Film critics and horrors fans all laud Bride Of Frankenstein and for good reason.  But many of those reasons are kind of unconnected to the horror movie genre.  In fact, does Bride even qualify as a great horror movie as opposed to just a great movie?  To help answer these questions, we present...

By JOE ROMANO

It's called by some, "the greatest horror movie ever made."  By others, the greatest sequel ever filmed.  And erroneously by a few--well, maybe quite a few-- the greatest drag movie to grace the silver screen.  Most would agree, however, that Bride Of Frankenstein is a classic Hollywood movie.  One of the true foundations of the horror genre...

When released in 1935, its popularity single-handedly saved horror movies from demise.  Although the 1930s were the golden age of monster movies, interest in the genre was already on the wane by the middle of the decade.  The success of Bride Of Frankenstein, with its mixture of monsters and black comedy, was a refreshing tonic for movie audiences of the day.  Its box- office success enabled Universal Studios to extend the life of its horror franchise well past its prime.

Still, if truth be known, I've always disliked Bride in spite of all the accolades it has received over the years, preferring the somber original to its comical mate.

That's odd, when you think about it, because Bride Of Frankenstein reunited several of the same people involved with its predecessor, Frankenstein.   Carl Laemmle, Jr., James Whale, Colin Clive, and Boris Karloff -- producer, director, and principal actors.  Add John Balderston as a writer and Jack Pierce with his incredible special make-up skills and you have almost the same creative team on both the first and second Frankenstein movies.

Although he lived an openly gay lifestyle, tales of Whale's flamboyance and the supposedly hidden homosexual elements within Bride of Frankenstein are greatly exaggerated.  While he was unashamed of his sexuality, Whale worked hard to break away from his working-class background.

While there are some homoerotic undercurrents throughout Bride of Frankenstein, Whale was too much the prim and proper gentleman to rub his sexual preferences in the face of his audience.  He was simply letting his creativity shine through.

When any extremely talented person does that, completely untethered from normal artistic constraints--as Whale demanded from Laemmle before agreeing to a sequel--his personality becomes an integral part of his artwork.

Despite some minor inconsistencies that Whale should have avoided, the two movies work well as a whole.  So much so that it's easy to forget neither one is peopled by exactly the same actors.

Of course, there's Karloff as the monster, and Clive as Henry Frankenstein, but two different actresses played the role of Henry's wife, Elizabeth.  (Mae Clark in Frankenstein and Valerie Hobson in Bride.)   Then there's the great character actor Dwight Frye as the hunchback Fritz in Frankenstein and as Karl the grave robbing murderer in Bride.

Not everyone will agree, but I think it really is best to watch both the original and its sequel together -- and that is the only way I do watch Bride when I view it at all.  Keep in mind, however, as novelist Simon Drax recently reminded me, "Frankenstein is a true horror movie, and Bride Of Frankenstein is a fantasy."  A subtle difference, but an important one for fans like Drax who seldom watch the two back-to-back.

Bride Of Frankenstein opens with an oft-maligned scene of a very young Mary Shelley, her husband Percy, and their friend, Lord Byron, discussing Mary's recent book, "Frankenstein."

Many critics hate this scene because it interrupts the continuity between the first and second movies.   Perhaps because I read Mary Shelley's novel long before I saw either of the two movies on late night TV, I see this prologue to the second movie as an interesting bridge between the two--and can't imagine Bride without it.

Following this unusual opening, we see the monster resurrecting himself and killing the mother and father of the little girl he accidentally drowned in the first film.  After freeing himself from the rubble of a burning gristmill, the monster quickly flees into the countryside and the scene shifts to the home of Henry Frankenstein as an unwelcome colleague arrives.  The colleague, a strange man named Doctor Pretorius, has also succeeded in creating his own sort of new life--miniature doll-like humans that he keeps in glass cylinders.  Pretorius is drawn to Henry like a doomed moth to a flickering flame.

As Pretorius asks for Frankenstein's help in a joint creation, the monster is captured and jailed.  Easily escaping his bonds, the monster flees into the countryside again where he meets a kindly old blind man who teaches him how to speak.  (A touching scene that was hilariously spoofed by Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein.)

When two hunters discover the monster in the blind man’s cottage, a struggle ensues and the hut is accidentally burned down.  The monster narrowly escapes the inferno and stumbles across Pretorius in a nearby cemetery. Pretorius befriends the monster, offering him a glass of gin and a cigar, and together they kidnap Elizabeth Frankenstein to secure Henry's assistance in creating a mate for the monster.

Unfortunately, the mate is appalled by the monster's looks and rejects him immediately.  Since this is his first "relationship" with a woman, the monster overreacts at his spurned love -- like a lot of men do--and destroys Pretorius, the mate, and himself.  Henry and Elizabeth escape, though, thanks to the monster's unusual sense of justice.

I admit Bride of Frankenstein is an incredibly important movie in the history of the film industry--and it can be loads of fun to watch with the right crowd -- but I still don't like it the way I should.

Why?

It's simple, really...

Frankenstein was filled with big questions about the meaning of life, overreaching ambition, and the unforeseen consequences of delving in forbidden areas of science.  In Frankenstein, poor Henry pays a dear price when he creates his monster from parts of dead bodies and breathes life into it; but he gets off the hook with no repercussions when he breaks the same laws of nature a second time.

Although Bride Of Frankenstein treads similar ground as Frankenstein, it quickly becomes campy and leaves the philosophical questions unanswered as it chases a laugh.  In a way, Bride Of Frankenstein is nothing more than a parody of itself.  And because of that, it can't take itself too seriously.  It's too busy looking in the mirror and poking fun at its own grotesque reflection.

Dodging deep philosophies is certainly not a bad thing for a movie -- especially when Bride routinely attracts scores of people to classic monster movie festivals -- but I've always been confused by the characters that people it, too.  And that's my other problem with Bride Of Frankenstein.  Who is the story really about?

The monster?  He's the one that wants a mate, it must be about him.

No, not really.  He's hardly on screen.

If not the monster, his bride?

No, it's not about her either.  She's a very cool woman and I would liked to have seen a lot more of her.  But she appears so close to the end of the movie, she's gone before you know it.

Maybe Karl?  A bit player?

Well, he did have a larger role at first.  But a subplot that amplified the hateful relationship between Karl and the monster never fully materialized.  So much of his tale was trimmed from the story that what remains is choppy and garbled.  It's unfortunate that crucial scenes showing Karl's absolute viciousness were cut from the final footage.  Were the scenes of the village idiot bludgeoning his uncle to death too horrific for the giddy story?

Then it's Pretorius and Henry?  Or as some would say, "the parents of the bride."  (There goes that drag stuff!) Yes, it is their story--the story of two completely insane men who reached too far in a futile attempt to create something that already exists.

Life...  Precious life...

But Pretorius is too goofy and Henry Frankenstein too erratic to be convincing madmen.  They make better grave robbers than scientists.   Not quite bumbling buffoons, but not the kind of maniacal geniuses capable of striving for supernatural heights.  Can these two silly geese actually burst through the metaphysical stratosphere and, as Henry said in the first movie, "know what it feels like to be God?"

In Bride Of Frankenstein, Henry and Pretorius just seem foolish and nothing more.  They're not smart. They're not diabolical.  No pun intended here--especially on Ernest Thesiger as Pretorius, who was a well-known homosexual at the time Bride was filmed--but are Henry Frankenstein and Doctor Pretorius comedians or straight men? A brutally honest question portrayed beautifully in the film biography of James Whale, Gods And Monsters, when Brendan Fraser playing a handy man, of sorts, tells Ian McKellen as Whale, "I didn't laugh at your movie."

If only Bride of Frankenstein had explored the monster's rejection more, using that as the point of plot development, Bride would be one of my favorite movies.  Instead, it's a film you have to see because everyone else has and says it's wonderful. Bride Of Frankenstein got off track by turning its back on its own legacy.  It doesn't fail--remember, it's classic Hollywood and everybody loves it--it just doesn't completely satisfy.

Thanks, Joe.  It's refreshing to get a different take on Bride Of Frankenstein after it has earned so much acclaim from so many different quarters.  Truly, it is a work of cinematic art and a film that that will live forever (as well as its Monster).  But as a horror film, it may well have missed the mark and might have done so strictly by design.

Article copyright © Joe Romano

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