BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

FORUM/AGAINST 'EM

by Anthony Ambrogio and Gary J. Svehla

Gary and Anthony have very strong opinions on Bride, and have been hashing this out since their first Fanex meeting and e-mail letter.  Happily they love to argue, so no feelings are ever hurt and fans can benefit from their obsession!

Anthony Argues:

      In 1998, I made this statement in these pages: "The too-campy Bride of Frankenstein (1935), so highly touted by many, is a great horror film only for people who really don't like horror films" ("Furry Tails Can Come True: 60 Years of Werewolf Films," Midnight Marquee 57, p. 28). It was an offhand remark, peripheral to my main topic, but sometimes I feel it was the only thing that readers remembered about my article; I have gotten no end of grief because of it. Now that I've labeled Bride the most overrated horror film of the 1930s, I'm sure I won't hear the end of that , either.

      Not that I don't stand behind both statements. I still think Bride is a horror film for people who don't like horror films (though I freely admit that some people who like horror films also think Bride is the bat's meow). And I question Bride 's reputation as the greatest horror film of the Golden Age or, by some accounts, of all time. Since my opinion runs so contrary to accepted wisdom, permit me to explain myself, to show that my opinion is not some easily dismissed crackpot assertion and that I'm not alone in that crackpot opinion.

      From the beginning, Bride 's "camp" elements were apparent to those who understood such things. "John L. Balderston, one of [ Bride 's] writers, went so far as to disown the film, but his objection was that he wrote it as a satire and that 'Junior' Laemmle changed it back into a horror film" (Denis Gifford, Karloff: The Man, the Monster, the Movies [New York: Curtis Books, 1973], p. 206). Laemmle's re-"transformation," however, was incomplete and couldn't compete with the directorial flourishes that Whale instilled in almost every frame and sequence of the picture.

      Of course, I don't imagine too many viewers in 1935 or for a long time after got Bride 's camp elements. Certainly, they eluded my 12-year-old understanding when I first saw the film--the first Karloff Frankenstein I ever saw--on Detroit's Shock Theatre , back in 1960 or so. I really liked it then. I felt sympathy for the poor Monster and all he went through, and I think James Whale manipulated my 12-year-old sensibilities very well. I don't dislike the movie now--although, after I saw the original Frankenstein (a movie I've seen at least 30 times since), I always felt that Bride paled by comparison.

      Gary Responds:

      The first Universal horror film I ever watched, on a fuzzy/snowy Washington TV channel, was Bride . It was my first look at a horror-movie classic, and, having read the filmbook in Famous Monsters , I felt as though the photos were coming to animated life. It was something magical for me. Frankenstein I saw later, and it never had the emotional wallop for me, both as a child and as an adult, that Bride generated. To me, Frankenstein seems somewhat creaky and hollow and even dated and weakened by time. The Monster is one-dimensional, and the characters (John Boles, Mae Clarke) seem wooden and less fleshed out than in Bride . Compare Colin Clive's Frankenstein from both films: In Bride , he's more animated and obsessed, but also more human and complex. Ernest Thesiger is simply wonderful. All the supporting characters are quirky and lovable. Yes, the tone of Frankenstein was horror, but Bride is quirky and has divergent tones. It's alternately scary, funny, weird and blackly comic. It is simply richer and exists on so many levels that it cuts deeper for me. Whether because of Bride 's laughs or its chills, the movie touches me emotionally and sticks.

      Anthony Continues:  

      As I grew older and reexamined Bride , I couldn't help but notice what for me were its flaws. There's really no need, it seems to me, for the prologue. Since we never return to the framing story, why keep it? And I don't understand what point (except a nasty one) Whale is making by having Elsa Lanchester be both Mary Shelley and the bride. (Well, I suppose, one could argue more or less successfully that we are what we create, that, just as Henry Frankenstein and his Monster are "one flesh," father and son, so too are Mary and her female creation. But I'm giving Whale the benefit of the doubt here.)

      Gary Counters:

      You gave the best reason why Lanchester plays both roles. The prologue section is wonderful...        interestingly over-dramatic but quirky in a mesmerizing sort of way. We have the Gothic Romantic "Frankensteins" concocting a parallel story where their artistic creations (poems by these young Romantic rebels) are akin to monsters which threaten society, and thus the artist creates the need to sympathize and emphasize with the monsters which are the by-product of the society and culture which created them. In this way, the prologue adds depth. It's almost like James Whale is saying, "My quirky, monstrous films frighten Hollywood, but, at their heart, they are artistic, and the viewer needs to approach them with sympathy, not loathing."   I think James Whale saw himself as Dr. Frankenstein--at least as Pretorius--and viewed his films as the Monsters.

      Anthony Persists:

Some may argue that Whale's tongue-in-cheek approach broadens the film's appeal, permitting its acceptance by a wider audience. Certainly, for a horror film to become a bona fide hit, it must appeal to more than just horror-film aficionados, but must it therefore betray its core supporters, or itself? Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) were blockbuster hits seen by more than just horror fans, but would anybody call them horror films for people who don't like horror films?

      I'm certainly not the first person to notice the film's continuity gaffes. That honor goes to Don Glut, who, in his seminal work, The Frankenstein Legend (The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Metuchen, NJ, 1973), pointed out "the almost ludicrous anachronism in Bride of Frankenstein . The setting for the prologue was Mary's own era of the 1800s. When her flashback narration dissolved onto the screen with her fading words, the picture miraculously jumped into the future by almost a hundred years" (p. 125). Of course, since Shelley was writing science fiction, perhaps one can justify her chronological projection--but I doubt it.

      It's unclear when Bride is supposed to take place. In the film, Karl (Dwight Frye) reads a tombstone claiming that a young woman died in 1899. Logic suggests that the story must be set in or after that year. Yet the "electrical machine" that Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) lets Henry (Colin Clive) use to speak with Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson) comes off as some crude precursor of Bell's telephone, even though the invention, patented in 1876, would have been around for 25 years by then. (Glut makes these points and others about other anachronisms in Bride and the rest of the series in The Frankenstein Legend , p. 147, footnote 17.)

      Adding to the confusion is the fact that Bride proper pretends to begin more or less exactly where Frankenstein left off, and Frankenstein appears to take place pretty much in the year it was made (i.e., 1931) or a few years earlier. One can't tell for sure, given Frankenstein 's "quaint" Ruritanian setting with no autos, phones or electric lights in evidence. (Despite my multiple viewings of the film, I still can't tell whether the lamp Henry's dimming just before the Monster shambles in is oil or incandescent.)   But all that laboratory paraphernalia seems to be of more recent vintage than the 19th century. The costumes seem also to be 20th century fashions. Ditto the clothing in Son of Frankenstein , which, like Frankenstein , seems to be set in the present day.

      Here's an intriguing thought: perhaps Bride , like the second season of the TV series Dallas , is all a dream--or, in this case, all a figment of Mary Shelley's imagination (the sequel she never wrote)! Perhaps the correct continuity goes from Frankenstein to Son of Frankenstein . Frankenstein ends with Elizabeth sitting by the bedside of a convalescing Henry while his father the Baron toasts for "a son to the house of Frankenstein." This conclusion provides for a pretty smooth segue to the next film-- if the next film is the one about Frankenstein's son. The more I think about this idea, the more I like it--makes it easier for me to appreciate Bride if I see it as an anomaly rather than an episode in the series.

      Of course, we all know that Frankenstein originally ended with Henry's death at the hands of his creation--an ending which could have precluded any sequel (featuring Henry, anyway). But Whale decided to tack on "the semi-happy ending...to remind the audience that after all it is only a tale that is told, and could easily be twisted any way by the director" (his words, quoted in The New York Times , December 20, 1931, and reprinted in Gregory William Mank's It's Alive! [New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., Inc., 1981], p. 35). Actually, since Frankenstein is a story about Henry rejecting normal procreation (with Elizabeth) for abnormal parthenogenesis (creating the Monster), the conclusion wherein, once the Monster's dead Henry can finally unite with a woman, is not arbitrary but makes perfect dramatic sense.

      This ending business gets tricky. As we all know, the "Henry recuperating" ending was sometimes dropped from subsequent showings of the film. Glut says that, "When Frankenstein was re-released years later on a double bill with its sequel Bride of Frankenstein , this epilogue was removed so that the two films would flow together. The second Frankenstein movie picked up at the burning windmill, ignoring the convalescing Henry. Still later the scene was replaced" ( The Frankenstein Legend , p. 146, footnote 13). Mank, on the other hand, says, "To prepare the public for the sequel, Universal cut from Frankenstein (still in circulation) the happy denouement, which would remain forsaken in the studio vaults until the sale of Frankenstein to television in 1957" ( It's Alive! , p. 55). Who's right? The more abrupt "Henry dies" ending (the mill burns while the villagers watch) does provide a better connection to Bride (save for the time-period discrepancy), but--as both Glut and Mank make clear--it was in any case a temporary aberration.

      Perhaps coincidentally (perhaps not), Son , not Bride , was included along with Frankenstein in that first Shock Theatre package released to TV. ( Bride was part of the Son of Shock set, released later.) If Bride is indeed a dream, a fiction not part of the actual Frankenstein series, then its amorphous time period is fitting--as are the various mix-ups within the film itself.

      In the overrated/underrated group article, Jonathan Malcolm Lampley mentions that "The continuity errors are worse in [ Bride ] than any other classic horror film," and I must agree. These begin almost as soon as Mary Shelley's narrative begins. As the villagers lift Henry's lifeless body, the burgomeister says, "Tell old Baron Frankenstein we're bringing his son home." But there's no old Baron to be seen at Castle Frankenstein. When Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) arrives, he greets Henry with a " Baron Frankenstein now, I believe." The fact that Henry's father dies from the shock of seeing his "dead" son, which is how Henry inherits the title, was in the original script but left out of the film--except for that incongruous line left in. (Since the burgomeister was played by E.E. Clive, perhaps Whale didn't want to cut his star's father's lines.)

      I know that the sloppy continuity could be due to the fact that some 17 minutes of the movie were excised--including the subplot about Karl murdering his uncle and blaming it on the Monster: "Very convenient to have a monster around." (Is this part of the "satire" that Balderston was referring to?) But, more and more, I get the feeling that some parts were added --that somebody at Universal (Laemmle, Jr.?) said, "Show more of the Monster; have him rampaging"--and threw in that long middle section where he's captured by the villagers, breaks loose and terrorizes town and countryside. Note, please: at around 26:57--after the Monster has rescued the shepherdess, she screams, and the two hunters shoot at him--he runs away, holding his wounded left arm. Then comes the eight-minute sequence in which he's chased, trussed up and escapes, wreaking havoc on the urban and rural populations. At around 34:34, he comes to the hermit's door-- holding his left shoulder as blood trickles down his arm. Doesn't it seem probable that the original continuity should have gone from the shepherdess scene to the introduction of the hermit? (Mank does mention that, in order to "bridge the gap" left by nearly two reels of cuts, "Whale recalled Karloff for a single vignette in which the Monster happens upon Gypsies in the forest at night" [ It's Alive! , p. 61]; this incident occurs at the 34:00 minute mark, just before the Monster visits the hermit.)

      One episode in that eight-minute interval is too campy; another is out of keeping with the Monster's characterization. At around 32:58, there's a scream, and a villager recognizes it as "Mrs. Neuman!" They rush to a house, and a crowd gathers around a supine form. We hear a male's moan: "Ohhh, ohhh!" "Poor old Neuman," someone says. From off-screen, we hear the same moan ("Ohhh, ohhh!"), only in a woman's voice: The people run upstairs...it's Mrs. Neuman! This similar groaning, in alto, then soprano and the ridiculous bustling of the townspeople renders the scene ludicrous.

      Just before this farcical example of the Monster's might, we're treated to an out-of-keeping instance of sadism. A worried mother cries for her daughter: "Frieda!" A group of communion girls tell the distraught parent that Frieda was just there a moment ago, and then all of them stare and scream as, off-screen, they discover the body of little Frieda--murdered, apparently, by the Monster. This gratuitous addition to the Monster's crime is what makes me say that Whale doesn't play fair by the Monster. We all know that the creature killed out of self-defense or ignorance, but this is a brutal, unmotivated homicidal act. I'm surprised that Karloff, who complained about the way he had to throw Maria into the water in Frankenstein , wasn't exercised about the Monster's inappropriate action here--that is, if he was aware of it, since the actor participates in neither of these sequences.

      Gary Comments:  

      You're right. Karloff never complained about the Monster killing the child in Bride (where it occurs off-screen, unseen, where the motives for the murder are never defined) but did complain in the original. To me, in Bride the Monster has been beaten, burned, scarred and is more monstrous because the humans have taught him how to hate and harm. He was an innocent (yet abused ) babe in the original; he's the abusing adolescent here in Bride . Society has literally made him a monster by the second film. Yet he's still lonely, compassionate and sorrowful--all in the same film. Karloff never struck all these emotional plateaus in the original. His was more a one-note (a great note) performance, but in Bride , well, here is Karloff's Academy Award-winning performance, bar none.

      About your claim that horror movie fans would never consider The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby as horror movies for people who don't like horror movies...well, think again.   For me, The Exorcist has not aged well, and I found many flaws upon its original release, but it was a blockbuster success financially.   Rosemary's Baby was a best-selling novel before the Roman Polanski-directed movie arrived, and once again, it appealed more to the mainstream movie audience than it appealed to the horror film audience (and again, I've never been much of a fan of either film).

      If Jonathan Lampley feels the continuity errors in Bride of Frankenstein are worse than in any other classic horror film, well, I refer both of you to Universal's The Black Cat (1934) for a true hatchet job.

      Anthony Thrusts:  

      Whale was a brilliant director but I think that, after Frankenstein , he never really wanted to do (and never really did) horror. I didn't get Bride when I was young, but I still don't get The Old Dark House --which was a disappointment to me when I finally saw it after reading about it in Famous Monsters and other places for some 10-15 years first. I don't exactly know what kind of movie it is, but I guess "black comedy" describes it as well as anything. The Invisible Man is a thrilling tour de force , but, by its very nature, it contains a lot of comedy. Rains' antics are very funny in many scenes, even as he descends into madness. And Bride has, for me, too many sly winks and scenes in which Whale wants us to laugh at the action rather than with it. I admire it as a cinematic accomplishment; I just resent it for somehow achieving the status of the "greatest horror film ever made."

      Gary Parries:

      All this talk that Whale never enjoyed doing horror after Frankenstein just does not stand the test of time. Yes, he added his quirky tone and humor, but are you saying that Bride is not horror or that The Invisible Man is a comedy? Just as David Lynch and Tim Burton are "stylists of the strange" today, so, too, was James Whale the idiosyncratic director of his era. That's why his films are so amazing. It is incredible that Hollywood during the 1930s even released them because they are so offbeat and run counter to any other 1930s horror classic. Yes, he didn't play things straight, but that's why these films are movie classics. He was cutting-edge for his time and even for ours. You seem to want your horror served straight up and conventional. For me the odd-ball style of Whale is ghostly, ghastly and invigorating.   Also your earlier claim that Whale added camp and humor to appeal to the more mainstream audience does not hold water, as a more traditional horror movie would have been more easily digestible by the mainstream public than the eccentricities offered here.

      Anthony Insists:

      Don't get me started on David Lynch!  

      It's not that I want my horror served up straight. Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996), which mixes its horror with humor and over-the-top characterizations (e.g., Jeffrey Combs' FBI agent) is definitely not "straight" or conventional, and yet it's one of my favorite horror films of the 1990s. I appreciate Whale's oddball style in Frankenstein , where the horror and humor were nicely balanced. (All those antics of Dwight Frye's Fritz, including his non-stop complaining and stopping to pull up his sock as he goes to answer the door, are wonderfully done.) Despite its lack of a musical score and other less polished items, it contains more genuine frissons than its more celebrated sequel--the moment where Henry and Waldman find Fritz hanged and must face the angry Monster; the muffled roar the wedding guests hear which makes Henry realize "He's in the house!" and that final, atmospheric mountain-top confrontation between creator and creation. For me, Bride can't hold a torch to Frankenstein .

      Gary Gets the Last Word:

      Interesting year for movies. David Lynch's Mulholland Drive has appeared on many top-10 "best of" lists, as well as Lynch being recognized as best director of 2001 by many critics and peer organizations, including the prestigious Academy Awards nomination for this year's best director.

      Frankenstein is a classic film, and an iconic one at that, but as many people agree, James Whale did the impossible by making his sequel better than the original, better because he dared to be idiosyncratic with his sequel and not merely repeat his pattern of the past.   It would have been so easy (and profitable) for Whale to do a Son of Frankenstein by-the-numbers sequel, but he turned the black-white morality of the original Frankenstein topsy-turvy by creating a denser, grayer morality with characters less easy to define or judge.   Bride of Frankenstein is very much an intense horror thriller with odd moments of black humor; it's never a black comedy with moments of horror.   Whale, the craftsman and artist, knew exactly what he was after, and simply because he broke the very rules he established in 1931, many people, such as yourself, are disappointed that he did not repeat himself.   Instead of dealing with what the picture is , you ponder continuity lapses, so-called anachronisms (it's a mythic fairy-tale that plays loose with the time period in which it occurs) and perceived editing problems (and if this movie were made today, I am sure James Whale would restore his "director's cut" and offer auditory commentary on how studio execs ruined his movie) and fail to recognize that the movie that remains, minor flaws and all, is perhaps the greatest horror film of all time, a uniquely original film that resonates on so many different levels.   Simply stated--Karloff has never been better, Whale has never been better and Universal has never produced a more     enduring movie classic.