31 Days of Horror: Days 18 and 19 - Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

I’ve had four sets of research papers to grade, so I’ve fallen a bit behind with my blogging but fortunately not with my movie watching.  To follow up on last week’s Frankenstein double feature, I watched James Whales deliberately campy “Bride of Frankenstein” on Day 18. Whereas his first Frankenstein film adapts the first half of Mary Shelley’s novel with Frankenstein creating the Creature and the Creature killing a few villagers, “Bride” covers events from the second half and gives more of the Creature’s perspective.  However, both movies are rather loosely connected to the novel, and “Bride” makes one very significant change by adding a second mad scientist, Dr. Pretorious, Frankenstein’s former professor, who has stolen a bit of the fire of the gods himself and created miniature humans.  He coerces Frankenstein into working with him to create a female. 

“Bride” is lots of fun to watch because it amplifies all the elements that make the first film so enjoyable.  This time, the Creature talks rather than simply grunting.  He makes a friend and learns to enjoy wine and cigars.  Frankenstein and Pretorius use the same tower where Frankenstein gave life to his original creation, but it’s now filled with more gadgets that crackle and pop as Frankenstein adjusts them to imbue life to the Creature’s mate.  The Bride herself is probably the best part of the movie and is yet another horror icon that Whale had a hand in creating.  She shrieks in horror and cowers behind Frankenstein when she sees the male Creature, and her moves are a bit robotic as she is just learning how to work her limps.  Her most recognizable feature, of course, is her conical black hair streaked with a white lightning bolt on each side. 

Continuing with the Frankenstein theme, I watched “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” on Day 19.  This is the most faithful film adaptation of the novel that I’ve seen, but it’s still a bit of a misnomer to call it “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”  Director Kenneth Branagh makes a significant change to the story by having Victor reanimate his wife, Elizabeth, after the Creature kills her when Victor refuses to make him a mate.  The results are disastrous, of course, and it’s the movie’s clearest example of Victor’s inability to consider the consequences of his actions or fully acknowledge and attempt to correct his own mistakes.  His childishness makes him almost insufferable, but this can’t really be blamed on Branagh as it’s also a major flaw in Shelley’s novel.  I know that Shelley’s novel is a cautionary tale about hubris and we’re not meant to like Victor, but I’d prefer him to be a sinister misanthrope rather than a whiney bitch.

Despite its annoying main character, however, there is plenty to like in Branagh’s take on the Frankenstein story, particularly the creation/birth scenes, which were clearly inspired by Whale’s Frankenstein films.  Victor sets up a lab in the attic of a boarding house and fills it with a variety of gadgets that emit sparks and bolts of electricity.  His exact method for imbuing life to the Creature is never specified, but it relies on a combination of inserting acupuncture needles in key points, stimulating them with electricity from eels, and immersing the Creature’s body in amniotic fluid.  Thanks to the movie’s very believable makeup effects, the Creature looks exactly like his body is a composite of several corpses.  Throughout the movie, he picks out the stitches that were used to sew him together, and the scars they leave behind are especially realistic.

Shelley’s novel has inspired dozens of film adaptations and “Bride” is one of the best.  I can’t say the same about Branagh’s film, but it does contain some very compelling elements that make it well worth watching.