THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)

Starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Gavin Gordon, Douglas Walton, Una O'Connor, E.E. Clive, Lucien Prival, O.P. Heggie, Dwight Frye. Written by William Hurlbut & John L. Balderston. Directed by James Whale. USA. 75 minutes.

"Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn't be more amusing if we were all devils and no nonesense about angels and being good."

What to say and where to start with this, easily the best film ever loosed from the Universal monster movie stable and quite possibly the greatest horror film ever made? I suppose the beginning is as good a place as any. After the thunderous success of its production of Frankenstein in 1931, Universal decided to produce a sequel, initially called The Return of Frankenstein. After a lengthy and tempestuous period of development, during which time a number of different writers took cracks at sewing together a suitable screenplay, authors Hurlbut and Balderston - with guidance from returning director James Whale - arrived at a draft that fit Whale's criteria of a satiric "hoot", a black comedy rife with sexual and religious symbolism. But the film that was made ended up being a whole lot more than a simple "hoot".  It ended up being one of the few films that can truly and easily be called a "classic".

The film opens rather archly with a prologue set in Geneva, Switzerland, at the home of Lord Byron, "England's greatest sinner", where he and his houseguests Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley are engaged in a little drawing room banter regarding the latter's recent novel while a storm rages outside. "Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived a Frankenstein?" Byron asks his friend Percy. Mary chirps and giggles girlishly, asking Percy to light some candles to help dispel her fear of electrical storms, but you don't buy the doe-ish innocence for a second. It doesn't take an X-ray machine to see through her waifish veneer and catch a glimpse of something much darker seething beneath. She can bat those big beautiful eyes of her's as much as she wants, but it's the subtly menacing tone of her voice that gives Mary away.

From here we are transported to the fiery finale of the first film, the wind mill burning with the monster inside and the mob of Angry Villagers cheering outside. The building finally collapsed and the flames waning, the town burgomaster (E.E. Clive) assures the throng that the Monster is dead and the show over, and encourages them to disperse and retire to their homes. The mayor is gravely mistaken, however, and we find the Monster a little scorched but not much worse for the wear in a subbasement of the mill. After killing a married couple (the mother and father of the little girl the drowned in the first film) and spooking Minnie (Una O'Connor as the film's equivalent of one of Shakespeare's clowns), the Monster is afoot again.

The broken body of the Baron Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is carried back to his castle where, much to the relief of his fiance' Elizabeth (Hobson), he is discovered - like the Monster-  to be very much alive.  They are soon interrupted by a visit from one of Heinrich's old professors though, a visitor whom their housekeeper Minnie describes as "very queer looking." Queer looking indeed. Dr. Pretorius, as played with great relish and aplomb by Ernest Thesiger, is flamboyant Wildean character who is one of Whale's sly, surreptitious jokes, a character who clearly has his own motivations for creating life artificially, if you catch my drift.

Seeking his old student's aid in his work, he spirits Frankenstein away to his home for a glass of gin ("My only weakness," he declares) and a gander at his own experiments - a group of tiny homunculi kept in glass containers that resemble a king, a queen, a bishop and the Devil. "There's a certain resembles to me, " Pretorius asks Henry.  "Or do I flatter myself?" As charming as Pretorius' creatures are, they fall pitifully short of his long-term ambitions, and he tries to enlist his ex-pupils aid in creating a new creation - an artificial female. The lust for creation lights Henry up like a Christmas tree, but shuddering with horror at the memory of the disastrous results of his last experiment, he declines.

The Monster, meanwhile, roams the countryside terrorizing the populace and engaging in his usual regimen of mayhem and misfortune. Shot, beaten and burned for his troubles, the Monster is wandering through the forest when he is suddenly drawn by the sound of sad, mournful violin music to the home of an elderly hermit (Heggie). Blind as a bat , the hermit can't see that his grim visitor is monster - all he can tell is that he's wounded and scared, and so he takes him, feeds him and puts him to rest in his own bed. The hermit kneels beside the Monster and prays over him, thanking God for blessing him with a companion after years of isolation. Tears streaming down his face, the Monster pats the old man on the back to comfort him, as if to say, 'It's going to be okay." It's a tenderly wrought scene that ranks as one of the most memorable in all of fantastic cinema.

Later, we see the hermit teaching the Monster how to speak and introducing him to the simple pleasures of wine drinking and cigar smoking. This time when the hermit plays his violin, his tune is a happy one.  But the peace of their pastoral paradise is soon shattered by the arrival of two lost hunters (one of whom is played by John Carradine). A scuffle ensues, the house catches on fire, the hunters carry the hermit away and the Monster once again finds himself friendless and alone.  After a fleeting glimpse of Heaven, the poor patchwork man is plunged back into the routine Hell of his cursed existence . The Monster makes his way to a subterranean tomb where he meets a calm, cordial Pretorius in the midst of a midnight grave robbery. The doctor offers the creature a drink, a bite to eat and a smoke ("They're my only weakness," he insists). Offered the promise of a mate, the Monster joins forces with Pretorius to change Frankenstein's mind about retiring from the monster-making business.

And so we come to the inevitable, climactic creation scene where Henry and Pretorius bring the Bride (wrapped in deliberately mummy-like dressings) to life in a tower laboratory with the aid of a raging thunder storm and elaborate electrical equipment (designed by Kenneth Strickfaden). The gurney upon which the body of the female creature is raised up into the storm and lowered back down again, where Henry announces with adulation, "She's alive! Alive!" We cut at last to our first good look at the female monster, decked out in a flowing white garment. "The Bride of Frankenstein!" gloats Pretorius. With her wild eyes, tire-tread lips and dimple chin, the Bride is a bizarrely beautiful creature,  her movements twitchy and lurching. Every time I watch this scene, I get a catch in my throat.

The Monster approaches her. "Friend? Friend?" he asks plaintively. But the Monster's pathetic attempts to charm his intended mate fail miserably. The Bride is repulsed and terrified by the Monster and drawn to Henry. "She hate me! Like others!" growls the despondent Monster, his hopes for happiness once again dashed. By sheer luck he happens upon a convenient self-destruction switch. In one final act of nobility and mercy, the heartbroken Monster allows Henry and Elizabeth to escape before blasting himself, the Bride and Pretorius to bits.

Karloff's performance in the first film was tender and remarkably expressive, but here he moves into a genuinely transcendent realm with the character. Here he is nothing short of astonishing. In sheer spite of the restrictions placed on him by the layers of heavy make-up (by Jack Pierce) piled upon his face, Karloff is at turns frightening, funny, pathetic, tragic and, ultimately, noble. It is a deeply moving performance that never ceases to amaze and touch the soul, no matter how many times you've seen it. Karloff's monster is ALIVE all right, in the truest sense of the word, in a way few characters - literary or cinematic - ever are.

As the Bride, the sinister sexual power Lanchester hinted at in the film's prologue is totally unfettered, unleashed at full force. The Bride is the silver scream's most memorable cameo: she's not on-screen for more than five minutes, and yet she remains eternally one of Horror's few truly immortal figures, branding the brain with her unforgettable image, at once mechanistically repellent and darkly enticing. While she looks considerably less robot-like than the Karloff Monster, her behavior is considerably more mechanistic. With her towering, wavy, white-streaked afro-like coiffure she bears a striking resemblance to the ancient Egyptian bust of Nefertiti, the oldest image of an artificial-looking woman.

Bride is a bold movie in many ways, particularly in the manner in which Whale snuck in all manner of little subversive touches. Aside from Pretorius' blatant, swishy homosexuality, there's also a fair bit of imagery referring to the crucifixion. In one particularly ballsy moment, the hapless Monster is caught and beaten by a mob, lashed to a pole, raised Christ-like up into the air and pelted with rocks.  Looking back, it's amazing that this stuff went soaring over the heads of the studio censors. Whale must have had himself one big hell of a laugh at their expense. But Bride is so much more than a sly joke. It's a priceless jewel those luster will never fade as long as the human heart beats.

**** Four Bridal Gowns Full of Maggots out of four.

* Dead meat, ripe and reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good n' healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality