Bride of Frankenstein (1935). 75 minutes. Directed by James Whale. Starring Boris Karloff (as Frankenstein’s monster), Colin Clive (as Baron Henry Frankenstein), Valerie Hobson (as Elizabeth Frankenstein), Ernest Thesiger (as Doctor Pretorius), Elsa Lanchester (as the monster’s mate/bride of Frankenstein, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), Gavin Gordon (as Lord Byron), Douglas Walton (as Percy Bysshe Shelley), Una O’Connor (as Minnie), E. E. Clive (as the Burgomaster), O. P. Heggie (as the hermit), and Dwight Frye (as Karl). Cinematography by John J. Mescall.
Bride of Frankenstein is one of those rare sequels that outdoes its predecessor. Frankenstein (1931), rooted in pre-Code and Depression-era culture, was itself a work of art and offered us insight into the 1818 novel of the same name by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In the first film, Shelley’s protagonist, Henry Frankenstein, embarks on a grisly campaign to revivify human corpses with the aim of becoming god-like; he successfully regenerates life in the form of a humanoid monster. Bride … Read the rest
