Bride of Frankenstein

Last weekend, I watched the original Frankenstein with certain assumptions of what the movie was that I wound up being dead wrong in. Tonight, I was confounded again with the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. I knew nothing about this one, either, besides the bride's fright wig. Turns out that everything we know about Frankenstein, referenced in pop culture, is pretty much from this movie.

Bride of Frankenstein is everything that nowadays defines a sequel. Exponentially more ambitious than the first, with a visibly much larger budget, but with a ton of callbacks to the scenes and elements of the first one that audiences responded to so much. There is a drawback to the widened scale, of course. I feel like it lost a little bit of the soul of the original in the process.

That said, it's still a great movie, just in different ways. The opening, for example: Director James Whale obviously needed a way to bring our heroes back after their (spoiler? Can I spoil an 80-year-old movie?) fiery demise. Solution? The movie opens with Mary Shelley narrating to Lord Byron how the story of Frankenstein would continue, should she ever continue it. What a brilliant device! We the viewers get to pretend that the author herself is acting as a deus ex machina for her own story.

This time, Dr. Henry Frankenstein is an alright guy, penitent and guilt-ridden after barely surviving his fall from grace at the hands of his own hubris. The monster, too is painted in a more heroic light. He is gradually and fascinatingly humanized over the course of the film. The villain of this piece is Dr. Praetorius, and he is the very epitome of the mad scientist archetype I always took Dr. Frankenstein to be. He blackmails Frankenstein into creating a woman for him and uses the monster to do his dirty work.

Boris Karloff, awesomely credited as only "Karloff" in the credits, is great again as the monster. He brings the same pathos and sadness to the character as in the first one, but with a much wider palette to work with. The best sequence in the movie is, of course, his befriending the old blind violinist (the scene was famously parodied by Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein). He teaches the monster to talk, which is where the "Fire bad" talk in all the spoofs comes from.

The ending, which I won't give away, in case you aren't familiar, is pretty incredible. James Whale brilliantly builds tension and anxiety throughout much of the last twenty minutes with the sound of a pulsing heartbeat. The camera angles get more wacky too. It's gripping, all the way to the epic, emotional, and satisfying conclusion.

The one thing I didn't like was this weird old lady character that was Dr. Frankenstein's servant or something. She was the comic relief, and her attempts at humor were too wink-wink-nudge-nudge for the movie they were featured in. There are times where she's just shy of looking directly at the camera, which took me out of the movie. The one thing she said that I laughed at was when she was bringing Praetorius to Frankenstein, she mutters to herself skeptically, in earshot of Praetorius, "Praetorius isn't a real name." It's such a weird thing to say!

So in the end, Bride of Frankenstein is a worthy, ambitious sequel that builds upon the world established in the original. I think I still prefer the first one overall, but one could make a good argument for the superiority of this one. If it weren't for the awkward attempts at humor, I'd give it perfect marks, but still I'll give it an A.

Wow, this might be my longest review yet. I had a lot to say about this one. Good night, everybody! If you made it this far, thanks for reading.