Moments after the original film (and following a handy recap segment), Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is rescued from the burning windmill, where his monstrous creation is presumed to have died. But while Henry recovers from his experience, the Monster (Boris Karloff) too has escaped certain death and is lurking near the village in search of companionship. Meanwhile, Henry’s old mentor Dr. Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) has come to Castle Frankenstein to demand that his former pupil resume his aberrant experiments in order to create a Bride (Elsa Lanchester) for the Monster.
Bride of Frankenstein is another in the Universal Monsters canon that I couldn’t be sure whether I’d seen before. There were bits that I recognized, certainly, but what was surprising was that those were sequences I had previously assumed were in the original Frankenstein, like the fact that the creature speaks in this film. I was equally amazed to discover that The Monster’s interaction with a blind man – which was present in the Shelley novel – was reserved for Bride of Frankenstein. (Of course, anyone who can get through that sequence without a hearty guffaw at the memory of Gene Hackman hasn’t, I venture, seen Young Frankenstein.)
In fact, watching Frankenstein and Bride practically back to back made me wonder if this was less an early case of Hollywood sequel-itis and more a case of a genuine two-part story that (with the benefit of hindsight) ought to be run sequentially. The analogue that kept running through my mind was a comparison with The Godfather Saga, the seamless editing of The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II into one extended epic film. Surely someone out there has stitched Frankenstein and his Bride together, moving the Mary Shelley prologue to the very beginning and eliminating the recap reel that opens Bride. If not – psst, Universal, that’s money on the table.
I teased in last week’s review of The Invisible Man that Bride of Frankenstein is the first Universal Monsters film made after the Hays Code was in effect, and the central change here seems to be that Henry Frankenstein’s God complex is excised – or perhaps, more accurately, relocated onto the villainous character of Dr. Pretorius. In the process, however, the net result is that Henry becomes a character practically addicted to his scientific experiments; his aberrations pull him away from his wedding night and drive him into a recursive spiral of abomination. Having created misshapen life already, a sweaty, frantic Henry is now impelled to create a bride. It’s a deranged turn, made all the more manic by Colin Clive’s own struggles with alcohol addiction.
I was surprised to see what little screen time the eponymous Bride is given in this film – only minutes at best (and with no dialogue, to boot). It’s frankly astonishing, then, to think of how iconic she’s become, and that’s almost entirely due to that striking image she presents, with her lightning-frazzled beehive and ghoulish shrieks and hisses. Perhaps the Universal Monsters linger best in our memories as still images, shocking intrusions into reality beyond any horror that a full-length film could impart. One can’t help but wonder what the Bride might have done had the Monster not decided for the both of them, “We belong dead.”
Of course, the Monster is speaking also for Dr. Pretorius, who joins the cast as its all-too-willing villain. Ernest Thesiger plays him delightfully arch, with a gleeful dose of camp, which makes him the perfect foil for the repressed mania of Henry. Pretorius is then the other half of the mad scientist coin; where Henry is prone to fits of hysteria (as when he reprises his most famous line to shriek, “She’s alive!”), Pretorius is in full control of his faculties and pursues his own eccentric experiments all the same. The sequence in which he demonstrates the results of his homunculi project is quaint for its 1935 special effects, but there is a sadistic streak in Pretorius, particularly when he encourages Henry to think of him as the devil.
Where the first film was very careful to caution us in advance that monstrosity is innate, particularly in the case of the Monster’s abnormal brain, Bride of Frankenstein is more reserved, positing instead that the Monster can and does learn kindness – a double-edged sword, as it were, since the Monster learns in tandem the lesson that humanity will always fear and revile him. This redemptive plot, in which an abnormal brain in an executed criminal’s body can rediscover his own humanity, is both surprisingly progressive and welcomely transgressive, forcing us to ask who the true monsters have really been. Mary Shelley herself (portrayed by Lanchester here) has her own opinion, suggesting that her story has been one of a man who plays God, but it seems the narrative gets away from Henry by the film’s end. The franchise too would get away from him (and, alas, director James Whale, for whom Bride is his last Franken-film), leaving this film a bit like the ending of The Godfather: Part II, in which Michael Corleone sits on a park bench and regrets all the ways his best-laid plans went awry. Whether the Coda to the Frankenstein duology would be Son of Frankenstein or (as I might prefer) Young Frankenstein is a question for next week’s Franken-Friday.
Next week for Franken-Friday, madness skips a generation for the Son of Frankenstein (1939), starring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi. Next week is a triple-header for the Monster, though. On Sunday, it's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange; then stop by on Wolf Man Wednesday to see what happens when Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi.
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