Bride of Frankenstein

 

Please note the purpose of this blog is to discuss established classics that I've never seen. As such, the following is laden with spoilers.

Why So Long?

If anything I've come to this one too early, as I've yet to see the first film. I, like anyone who's lived through a single Halloween is obviously familiar with Frankenstein's monster, and of course the iconic look of the eponymous Bride but had yet to give the film my time. We jumped to Bride of Frankenstein on the back of Marie buying a t-shirt with the film poster on it.

And? 

I've written on this blog previously about how people coming to certain films for the first-time, decades on from the original release, can struggle to take a film on its own terms. Let alone the terms with which those first viewing audiences took it. I'm not talking exclusively about desensitization, although when it comes to horror that is undoubtedly part of it. 

Instead, what I struggled with throughout this film's, admittedly very short, running time was the lack of the Bride. One had always assumed from the title and her omnipresence in Halloween culture that the Bride featured quite heavily in this film. Rather than the two minutes she pops up for at the end just before the lab blows up. That said, those are two powerful minutes, viscerally speaking. From the body bandaging that somehow manages to accentuate her breasts, through to her sharp angular movements and of course, that dye-job...what a scene, nearly 90 years on from the film's release, it still holds up. 

 

The other jarring element of the film was its unrelenting sense of humor. I'm not referring to fantastical elements that haven't aged well - if anything the film holds up surprisingly well. Instead, the film is filled with elements, lines and characters that can't be expected to be taken as anything other than a joke. These jokes land, Dr Frankenstein's housekeeper is a genuine delight throughout, but again one fails to square this with the idea of this film being scary. A horror? Certainly, horror is about the freakish, the phantasmagorical and the wretched (check, check and check) but scary? I'm not sure it is even trying.

Call it naivety on my part, but I really didn't pick up on the gay subplot. On reflection its obvious and has meant that the film has aged well in my head since viewing as certain scenes take on new meaning. There's the incredibly obvious one, that the Bride has two fathers and (to me anyway) the less obvious one, when Karloff's Monster moves in with a blind hermit, an early on screen example of "rough trade". Guess I'll have to see if Gods and Monsters, the biopic of James Whale with Ian McKellan is available to rent on AppleTV.

One note of dissent I would voice would be to question what this film is bringing to Mary Shelley's tale that wasn't covered by the first one. I can forgive just how easily Dr Frankenstein is convinced to go back into the lab - sure we've a plot to progress don't we? But despite creating a mate, nothing new is brought to the table in terms of theme or purpose. The lesson remains that men should not dabble in the role of gods, not even if their creation has knockers. They even resort to the same solution in the end, not a burning church this time round but the aforementioned exploding lab.

"An audience needs something stronger than a pretty little love story. So, why shouldn't I write of monsters?"

 

 

Finally, a small note to the screenwriter who felt honour-bound to begin the film with, what I'm sure was intended to be a respectful nod, to Mary Shelley. Back in 1930s sequels weren't as much a part of the furniture as they are now and as such the rules around crafting one hadn't been laid in stone. If the first tale had begun as a ghost story Mary told to her husband and Lord Byron, then why not have the sequel start on a similar night? This would probably work better if the film had more in common with the book than the title and basic concept - for one thing it ends not with a fire in a church but a sled race in Antarctica. Ultimately this beginning just serves to reinforce how much this film is a retread of the first.

 

Will You Be Watching It Again? 

I feel I kind of have to, given how a different a film it was to the one I had imagined.

Has Any Light Been Shone on Some Heretofore Unknown Bit of Pop Culture?

Well, no - you wouldn't need much more than the fingers on yours hands when trying to count films that have had a more lasting affect on the iconography of a single genre and indeed an entire holiday! What was fun to find out was that the props from the lab here were the same ones that would be used in Young Frankenstein after Mel Brooks found them in storage.