Like many of us of a like mind, Bride of Frankenstein affected me at a young and impressionable age. I grew up on a diet of Hammer Horror (usually watched through parted fingers), and from time to time one of the 'classics'. Psycho was one of them, and I could still watch that particular Hitchcock movie on a daily basis and never tire of it. I never much cared for the Bela Lugosi Dracula, but I suppose by that time, I had become used to the near pant-soiling terror of Christopher Lee's turn as the the Count, and Lugosi's version simply seemed too tame to make any kind of impression.But as a child, the movie that made the largest impression on my psyche was James Whale's tremendous sequel to his own Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein.
Barring the relative oddities of The Godfather II, The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight, there aren't many sequels that surpass their predecessors. But Bride is one of those oddities.
Of course as a child, all that lingers in the mind is imagery, particularly if it's as vivid as that of the beautiful Elsa Lanchester being brought to life by the greatest of 'weird science' moments in cinema history, that electric-shock hair, those birdlike movements and that scream upon meeting her intended mate, Boris Karloff's sublime monster.
I've had the original movie and its sequel on one of those classic Universal special edition DVD sets for a while and simply hadn't gotten around to sitting down to watch Bride of Frankenstein again, until tonight.
And I was suprised by the movie for many reasons.
Of course, Lanchester's appears in what amounts to less than five minutes of screen time (not including her dual appearance as Mary Shelley in the movie's prologue). But of course, those five minutes, and the laboratory sequence leading up to Frankenstein exclaiming, "She's Alive! Alive!" are a delicious concoction of special FX, set design, pure camp and surrealism.
Whale came to Bride with a degree of reluctance, and only after several script passes with numerous contributions by himself, did he agree to the sequel. What stands out about Bride is the air of high camp about it all: the whimsy of various bit part performances, the bizarre miniature people in jars and the outrageously flamboyant turn by Ernest Thesiger as Frankenstein's mentor, Doctor Septimus Pretorius. The homosexual overtones of this queen of a mad scientist, luring Frankenstein away on his wedding night to meddle in some nefarious non procreative life-making is pretty clear, but still delightfully tongue in cheek.
There's also some quite overt religious imagery in the film, despite Whale's lack of any such conviction: the bread and wine with the blind hermit (and this scene again plays with the homosexual inferrence of two men living together, only to be torn apart by two gun toting villagers), the monster strung up in a cruciform pose when captured, the obvious act of scientist's 'playing God', and a scene apparently cut from the script where the monster attempts to rescue the stone figure of Jesus from a cross in a graveyard.
Aside from all of this contentious stuff, there's also the stuff that you'll remember from that first viewing as a child, but had no context for: the gorgeous sets and imaginative camera work lifted from German Expressionist cinema, the iconic make-up for Karloff's monster by Jack P. Pierce (adjusted with more scars and burns after the first film, and simplified for Karloff's comfort, befitting his increased status in Hollywood), the generally impressive cast (even Colin Clive as Frankenstein, who was reportedly drunk for most of the shoot and died just two years later), and the splendid score.
And of course, we return to Elsa Lanchester, the girl from Lewisham, who modelled the Bride's hissing on the hissing of swans protecting their young after feeding the birds at a pond back in England. Those five minutes of quintessential horror iconography, now tied thirty years later with a better understanding of the wit and subversive genius of James Whale.
Mad science at its best.
2 comments:
Yup, both of the Whale Frankenstein films are awesome. Read an interview with Doug Jones where he mentioned him and Del Toro had discussed doing a version of Frankenstein, with him as the monster. Some concept art was floating about on the net - but I can't find it at mo - based on DJ's look, and it was pretty cool. But, given his Hobbit duties, and the fact that he's said he might do Hellboy 3 after that, can't imagine it'll be something that'll get made soon, if at all.
My other fav old B&W horror film is the Lon Chaney version of The Wolf Man. I was on holiday as a kid when I first saw it, and we were camped out in a tiny cottage in some woods, somewhere in Cornwall. Night fell, and the mist descended, and me and my sisters, plus my cousin Paul, sat and watched it. It freaked us all out, so it's sort of ingrained along side that childhood memory. Plus, gotta give kudos to Curt 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers' Siodmak's script - all that made up Gypsy curse stuff, is regarded by a lot of people as genuine, rather than a rather poetic scripting moment: Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. Classic!
Definitely the best way to see a horror film for the first time! I recall the Oliver Reed Wolfman scaring the bejeesus out of me as a kid, although I doubt it stands up quite as well as the Chaney version.
And I'd usually have to roll my eyes at the thought of Frankenstein being remade again, but if anyone could do it and do it well, it'd be Del Toro. Doug Jones really is the modern day equivalent of Karloff and Chaney, but a little less bitter than they were!
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