Frankenstein Wednesdays: "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) – Mate

 Continuing my weekly "But What Do I Know!" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...

 James Whale's "Bride of Frankenstein" is a morality tale, by which I mean it lets the world off the hook, so I'm not sure I agree with those who think it's better than its pitiless predecessor. For one thing - as I said last week - "Frankenstein" is "Frankenstein"! According to Scott MacQueen's excellent Blu-Ray commentary, Whale didn't even want to make a sequel, Karloff didn't want to talk in it, and suave newbie Claude Rains couldn't play the villain, and so was replaced by Ernest Thesiger, which is a bit like casting Brian Blessed because you can't get Ed Harris.

  I suppose one should ask next, "So how did it go so right?" because there are at least three great films in "Bride". The only problem is, they're great for completely different reasons, and when they come together at the end there's no way to resolve the differences, except pull the lever and blow the place to atoms. In no particular order then – Film One:

 Film One I like to call "Just Let Elsa Lanchester Do Whatever The Hell She Wants!" Tragically, only fragments exist, but they give every indication this might have proved the best of the three. Every decision she makes – as both the prologue's Mary Shelley with her sassy, shit-eating grin ("It will be published. I think") and the Bride hissing like a swan with her mouth in a scream – proves better than correct, astounding but true, mind-expanding. It's just a shame these two decisions count for more than half of the total sum she was allowed to make, because, unlike Karloff's beautiful abomination, Lanchester's is shown no pity at all, and immediately destroyed. Still her work is so haunting, maybe it's wrong to want more. No, to hell with that! I wanted more. And I'm pretty sure she was never allowed to do anything as bold again. There were simply no stories being told for the monsters she could make. Even this story, named after her, wasn't hers. That's Film One. Film Two:

 "The Story That Wouldn't Die!" Karloff's monster survives the fire (if a little scorched and puffier – did he keep his teeth in this time?) only to be condemned to a new tragedy: a life long enough to experience loneliness and a seemingly inescapable cycle of violence. It should be noted that Mary Shelley's recap (in a prologue delivered at least a hundred years before the events depicted in the film, if all dates are to be believed, which is fine, in fact I love it) shows the monster strangle a villager. This never happened in the original film, and revises the creature's history into a pattern of Escape, Killing Spree, Persecution and Capture, which "Bride" will then repeat: In this new version he escapes immolation, drowns Maria's parents in front of an uncaring owl (the father here is recast, although Reginald Barlow heroically attempts Micheal Mark's thousand-yard stare), then attempts a kindness in saving a shepherdess from drowning, is spotted, hunted, caught, crucified (the film opened on Good Friday)...

 ... and imprisoned, then escapes, is hunted etc. It's the hopelessness of this cycle that makes his encounter with the blind hermit so powerful, because suddenly, finally, hope pervades this film, and Karloff plays the wounded animal perfectly here. Only his tears betray his humanity. They're tears of relief.

 It's here too that the monster (against Karloff's wishes) is taught to talk, and as someone who prefers the prequel I agree it's a shame. I didn't need to hear "I hate life... want dead..." to know what was going on. But again, it helps us hope, and the hermit's lessons also help the couple bond. They eat, smoke, play music and love each other, a nation of two. Until the hunters come, and the monster flees, and we're back in the cycle, and it couldn't last, but actually no, to hell with that too! It should have lasted. This is what I mean about the film letting the world off the hook. 

 Meanwhile, the monster's creator has been returned to a far more delirious vision of the ancestral pile than the claustrophobic drawing rooms of the first film, and his wife (fiancée?) is now the seventeen year-old Valerie Hobson – who would later marry John Profumo! – but thankfully, Frankenstein as played by Colin Clive hasn't changed a bit. He may have renounced his studies, but he's still impossibly weak, and literally itching. Enter the monster, echoing his creator's original barked commands to Sit Down, in the one really great use of his new-found power of speech (as also noted by David Cairns), and demanding a mate. Henry refuses. The monster kidnaps his wife until a partner is provided (apparently the hermit also taught him to tie knots). And so Frankenstein the scientist returns to the lab. His twisted watchtower, intantly recognisable, now has kites. His creation's tragedy has forced him into a similarly inescapable cycle, and the buzzing and screaming of his equipment seems to go on for ever, but he's no longer itching.

 Film Three:

"Tales From The Crypt - or - Una, Ernie and E. E. Clive get up to more mad shit, with a guest appearance from Dwight and we hope you have as much fun watching this as we had making it etc." The year after James Whale made "Frankenstein", he worked with Karloff a second time on "The Old Dark House". It might be the film of Whale's I watch most often, and the one I'm most keen to show others. In it, a sexy bunch of know-nothings with their whole lives ahead of them, are forced to take shelter on a dark and stormy night, in the home of an ageing, deranged family and their drunkenly incoherent, psychotic butler, played by Karloff. Thesiger plays the saddest and sanest member of this family, delivering the line "Have a potato" in a way you'll remember for the rest of your life. The year after "Old Dark House", Whale continued his experiments in horror with "The Invisible Man", starring Claude Rains (and hopefully you'll have clocked by now the director's enormous influence on "The Rocky Horror Show"). You never see Rains until the final shot, but you see a lot of Una O'Connor, who plays the landlady of the inn in which his mad scientist holes up, and you see a nice amount of E.E. Clive too, as the head of police. These are the villain's anatagonists, and they're hilarious. Their performances are shrill and dull respectively, but also enormous, and precise, and musically human. To Rains' mad scientist, everyone else in the world is an expendable idiot, but thanks to the strengths of its comic relief, "The Invisible Man" seems more a celebration of us expendable idiots, and I adore both films. Two years later, Whale finally acquiesced to demands for him to make a sequel, and cast E. E. Clive as a burgomaster (as with Maria's parents, a recasting), Una O'Connor as a housekeeper, and Thesiger as Claude Rains. And I'm very happy to see them all back, but I'm not really sure what any of them are doing here.

 Well look, Terry Jones has just died, so I'm in no mood to say anything about O'Connor's Tyrolean pepperpot other than congratulations! But if Thesiger's Dr. Pretorius had not turned up to seek a collaboration with Henry Frankenstein, wouldn't the story still have worked? Would it not in fact have worked even better, with the monster seeking out his creator directly, rather than through a go-between? And while it's Pretorius who toasts to "a New World of Gods and Monsters" what is this newcomer actually bringing to the table, apart from jars of comedy homunculi, and the House of Lords gin? I'm trying to imagine what it would have been like with Rains in the role. Thesiger better suits a dingy attic, but I'd feel a lot more uncomfortable watching Rains handle a tiny king with tweezers...

 ... perhaps because Rains has the air of a sadist, while Thesiger seems more a masochist. It's impossible from me to imagine this Pretorius actually wanting power, so maybe he's just seeking out people even more wretched. This might be why he's at his best in his first encounter with Karloff, picnicking in a crypt, after the monster has fled from the hermit, and returned to the cemetery from "Frankenstein" where he was dug up. Here, Thesiger perfectly communicates the air of someone always found in the worst possible place for a human being to wind up. He's a great host, just a lousy guest.

 One thing he does bring to the table, actually, is Dwight Frye, recast as a bodysnatcher with a string of gallows one-liners... "Pretty little thing in her way, wasn't she"... "This is no life for a murderer" etc... And again, I'm very happy to see Frye back, but when he turns up with a freshly extracted human heart Frankenstein asks no questions either, and so is every bit as culpable as Pretorius – more so in fact, as I doubt Thesiger's sea monkeys ever went on a killing spree. Yet, when the monster is rejected by the bride, it is Henry and Elizabeth who are spared his fit of incel pique, and Pretorius who goes up in smoke. Why doesn't he escape too? No idea. Why does the monster spare the breeding pair? How did Elizabeth get out of those ropes? Why is there suddenly a wooden lever that blows everything up? We're not supposed to ask any of these questions, and if we're honest we know the answer anyway, and it's a shame. It's the film surrendering to straightness. Karloff might have been crucified, but it's Pretorius who dies for all our sins.

 Two more points: Instead of Edward Van Sloan offering a prologue, "Bride" opens rather surprisingly with a poster for the NRA. This was not the National Rifle Association, however, but the extremely shortlived "National Recovery Administration". So, phew! And finally, since this is the last Whale film I'll talk about in this series: It's easy to imagine all classic books ever written came before any films, but, since they didn't, I often enjoy wondering how big an influence the work of this beautiful man (pictured above) and his collaborators may have had upon fantasy literature. Gormenghast, for example, with its deranged, vaudeville grotesques and gothic slapstick. Or even the influence Dwight Frye's murderous, pitiful, gimlet stare may have had upon Smeagol.

 Your homework for next week is 1939's "Son of Frankenstein", in which Karloff gives his final turn as the monster, and we finally get to say "WULL HELLOooo" to Ygor.