Bride of Frankenstein

USA, 1935

Director: James Whale

Screenplay: William Hurlbut

Screenplay: Garrett Fort

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester

Plot

One stormy night, the famous English poet Lord Byron finds himself in a castle with the married couple formed by his writer friends Percy B. and Mary Shelley. Both men praise the talent of Mary, who has published her novel “Frankenstein” (1818) with great success. Mary claims that the story of the scientist obsessed with creating life from pieces of corpses does not conclude in her book. Both Dr. Frankenstein and his spawn managed to survive the fire set in the laboratory tower by the angry villagers at the end of the story. Thus, Mary Shelley begins to narrate the continuation of the story…

The badly wounded Baron Henry Frankenstein was taken unconscious to his castle, where his wife Elizabeth was waiting for him. The monster, on the other hand, managed to save himself by falling into a kind of well. The locals consider him a dangerous and uncontrollable killer, as he caused the death of several people in the district; among the victims is a little girl. Upon surfacing, the creature hides in the forest. A village woman has seen it and, frightened, raises the alarm, but no one takes her seriously.

Meanwhile, Henry is gradually recovering from his wounds. Elizabeth takes care of him. One night an enigmatic visitor arrives at the castle. It is Dr. Pretorius, Henry’s former professor at the university. Pretorius, whose ears have heard about the scientific progress of his ex-pupil, announces that he too has been able to create life and asks for his collaboration to continue to delve into these fascinating experiments. But after his fiasco, Henry has become convinced of the error (and the horror) that these challenges to nature represent; and he refuses to participate in new similar projects. Nevertheless, he accompanies Pretorius to his laboratory, where the veteran scientist shows him some tiny characters inside transparent glass cylinders. Pretorius’ mini-creatures are characterized as king, queen, archbishop, ballet dancer, etc…

The monster, however, wanders through the forest scaring everyone in its path. He is captured and taken to the dungeons. Despite being chained, it is not too difficult for him to escape, and he returns to the woods. Attracted by the music of a violin, he arrives at a hut where a lonely old musician lives. To the monster’s surprise, the man does not reject him or treat him with hostility, but invites him in and regards him as a friend. For the violinist is blind, and cannot see his hideous features. The monster is unable to articulate a word, but he understands what is said to him. Little by little the violinist teaches him a few words, until he learns to speak in a rudimentary way. But one day, some villagers come to the hut and, seeing the monster, try to hunt it. The unhappy being is forced to flee again, losing his only friend.

The monster takes refuge from the village mob in the crypt of a cemetery. It is precisely there that Dr. Pretorius arrives with some assistants. They are looking for corpses of young women for their delirious experiments. When Pretorius sees the monster, he tells him about his plans. The being understands everything perfectly, he even knows who his creator is and is aware that he is made from dead bodies. When Pretorius presents him with the idea of creating him a woman, a companion, the creature reacts enthusiastically.

With the monster on his side, Pretorius succeeds in pressuring Frankenstein to finally agree to collaborate with him. To make the blackmail complete, the monster kidnaps Elizabeth. Now Henry Frankenstein is forced to produce a woman for his monster if he wants to see his own wife again…

Comment

Very well made sequel to the classic “Frankenstein” (James Whale, 1931) shot four years later by the same director. This is probably one of the first genre crossovers in the history of cinema, including even some comic touches.

The stereotypical mad scientist Pretorius (next to whom Dr. Frankenstein is a paradigm of reason and sanity) not only wants to create a man out of corpses. His ambitions go beyond that, for by unraveling the mysteries of life and death he seeks to create a whole new race. To do this, it is necessary to create a companion for the existing monster. A female spawn to serve the monster as a woman.

Frankenstein’s monster, whom all the locals fear and attack, is not really a “bad person”, he has no cruel or aggressive motivations. His very existence condemns him to be the first victim of his demented creator. He behaves like an animalistic child, he is capable of understanding and feeling, and needs an affection that is impossible to find in this world for a being like him. His violent reactions are motivated by the attitude of others towards him. It is easy for the viewer to empathize with this monster, especially in the emotional scene where we see his friendship with the blind violinist.

Doctor Frankenstein (here called Henry, although in the novel it is Victor) and especially Pretorius aspire to emulate the demiurge, playing with “the mysteries of life and death” and crossing the fragile barrier that separates science from black magic (as Henry himself mentions at one point).

Rather than a purely “horror” film, as it would traditionally be classified when dealing with monsters, this film is a drama with gothic elements, science fiction, and a dash of humor. The comic touches can be seen in several moments of the film; like at the beginning when the woman gives her hand to the man she thinks is her husband to get him out of the well where he has fallen, but who she is really helping is the monster… Or when the violinist teaches the monster, who is afraid of fire and smoke, to smoke… Not to mention the funny disguised homunculi that Pretorius shows Henry.

To write her acclaimed novel “Frankenstein”, it is possible that Mary Shelley was inspired by the Jewish legends of the golem, which have a very similar concept: Rabbis who by means of cabalistic black magic are dedicated to create automatons based on inanimate matter to turn them into their slaves; and sometimes the golem rebels against them. In this context it is curious to mention that at one point in the film Pretorius wears on his head a hat that seems to be a kippah.

The “Bride of Frankenstein”, who only appears in the final minutes, is played by Elsa Lanchester; the same actress who in the film prologue of the beginning gave life to Mary Shelley. The mythical Boris Karloff, along with Bela Lugosi one of the most emblematic actors of classic horror films, returns to play the monster, using the same aesthetics as in the first film.