Welcome To Our Nightmare II: The Return of Terror and Wooley

You had all the fun.

I never owned those, sadly.

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Leave your body at the door.

“Science… like love… has her little surprises.”

The sequel director James Whale didn't want to make but couldn't turn down when they offered him a healthy budget and almost total creative freedom, The Bride Of Frankenstein is a film that lives up to its reputation as not only arguably the greatest sequel ever made and the greatest Horror film ever made, but also simply one of the best films ever made.
What I had forgotten about The Bride Of Frankenstein, as it's been well over a decade since I last gushed about it, is how crazy it is and how funny it is. The film flirts with being labeled a Horror-Comedy, to be honest. But it also has an edge to it that underpins everything. For example, I really enjoyed the comic relief of Una O’Connor, who honestly cracked me up, immediately following the film opening with a opening pair of murders.
Well, that's not totally true as the film actually, wonderfully, opens with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and some actress named Ilsa Lanchester portraying Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, as she agrees to tell the rest of the story of her world-shaking Horror novel.


The idea of her playing both Mary Shelley and The Bride is genius and boy does it work because Elsa Lanchester’s (far too brief) performance in the latter role is pretty spectacular. A documentary I’m watching talks about her coming up with the hiss herself, which was from feeding the swans, when she got to close they would hiss at her, and she felt it would be perfect for The Bride, as well as her hitched movements and wild eyes.


It's worth mentioning that Patty Mullen obviously studied and practiced Lanchester’s performance specifically for her role in Frankenhooker. Also funny that Hammer squandered, yeah, I said it, a similar opportunity in Frankenstein Created Woman.

But not only is the film very edgy and very funny, it's also batshit crazy. As if Lanchester's performance and look as The Bride were not enough, you have Dr. Septimus Pretorius.


This nasty piece of work is thoroughly psychotic and only interested in Science as pursuit of his own greatness. He blackmails Henry (Victor, renamed for some reason) into re-starting his work and building a new Creature from scratch, a mate for Karloff's Monster. He is pretty much crazy enough on his own but his creations, I mean, what the f*ck? I had kinda forgotten the scene of him unveiling his failures.


What the hell?!
And the special effects, particularly in that scene, are just kinda mind-blowing for 1935. The whole movie looks fantastic, really, from the costumes to the makeup to the sets, especially the lab, obviously, the lighting, it's just
I'm sure I don't need to say it but Karloff is amazing. He's frightening and monstrous and powerful in a way that none of the other actors who've portrayed him quite are (not even Lee). But here, the monster’s plight really is also really sad. And I don’t feel like you get that part from any of the other portrayals up until Lee. Karloff’s performance is also very physical, very athletic. He was clearly a real actor even then. I say it all the time and I say it again, we all got robbed that Karloff didn’t get more opportunities in diverse roles.
Bride Of Frankenstein is a straight-up masterpiece. And all the subversiveness that you can feel coursing through it from Whale, everything you've heard about what's probably in there, really feels like it's in there. It's also just a really unexpected movie, absolutely none of the other Universal Monster movies are this crazy or, for that matter, this fun.
There is no other possible rating for this film:




Post script - I enjoyed this so much that I actually watched a documentary on it and did a couple of hours of reading about it and Whale, and the actors, the score, the makeup guy, all kinds of stuff. It's really that interesting of a film. I feel like I could have written several more paragraphs without exhausting just the things I found really interesting, but I had to stop somewhere.

The original Frankenstein is really good, but The Bride of Frankenstein blew me away when I watched it.

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Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.

Exactly. The greatness of Bride should not obscure how good Frankenstein is. Whale only got to make this this film (and I mean make the film he wanted, mostly) because the OG was such a smash.

Bride of Frankenstein is really something else.

I'm sure you've seen Gods and Monsters, but just throwing it out there in case not.

I actually have not but after re-watching this film and then watching the documentary on it, I am absolutely watching Gods and Monsters next month!

Whoa! I thought it was almost a sure thing you would have seen it. Really moving, sad film with some amazing images and two great performances from McKellan and Fraser.

It was the "sad" part that has kept me away for so long.
Same reason I've never seen Brokeback Mountain.

Including today...

In my house we just completed the Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein/Young Frankenstein trifecta. Not much point in having a kid if you don’t indoctrinate him properly, I feel.

Awesome!
Too bad you didn't squeeze Son Of Frankenstein in there too, that's the one that Young Frankenstein parodies the most.

Sad but totally worth it.

And same goes for Brokeback Mountain.

I know. I wanna watch 'em both, I just get tired of sadness.
Definitely doing G&M next month so maybe I'll do a double-feature.

Oh shit, we went way too long without this. Well, hopefully it's just the thing to launch everyone into that last week before Halloween when we really gotta get into it.