Too much of everything

Memorable, crazy movie

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Simply brilliant. This film is filled with terror, pathos, wit and a great cast. Picking up right after the original ends, with Mary Shelley telling the story of what happened, it never has a dull moment. While Karloff didn't want the monster to talk, his speech and his friendship with the hermit is the highlight of the movie. Just an excellent film that can be watched again and again.

"The Bride of Frankenstein" is so hypnotic in its eeriness, so intelligent in daringness and capable in wackiness that it had me puzzled for a while, caught in a long brainstorming in order to decide whether it was better than the original, as it's often said to be, or not. To put it simply, it's better because it's not just brilliant but brilliant in the way it doesn't prepare you to its own brilliance. After the first fifteen minutes, I thought James Whale was parodying himself, I couldn't think of Una O'Connor as a comic relief but rather a symptomatic attempt to deconstruct in the most over-the-top way all the established notions of the predecessor. And when Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) showed his little squeaking 'homunculi', there was no doubt anymore, something was too outrageous about "The Bride" not to be intentional, and it took me some time to appreciate it. Then the story slowly and confidently unfolds its most wicked twists with a score and a photography so penetrative we're immediately lured into it. The Monster saves a woman from drowning as to make up for his previous crime, he tries to make friends, making an actual friend out of a blind hermit in a touching and satisfying emotional interlude, then the Monster learns how to speak, longing for a mate and domesticating his own terror of fire, mirroring our own rooting process. And finally, twenty minutes before its conclusion, action rises up to an ultimate spellbinding ride, reminding us that the film was after all about "The Bride of Frankenstein", in case we forgot... I think I almost did. In fact, the film was so visually and narratively dense that it makes you easily forget how little screen-time the Bride has.And yet she's still what makes the greatest impression of all, which says a lot about the movie and its status in the ghostly Pantheon. The image of the Bride, played by (but not credited as) Elsa Lanchester, with the towering hair and the trademark streaks, her robotic movements as if she was still infused with electric power and her unforgettable scream when her eyes meet Frankensteins', all these moments rival with the iconic "It's alive!" scene from the first. It goes even further than that, I mentioned in my review that the 'alive' scene was perhaps the most climactic non-climax scene ever, but here it's played for the climax and you can tell James Whale made the process even more heart-pounding with the apparatus and the lightning effects on the two professors' faces playing like Morse-like flashy allegories of the rhythm of our own hearts. As far as our ears and eyes were concerned, what a sequence!Indeed, when you watch "The Bride of Frankenstein", you have the feeling nothing was left to chance and James Whale knew he had to outdo the original in every single department... and he miraculously did. We don't get the original disclaimer from Van Sloane but a surrealist discussion between Lord Byron and Mary Shelley played by a pretty and natural-looking Elsa Lanchester, the introduction uses flashbacks from the original film but the cast of Lanchester is a masterstroke in the way it points out that even the loveliest creature can have a monstruous counterpart. Van Sloane who played a rather bland tutor is replaced by Thesiger who, no pun intended, steals Clive's thunder and becomes a fascinating and unforgettable mad scientist figure, indulging to a few hammy and over the top dialogues, but indispensable as the foils to Frankenstein's retrieved sanity. And Frankenstein, of course, played by Boris Karloff (credited as Karloff), like Garbo, finally talks and while it doesn't deprive him from his sensitive side, it highlights a new tragic dimension as he can put words in his needs but doesn't have them fulfilled for all that, and finally concludes the film with a line that represents his only possible existential impulse sealing his fate as a tragic movie figure... and only getting from his Bride a hiss magnificently ad-libbed by Lanchester like Hopkins would do a few years later to make the 'chianti' line even more memorable, some remember "We belong dead", I'll remember that hiss. And yes, she's only there for a few minutes but she marked horror movies forever, becoming the first female monster of cinema... created by two men, doesn't that ring a bell? In "Interview With the Vampire", a male vampire sucked the blood out of a little girl's neck and his companion provided the taste of blood that would save her life albeit turning her to a vampire. While the homoerotic subtext between Louis and Lestat couldn't even escape from a numb attention span, the move was even more daring as it featured a conception of life from two men, as if only in the movies, the miracle could ever happen... and be plausible in its realm of fiction. If not directly based on Mary Shelley's book, "The Bride of Frankenstein", sixty years later, proved to be of similar boldness and it is a mystery whether James Whale intended it as a wink to his own sexuality. But while in my first review, I insisted on the sexual innuendo more than the religious undertones, the sequel creates a fascinating parallel between Frankenstein and Adam with the two men creating an Eve-like figure. The religious aspect of Frankenstein is even more apparent in scenes where the Bible is mentioned in a disdainful way as if there was no difference between Mary Shelley's fiction, the one she's about to tell in the opening and the story of Frankenstein, making the whole film an even more revolutionary for its time, so daring and so magnificent in terms of special effects."The Bride of Frankenstein" is a landmark of the horror genre, fascinating to deconstruct but works even better as an entertaining flick.

(Flash Review)Will the Frankenstein monster be able to find a friend or even love? This film is even more visually striking than the original with aggressive and stunning shot framing and the film quality is a step up as well. In this film, which picks up right after the first film ends, Dr. Frankenstein wants to create a mate for the monster. He has already made several miniature human-like beings he keeps in glass pedestals, which are nifty and creative film techniques for the 30's. In the meantime the monster has escaped his shackles and befriends a blind hermit. Thinking the monster is just a normal person who cannot speak, he connects with him as he himself cannot see. The monster having finally made a friend gets chased away by the search party. Having lost a new friend, will the monster finally get a female mate to befriend or to marry? There are so many famous moments from this film that are referenced still today. The brides white streak in the hair and the scientist's reaction to his success. This is a must see film.

"Bride of Frankenstein" will play in the open air next Sunday, as part of the first edition of Panama Horror Film Festival, so I felt inclined to write a few notes, remembering the first time I saw it. The opening sequence is as precise as a good clock: in it humor is mixed with dread in perfectly administered doses. Minnie, Dr. Frankenstein's meddling servant, goes to the mill where the monster died in the first installment of the series, and discovers that he is still alive and ready to destroy anything blocking his way. Minnie runs screaming and so arrives at the Frankenstein castle to break the news. In the following minutes, unforgettable images, sequences and scenes follow, such as a funeral in silhouette, the entrance of Dr. Pretorius to the scene with his gallery of miniature human beings, the monster's stay in the hut of a blind hermit, until the films finally reaches the sequence of anthology when the bride is created, when all the elements of the plot are combined in a tragic and delirious ending, that does not erase the smile or sense of wonder in our faces. The director was maestro James Whale, British filmmaker and theater director who retired from film in 1949 when Universal's management took the control he had of his films. This control allowed him in 1935 to reunite an almost foreign cast to tell a European history: Boris Karloff (the monster), Elsa Lanchester (the bride and Mary Shelley), Ernest Thesiger (Pretorius), Una O'Connor (Minnie), Valerie Hobson (Mrs. Frankenstein) and E.E. Clive (the burgomaster) were all Whale's compatriots, while Colin Clive (Dr. Frankenstein) was born in France and O.P. Heggie (the blind), in Australia. Of the British cast, besides Karloff in an exceptional performance full of nuances under the heavy makeup for the role of the monster, for me three also stand out: O'Connor, the eternal sneaky little lady who brings humor; then Thesiger, Whale's friend, as the diabolical and effeminate scientist, collaborator in the creation of the monster's bride; and especially Lanchester, as a trapped little bird, immortal, fantastic, touching, in those few minutes in which she fills the screen, to the chords of the wonderful score of Silesian Franz Waxman. It is curious that not only did Whale reject the genre of horror movies, but also the film industries of the world, which for long years assigned derisory budgets to the projects, until they recognized it that it could also have style when Stanley Kubrick made "The Shining." The genre was validated by the middle class in all its "terrestrial replicas". But before Kubrick, terror geniuses shone with one, two or several masterpieces each, as Whale (in spite of himself), Tod Browning, Jacques Tourneur, Mario Bava and Terence Fisher, to name but a few. "Bride of Frankenstein" is genuinely one of those high points.