The Bride of Frankenstein [DVD] [1935] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The plot elaborates an idea contained in the Mary Shelly novel: Frankenstein is pressured to create a mate for the monster. In Shelly's novel, the doctor eventually balks; in the film, however, he sees the experiment through due to a mix of his own obsession and the manipulations of a new character, Dr. Pretorious, and the two create the only truly iconographical monster in the film pantheon of the 1930s horror film: "The Bride," brilliantly played by Elsa Lanchester.

The cast is excellent throughout, with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff repeating their roles and Frankenstein and the monster, and Valerie Hobson an able replacement for Mae Clarke in the role of Elizabeth; Ernest Thesiger and Una O'Connor also give incredibly memorable performances as the truly strange Pretorius and the constantly hysterical maid Minnie. The art design is remarkable, and the Waxman score is justly famous. But the genius of the film lies not so much in these new and bizarre characters, in the familiar ones, or in the production values: it is in the way in which Whales delicately balances his elements and then subverts them.

FRANKENSTEIN owes much of its power to its directness--it has a raw energy that is difficult to resist, still more difficult to describe. But THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN owes its power to its complexity. Nothing here is quite what it appears to be, and throughout the film we constantly receive mixed messages about the characters and implications of their situations. While Thesiger's Dr. Pretorius is justly celebrated as a covert gay icon of the darkest possible variety, and while many people quickly grasp Whale's often subversive use of Christian imagery, the film has many, many layers that do not reveal themselves upon a single viewing.

The single most startling sequence, at least to my mind, is the famous scene in which the Monster stumbles into the lonely cottage of the blind hermit, a role beautifully played by O.P. Heggie. On the surface, the sequence would seem to be about how cruely we judge people by appearances, and how true kindness can lift the fallen. It was not until I had seen the film several times that it dawned upon me that Whale has essentially endowed the a scene with a host of covertly homosexual overtones--and then tied them to a series of Christian elements for good measure. It is startling, to say the least.

Like most Universal horror DVDs, the package here is superior, and the film is supported with an interesting documentary and a still more interesting audio commentary track. Critics and fans continue to battle over whether FRANKENSTEIN or THE BRIDE is the better film--but I say they are so completely different that the question simply doesn't arise. Whatever the case, if you are a fan of 1930s horror and James Whale in particular, this is a must own DVD.

Most of the principal cast members of the original Frankenstein movie reprise their roles here, including Colin Clive as Frankenstein and the inimitable Boris Karloff as the monster. Mae Clarke, however, was unavailable for health reasons, and a seventeen-year-old Valerie Hobson took on the role of Elizabeth, Frankenstein's fiancée. This is a noticeable change, as Hobson played Elizabeth in a strikingly different manner. As you may have guessed, Frankenstein's monster did not actually die in the big fire that ended the first motion picture. The windmill was built over a cistern (more like a great big underground pond, if you ask me), and the monster escapes the conflagration, not before killing a couple of people and scaring Minnie, this film's version of interminable comic relief, half to death. Dr. Frankenstein, for his part, also survives (although we already knew this thanks to the last-minute concluding scene of the first movie). He regrets his foolish attempts to play God, even though he still speaks with a mad zeal about the dreams he pursued so dangerously. Enter Dr. Praetorius (Ernest Thesiger), a former professor of Frankenstein's and the kind of evil genius our reformed young doctor should have become. Praetorius has been doing his own God-like experiments and now seeks to join his knowledge with that of Frankenstein to make not a man, but a woman. In the film's only borderline ridiculous moments, we see the products of Praetorius' work - the film work and special effects are brilliantly done, but the whole idea is just laughably silly. Still, you can't help liking old Praetorius because he is everything a mad scientist should be. Frankenstein has now become - well, he's a total wuss, a cowardly man who seems incapable of acting on his own accord. Luckily, Dr. Praetorius knows how to deal with a man such as Frankenstein, and he eventually succeeds in getting the good doctor back in the lab for one final experiment.

As for Frankenstein's monster, we finally get to see the humanity of the character emerge. Seeking friendship, he is met only with fear, screams, and malice. He does manage to find a friend in the countryside, however - the sound of violin music takes him to the home of a blind hermit. In one of the most touching scenes in cinema history, the blind man takes the monster in, thanks God for finally sending him a friend to assuage his loneliness, and shines the full light of humanity, all too briefly, on the lonely creature. Naturally, this time of happiness does not last long, but the monster does develop the ability to speak before he is separated forever from his friend. He ends up crossing paths with Dr. Praetorius, who quickly sells him on the idea of a mate, setting the stage for another pyrotechnic creation scene that gives us the unforgettable Bride of Frankenstein.

The cinematography, musical score, and basically everything else are well-nigh perfect in this film; despite the ridiculous editing demands of the censors, Bride of Frankenstein achieves the pinnacle of monster movie success. Still, it bothers me that these films have defined Frankenstein's monster as a creature much different than the literary monster of Mary Shelley's creation. The first film completely stood Shelley's story on its head, missing the point entirely. How ironic it is for Bride of Frankenstein to feature a prologue featuring the character of Mary Shelley herself, in company with her companion Percy Bysse Shelley and the flamboyant Lord Byron, explaining the meaning of her work and then introducing yet another bastardization of the real Mary Shelley's literary masterpiece. The original monster, as envisioned by Shelley, was not the creature at all; it was Dr. Frankenstein, not so much because he played God but because he abandoned his monstrous creation and left him alone to fend for himself. Bride of Frankenstein rights some of this wrong by showing the depth of humanity in the monster, but it cannot undo the wrongs already done the character. In the context of the cinema, he will forever be a "monster," a shadow of his true literary self, forced to suffer at the hands of man while the true villain of the story fails to even attempt to redeem himself or to suffer the harsh yet noble fate that he so rightfully earned in Shelley's original story.