Rhapsodies

Halloween marathon, I went back to the classics with  James Whale‘s Bride of Frankenstein and its remake/sequel,  Franc Roddam‘s The Bride.

In Bride of Frankenstein, we find ourselves back in the Swiss Villa where Mary Shelly first wrote Frankenstein. Lord Byron and Shelley ask Mary (Elsa Lanchester) Shelley if the monster survived and what happened next and so, Mary continues the story.

The Monster (Boris Karloff ) indeed survives and, having met a friendly blind hermit, has learned something about speech position. He also meets Doctor Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) one of Henry Frankenstein ‘s former mentors. Together they confront Frankenstein.  Henry (Colin Clive) is about to get married and wants nothing to do with his old life. Pretorius and the monster want him to make them a Bride.

This is definitely one of the classics of the Universal monster movies, the iconic end with the Bride (Elsa Lanchester again) screaming at the camera is just as cool as the textbook says. If I have any problem with it, it’s that it’s far more beautiful than scary. But who cares when it’s that beautiful?

The sequel, The Bride, starts up where the last movie ends with the Bride (Jennifer Beals) being created, rejecting the Monster (Clancy Brown) and the lab exploding. However, everybody survives, and Frankenstein, played by Sting, teaching the bride, now name to Eva, to be a proper lady. The monster goes out on his own and joins the circus.

This film isn’t quite as bad as its reputations Jess but it’s no masterpiece either. For the most part, it’s pretty corny. Sting has good screen presence but can’t isn’t much of an actor. And for all her supposedly being a liberated woman, Eva is quite passive when it matters. I enjoyed the monster’s story the most which is mostly treated as a buddy between him and David Rappaport as Rinaldo the Dwarf. Even there, things fall short with lots of plot holes and things that just don’t make sense.