The Monster (Boris Karloff) is getting ready to meet his mate in FRANKENSTEIN sequel
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, October 27, $7, 11:00 am
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
At the start of James Whale’s Frankenstein, actor Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr. Waldman in the film, steps out from behind a curtain and tells the audience that what they are about to see “is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation; life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to uh, well — we warned you!” Instead of staying away, people flocked to the theaters, making Frankenstein such a hit that Universal produced a sequel, although it took longer than expected. At the beginning of Whale’s 1935 follow-up, Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) tells Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Walton) and Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), “The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson, the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate god,” letting them know that there was more to her story, picking up where the first movie left off. The Monster (Boris Karloff again, billed only by his last name) has survived the fire, and he is on the loose. Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive, reprising his role as the godlike creator) has survived as well and is ready to finally marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson, taking over for an ill Mae Clarke).
The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) has a few things to say about her resurrection in Whale sequel
But their plans are interrupted by the arrival of the extremely strange and menacing Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who thinks that the Monster deserves a mate. Meanwhile, the Monster is traipsing through the woods, finding a friend in a blind violin-playing hermit (O. P. Heggie) and learning how to speak as he tries to avoid capture by the determined Burgomaster (E. E. Clive). Whale, who initially did not want to direct the sequel, has a ball with the film, infusing it with religious imagery, including having the Monster lifted up on a cross in a graveyard, and campy humor, particularly when Dr. Pretorius shows off his collection of rather silly miniature creatures to Dr. Frankenstein. Karloff, who was billed above the title, takes the Monster to another level, achieving sympathy as he learns more about what he is and comes to understand such feelings as longing and loneliness. Una O’Connor is a hoot as the loudmouth Minnie, practically serving as a one-woman Greek chorus. The scene in which the Monster waits for and then meets his mate (Lanchester, who is listed in the credits only as Mary Shelley) is a genuine cinema classic, layered with depth and meaning. While the first film was, and still is, shocking and horrifying, just as Van Sloan warned, the second is actually stranger, more satisfying, and, at its heart, more human. Interestingly, Bride of Frankenstein, which experienced various types of censorship back in the mid-1930s, is screening on October 27 at 11:00 am as part of the Film Forum Jr. series for kids and families and will be preceded by Ub Iwerks’s 1937 cartoon Skeleton Frolics for Halloween week; the series continues November 3 with Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, appropriately during election week, and later will show George Seaton’s 1947 Miracle on 34th Street on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
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