The Bride
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I love the classics.” Right up there with my love of Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Stoker’s Dracula, is my all time favorite Gothic novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. I’ve also mentioned in earlier writings that my favorite iteration coming in the form of the illustrated version, which included the jaw dropping work of the late great, legendary Illustrator, Bernie Wrightson. One of my most prized possessions being that of an autographed print of probably one of the most well known plates from that volume: the moment when Dr. Frankenstein has destroyed The Creature’s intended mate, to which the creature threatens, “I shall be with you on your wedding-night.”
Of course this line from the novel was not the focus of the larger story being told, but rather a sub-plot which must have seemed like a great idea to the minds at Universal when the public were rabid for a sequel to the studio’s 1931 masterpiece. As any fan of both Shelley’s original work and this 1935 sequel can tell you, the events of the novel didn’t quite unfold the same way as they did in the movie. So let’s jump right into unwrapping this tragic tale of love and love lost.
In a lot of ways, Bride is a far more superior film than the original. It had a larger budget and was in both pre and post production for longer stretches of time. The bigger budget allowed for a higher production value when it came to both the sets and the makeup, as this time around three to four hours would have to be set aside for The Bride’s makeup in addition to the five to six required for the Karloff’s. But not only that, the film opens in quite a unique manner, utilizing a very bold storytelling format in which real life author, Mary Shelley (the first of two roles for Elsa Lanchester, the other of course being the Bride) and friends are used as a clever tool in which to not only bring the audience up to speed on what happened in the first film, but to allow for an explanation as to how both the Monster and Baron Frankenstein seem to have survived the events of it. The rest of the film is meant to play out as Shelley telling the rest of the story to her assembled admirers as if in a flashback.
With returning actors in returning roles for both the Monster and Henry Frankenstein, and with Henry all but having learned his lesson from the previous film, a new antagonist in Dr. Pretorius is brought in to entice and tempt the weary Henry to return to his work so that the two can create a new experiment in the realm of the living dead. That’s right; Frankenstein plays a much smaller role here with the good Dr. Pretorius eating up the majority of screen time as the film’s true villain. But Henry and the doctor are great foils to one another. As previously mentioned, at film’s open, Henry is done playing God and wants nothing to do with it; he’s learned his lesson. But his exploits, having reached the greater scientific community, spur Dr. Pretorius to seek out Henry, as well as his research, to perfect his own creations.
The two play off each other expertly and I have to believe that was by design as the theme of man playing God carries over into this sequel and if Henry is God, then of course Pretorius must be the devil. In fact, in one scene when the mad professor is showing off his “experiments” to Henry, upon revealing one that he refers to as the devil, Pretorius brags that he modeled that one after himself. Fun fact: the actor in the bottle to whom Pretorius refers to was actually the stand in for Ernest Thesiger, so the dialogue is also a clever tongue-in-cheek declaration. Anyway, even when staged together on screen, Henry and Pretorius seem to contrast each other even visually. Pretorius clad in all black from head to toe as Henry dons more neutral colored suits. Pretorius’ unkempt grey locks flail about as Henry’s dark hair presents itself immaculately slicked in place (at least until he gets back in the lab, then all bets are off). In plot and on set, they are the complete antithesis of each other.
But the religious theming doesn’t end there. Bride is laden with all kinds of Christian imagery. How can you tell a story about a man who plays God without upping the symbolic visuals? In one scene, once the Monster is hunted down by the townsfolk and tied up to be taken prisoner, he’s strung up in a manner identical to that of Christ on the cross. Because if Henry was playing God in his creation of the Monster, then wouldn’t that make the Creature Henry’s only begotten son? In another scene, the blind Hermit who takes the Creature in, shows him compassion, and teaches him speech (another nod to the literary source material), gives thanks to God for sending him this new friend and blessing him with the gift of companionship, even so much as praying over the Monsters body as he falls to sleep, a crucifix hanging on the wall composited into the film and hanging over a little longer over black to act as a transition between scenes. It's extraordinary filmmaking in the days long before visual effects became second nature in post-production.
But I mentioned in the intro how this film, down to its foundation is really about love. First, there’s the on the nose definition found in the title. In the source material, the Monster practically threatens Frankenstein to create for him a mate, someone like him, whom he can literally walk off into the sunset with and leave the world of man forever afterwards. Here, the intention is not so forced and the creation of “The Bride” really only comes about matter-of-factly when Pretorius states in not so many words, “Well, you created the man, so now we create the woman,” an Adam and Eve reference for those who nodded off in the last paragraph. The Monster, however, simply longs for the companionship of a friend after he had his last friend, the Hermit, dragged off by worried townsfolk.
There’s the love for God, as I mentioned earlier our Hermit friend exhibits, but more so, the Hermit really teaches us the most important love lesson of all: To accept those for whom they are inside. I don’t know if this plot point, in both the book and film, would have been as relevant if not for the Hermit being blind. It’s an obvious visual (no pun intended) cue to us, the viewer, that we should “see” with our hearts and not our eyes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that jazz.
Finally, there’s the love one has for their child and the love a child has for their parent. In the final moments of Shelley’s masterpiece, upon finding his creator dead after searching far and wide for him only to exact his vengeance, the Creature has an epiphany in the realization that the one man who held the only connection he had with anyone living is no longer. He has lost his father and so he gathers his lifeless corpse and carries him away into the mist, the two never being seen again. In the film it plays out a little differently with the Monster instead saving Henry and pleading with Henry to save himself before the Creature brings the rest of the hilltop laboratory on top of all of them in one final grand explosion. “You live!” he exclaims in one final moment and in that one action, that single line, the Monster has forgiven his creator and wishes only good fortune upon him and his new wife.
Oddly, the story isn’t about “the bride” at all really, she’s only onscreen a scant three minutes, a colossal feat for a Universal Monster that has stood the test of time in all forms of media! In the novel, she doesn’t even make it to life before Frankenstein abandons his work and calls the whole experiment off. So lasting eighty-five frigging years in the visual medium is not too shabby for a character that is merely an afterthought on the screen.
Listen, there’s a reason why Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein is a film study in universities across the globe. Hell, I had to study it in my Horror Genre Studies class at UCF. It’s a great film lesson on how to make a practically perfect sequel. It can teach us a multitude of lessons on what it is to truly be human and to what criteria we should judge all humans. But above all else, it is a story of love: Love of strangers, love of family, and love of thyself. It is indeed a great life lesson.
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