Bride of Frankenstein

Chris Feil5.0

This is about a gay man and a lesbian unknowingly set up on a blind date

👽 Zara 👽4.0

the bride deserved more screen time

Josh Lewis5.0

"Before you came I was all alone." "We belong dead."Retains and expands on pretty much every iconic element of Whale’s first time welcoming us into a “new world of Gods and Monsters” with his 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece Frankenstein: the elaborate and beautiful expressionist scifi-horror production design/lighting, Jack Pierce’s incredibly vivid and textured make-up FX, Karloff’s simultaneously sweet, menacing and heartbreaking physical performance, etc. However this one has the added benefit of Whale digging even deeper into the unnaturally perverse obsession/mortality anxiety of the material with a morbid sense of camp humor about these mad scientists with God complexes (Thesiger’s almost Claude Rains-ish performance as Dr. Praetorious is an incredible addition to Clive’s sickly and tortured Frankenstein), throwing in some even more impressive optical FX work (the homunculi bit with the jars is as seamless as anything in The Invisible Man), and foregrounding arguably the most essential chapter in the book that they vetoed in the first film for some reason. The monster’s relationship to the blind man (the only character who isn’t scared of him, repulsed by him or tries to kill, and who teaches him about music, and friendship and smoking/drinking) is maybe my favorite stretch of the text, a lovely interlude to all the desolate gothic graveyards and dungeons and attempts to crucify the monster that turn him into the murderous rage monster they see him as--and he is 100% capable of being. And even better is the climactic attempt to end his existential suffering and loneliness by creating the titular Bride for him (a remarkable 4-minute-long performance by Elsa Lanchester, with a look and scream and stiff twitchy hissing that is all iconic for a reason), only for her to bleakly and ironically be just as confused and terrified of him. (Karloff’s expression and delivery of “she hate me!” is so tragic.) The entire extended procedural creation sequence of The Bride is one of my favorites in any Universal monster movie (love all the detailed machinery, the steam/sparks, the manic cutting, dutch angles, tense faces, the hurling of Karl off the roof lol), and it's hard to imagine a movie now having such a gorgeously and grimly explosive/cathartic murder-suicide ending as this does, let alone one in 1935.Full discussion on episode 422 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.