The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Horror

DIRECTOR

James Whale

WRITERS

William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston (screenplay); Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (novel)

STARS

Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester

BEFORE

1931 James Whale adapts Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Karloff stars as the monster.

1933 Whale films H. G. Wells’s story The Invisible Man, about a scientist who finds a way to become invisible.

AFTER

1936 Whale moves away from the horror genre, directing a musical adaptation of the play Show Boat.

Through the 1930s, Universal Studios made a string of hits adapting classic horror literature into mainstream movies. What separates James Whale’s Frankenstein movies from the other horror movies in the universal canon is its empathy for its monster. This is never more apparent than in The Bride of Frankenstein, in which the monster implores Dr. Frankenstein to build him a mate.

Morality tale

Much of the movie’s narrative presents Frankenstein’s monster as lost in a world to which he does not belong. He longs for friendship, but is rejected at every turn. At one point, a blind man introduces him to the pleasures of domestic life, only for armed villagers to drag him away. He learns to speak, saying, “I want friend like me,” but even Dr. Frankenstein’s efforts to provide him with a bride backfire, when the bride also rejects him. In the end, The Bride of Frankenstein feels as much a morality tale as a horror movie, suggesting that monstrousness might be no more than skin deep.

An excited monster (Boris Karloff) steadies his bride (Elsa Lanchester) as she comes to life in Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory.

What else to watch: Metropolis (1927) ✵ Frankenstein (1931) ✵ Dracula (1931) ✵ The Mummy (1932) ✵ Gods and Monsters (1998)