Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #204: The Bride of Frankenstein

The horror genre is full of iconic figures, yet only one of them is female and she is not much of a monster in the first place. The Bride in James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is not a blood thirsty ghoul terrorizing the villagers or even a murderer, but a creature brought to life to be a companion for the Monster from the first movie who doesn’t want to be alone in his existence. Their time together is very brief, yet The Bride’s look is so iconic it has had an impact on pop culture decades after the movie was released. You can see her influence in everything from Marge Simpson’s hairstyle to, more obviously, lesser horror films like Bride of Chucky, which actually features footage from Whale’s film.

Appropriately enough I saw this classic a few days before Halloween 2013 when it became available on Netflix. Given the film’s notoriety I was a little surprised by some of its more humorous aspects and its more melodramatic moments. It has aged for sure given it was released close to 80 years ago. Still, the story as a whole remains a memorable tale of murders, monsters, body snatchers, and ultimately broken hearts. Modern audiences might frown on the black and white and older special effects, but it remains a must-see for horror fans and movie fans in general.

This sequel to Frankenstein, the first of many as with all horror franchises, has a rather creative and meta beginning. The entire Frankenstein franchise is of course based on the book Mary Shelley wrote in 1818 telling the tragic tale of scientist Victor Frankenstein trying to bend the laws of nature by creating a man from spare parts he digs out of a cemetery, only for his creation to ruin his life. James Whale’s movie changed that ending with The Monster (Boris Karloff) seemingly perishing in a burning windmill. In The Bride of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is a character in the movie and is receiving praise from her husband (Douglas Walton) and poet Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) for her book only for her to tell them the story is not over yet.

Then the movie leaves the authors and goes back to the ending of Frankenstein to show that indeed The Monster did not die in the fire, but fell into a cave beneath the windmill. On his way out he is responsible for the deaths of two members of the angry mob with pitch forks who put him in that pit however for the rest of the movie his goal is not to spread fear into the countryside, but to be accepted. Meeting a blind hermit (O.P Heggie) in a cottage, he makes his first friend as the man cannot see what he looks like. Together they shares food and the hermit teaches The Monster how to talk. Sadly the friendship ends abruptly when two hunters stumble upon the cottage and only see The Monster instead of the man he could be.

The Monster does not want to be a monster, but since every person is determined for him to be one, he has no other choice than to take on the role. Doctor Frankenstein (Colin Clive) meanwhile wants to leave this chapter of his life behind him and marry his fiancé Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson). But, just when he thinks he’s out, they drag him back in. Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), Frankenstein’s former mentor, has heard of his experiments and also wishes to play God by creating a bride for The Monster. Adding yet another lawyer of meta storytelling, the actress who plays The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) is the same who plays Mary Shelley in the opening segment.

Despite his name, The Monster is not the villain of this movie. Neither is Doctor Frankenstein, even if he created the creature. In this story he has learned his lesson and has chosen to stop tampering with nature. It is Pretorius who forces his hand by getting The Monster to kidnap Elizabeth and hold her hostage until The Bride is brought to life. Of course just because she too will be made of corpses it doesn’t mean she will automatically like The Monster.

As with most franchises, Frankenstein peaked with its first sequel. The Bride of Frankenstein has been hailed as James Whale’s masterpiece and deservedly so. It is often remembered for its monsters and the gorgeous set design of the laboratory where the monsters are created, but it also has one of the most tragic endings of any horror film when a creature realizes there is no place for him in this world.

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...

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