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| A sombre, beautiful poster for James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein |
QUICK REVIEW:
From the Golden Age of studio-created horror movies - especially from Universal Pictures, - James Whale (The Invisible Man (1933)) finally followed his hugely popular 1931 Frankenstein up with The Bride of Frankenstein, which boldly and inventively starts out from a make-believe conversation between Mary Shelly (writer of the original Frankenstein (1818)) and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. We are then catapulted into the fictional universe of the animated monster again.
Whale has chosen several details from the novel that had not been used in the first film, like the monster's relationship to the old, blind man and its ability to speak, which I think, however, is overused a bit in Bride.
But Boris Karloff (The Mummy (1932)) portrays his tragic figure brilliantly, and Ernest Thesiger (The Ghoul (1933)) is superiorly evil as Dr. Pretorius. The effects, camera and set work is stunning. The fantastic cinematography is by John J. Mescall (Magnificent Obsession (1935)). The film had censorship issues in many countries and is teeming with symbolic, religious and scientific elements that have stirred rich analyses of it in many different directions.
Finally, Bride is always remembered for Elsa Lanchester's (Mary Poppins (1964)) now iconic costume wig, if not for some of its many other appealing, strange, remarkable contents. A great horror classic.
Related review:
Boris Karloff: The Ape (1940) or, The Costume-Crazed Doctor!
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| Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankenstein in James Whale's horror classic |
Watch an original trailer for the movie here
Budget: 0.397 mil. $
Box office: 2 mil. $
= Big hit
What do you think of Bride of Frankenstein?
If you have any funny anecdotes concerning the film, please share them
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