual HalloWatch: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/31/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

For evidence of our ongoing Frankenstein discussion, click here.

If you've followed this site, it is likely you know The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is easily one of my favorite films.  It takes everything I like in the first film (which is also a favorite) and turns it up to 11.  

I'm pretty sure star Colin Clive was not actually okay while filming this movie.  He was dead by 1937, and his drinking problem was likely in full-effect while making this movie.  But he's @#$%ing great as the manic Henry Frankenstein - obsessed with what he *almost* did in the last film, and not all that interested in his lovely fiancee (Valerie Hobson) in comparison to animating life with cosmic rays.  Which is a shame - Elizabeth seems nice, and psychic.

If the sets and lighting in Frankenstein filtered German Expressionism through an Anglo/ American lens, then this movie cranks it all up - with gigantic sets (what were those walls Minnie runs through returning to Castle Frankenstein?  The huge space of the entry hall!  The tower laboratory!)  and fascinating lighting and camera work - just watch the sparks and shadows in the birth sequence.

At this point, I'm not even really sure Bride of Frankenstein is a horror movie.  It certainly *looks* like one, and I'm sure the 1935 audience was primed for scares.  But, like its predecessor, it just isn't about scares.  Whale and Co. are clearly having a ball (see:  Ernest Thesiger, Una O'Connor and EE Clive playing it as high camp).  It's also got the pathos of the cabin sequence, Franky being harassed by the villagers, and the tears of rejection at the film's end.  At no point is the Monster really out to get anyone - even less so than in the first film.  If you're scared of him, you're part of the problem, amirite?

I try not to let it get to me that so much 21st Century Bride of Frankenstein imagery and merch and whatnot puts the Bride and Franky together as a couple.  To be blunt - it's demonstrating you've never actually seen the movie, and if you *have* seen the movie, you completely missed the point of it.  A point which is pretty difficult to miss here in 2024 - that all of your dumb plans to just make a "mate" for someone neglects the fact women have their own mind and are going to hiss at you like a goose if you think they just *have* to think you're a charmer.

My least favorite part of the film is not even in this movie.  It's not that we get so little of The Bride (she's in maybe five or six minutes of the movie), it's that she never shows up again.*  I mean, I'm aware they were not assuming, in 1935, there would be many more Universal Frankenstein movies - blowing folks up 60% of your main cast seems like a definitive ending.  And it's true James Whale did not return for a 3rd film.  I just would have liked to have seen her pop up again in one of the many, many, many... sequels.  

Not really sure what you can chalk it up to that we didn't see her again, but it's not a mistake modern filmmakers are champing at the bit to claim her story, and we have a Maggie Gyllenhaal directed Bride movie coming.  I believe there's others in the works, and I'm still cheesed we didn't get the Angelina Jolie/ Bill Condon directed version because The Mummy (2017) sucked.

*I'm not one of those folks who thinks "now I get to make up my own story and that's legit!  Head canon!" kind of people, so I take it she didn't make it out of the explosion or is lying undead under a pile of rubble somewhere.