DVD/150: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)

86 years on, James Whale's film re-generates with every viewing, just like his iconic Bride...

The greatest of all the Universal horror films crackles with invention, wit and a deliciously perverse subtext - all the more remarkable that James Whale wasn't interested in making the sequel.

The script went through seven writers before Whale was satisfied.

We start with Mary Godwin, Byron and Shelley discussing her novel followed by a FRANKENSTEIN montage to pick-up the storyline, swirling through to the final cataclysm - Elsa Lanchester playing both Mary and The Bride provides a wonderful symmetry.

Boris Karloff and Colin Clive return as monster and maker. Whale refused to give up on his alcoholic friend Clive who died two years afterwards from TB.

Karloff built on his performance to suggest the soul within the monster, oddly he disliked the idea of the monster learning to speak.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN lives....

Shelf or charity shop?  It's what shelves were made for... One of the rare sequels that outshines the original, Universal gave James Whale full artistic control after the success of FRANKENSTEIN and his vision was brought to vivid life by cinematographer John C Mescall, production designer Charles D Hall, costume designer Vera West, make-up artist Jack Pierce, Kenneth Strickfaden's electric laboratory props and composer Franz Waxman. Whale cast UK actors in all six lead roles: apart from Karloff, Clive and Lanchester, the film benefits from the lip-smacking eccentric campness of Ernest Thesiger's Doctor Pretorius, Henry's former professor who lures him back to the dark side. 17 year-old Valerie Hobson was cast as Elizabeth when Mae Clarke was too ill to reprise her role - Hobson is quite wonderful especially considering her age, and finally Belfast-born Una O'Connor plays the bustling, shrieking maid Minnie.  Australian actor OP Heggie is marvellous as the blind hermit who provides the monster with a few hours of understanding, while FRANKENSTEIN'S scuttling servant Dwight Frye returns to play another sniveling underling.  Elsa Lanchester's Bride is onscreen for only 3 and a half minutes but in that brief time a screen icon was born: swaying, imperious, scared and disdainful..

...and The Bride made a memorable reappearance at The Retro Bar in 2005...

DVD/150: FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1931)

When DRACULA became a huge hit, Universal Pictures wanted another Gothic horror film so chose Mary Shelley's 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN, already filmed three times during the silent era.

Universal had the rights to a 1927 stage version which formed the film's basis, only Shelley's premise remains.

 

FRANKENSTEIN's huge success confirmed Universal as *the* horror studio.  It's sequel THE BRIDE OF... is a rare instance of a sequel being better than the original, but susequent films dwindled into tawdry retreads.  After Universal, Hammer had a seven film run which also repeated declining quality.

 

 

Actor Bela Lugosi and director Robert Florey were first choices but after some make-up tests they were ousted when Univeral offered it to British director James Whale for only his third film.

Despite creakiness and Colin Clive's over-wrought Victor Frankenstein, Whale's influential film still delivers. with unsettling imagery that continues to haunt us down the decades.

Shelf or charity shop? A re-animated keeper.  If ever a performance can be said to have been iconic it's Boris Karloff's Creature: thanks to Jack Pierce's extraordinary make-up Karloff gave us a timeless Creature. Despite the diluting of the image down the years, his actual performance is still fantastic. Scenes that have stayed with me down the years: the tilted perspective of the opening graveyard scene, Karloff's first appearance walking backwards towards us, the fizzes and crackles of the laboratory equipment during the re-animation, the towering film sets, the knife-edge tension of the Creature playing with Little Maria by the lake, Mae Clarke's Elizabeth draped across her bed echoing Fuseli's "The Nightmare" and the moment in the mill where Victor and the Creature's faces are seen together through the spinning machinary.