Weirdhouse Cinema: The Bride of Frankenstein

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
in honor of the Halloween season, we are going to
be talking about the nineteen thirty five Universal horror classic
Bride of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, the first sequel
to the original Universal Frankenstein, also directed by Whale, which

(00:36):
was released four years earlier in nineteen thirty one. So
I know we're going to talk a lot more about
the specifics of our appreciation for this movie as we
go along, but I wanted to just start off by saying,
in my opinion, Bride of Frankenstein is about as good
as it gets. It is. I think shocking how great

(00:59):
this this movie is, how good it looks, how weird
it is, how beautiful and funny and full of genuine feeling,
and how fresh it feels. Something about it is the
exact opposite of a relic from the past. It feels
so exciting and new.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I think the word that I would use for Brida
Frankenstein without even a hint of irony or parody or humor.
Is it is just truly transcendent. It transcends its genre,
it transcends its time period. It is just a masterpiece.
And yeah, I second way you said, if you're the
type of film viewer who's like, I don't know if

(01:40):
I need or want to see a film from the
nineteen thirties, I mean, fair enough, watch what you want
to watch. But films like this, films like Mad Love,
which we previously discussed on the show, these really stand out.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
And I love the other universal monster movies, you know.
I love Todd Browning's Dracula. I love Wales First Frank,
I love the Invisible Man creature from the Black Lagoon.
I mean, really enjoy all of those core monster frolics.
But even though all of those are excellent, there are
individually things in them that kind of drag Dracula, for example,

(02:13):
I love Todd Browning's Dracula, but it gets markedly less
interesting when Bella Legosi has been off screen for too long.
You know, there are some there's some kind of slow
moving talkie segments with the not terribly interesting human characters, which,
to be fair, are trying to be faithful to the
plot of the novel, but in some ways I think

(02:35):
end up kind of holding the movie back from what
it could have been. All of the other Universal Monster
frolics have their their stuffy interludes, but for me, Bride
does not. My opinion is that it is just wall
to wall horror, profound weirdness, hilarity, and powerful emotion. So
I think, not only is Bride of Frankenstein the best

(02:57):
of all the Universal Monster movies, it's the best buy
a mile, It's the best by an astronomical unit. It
leaves these other great movies in the dust. And I
guess we can as we go on, we can talk
about some of the reasons why I feel that way.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
It is kind of funny that in leading up to
this episode, we were talking about maybe doing Son of
Frankenstein or House of Frankenstein, a couple of the later
movies in the Universal Frankenstein cycle, And then we were like, well,
why are we denying ourselves, Like staring at the bar,
there is the top shelf Frankenstein right there. Let's just
do that one.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah. So I was realizing before we started recording that
one way this movie will fit into the weird house
cinema cannon is that we sort of have a show
tradition of covering sequels without covering the original that they're
following up, and we haven't done an episode on the
original Universal Frankenstein, though I think it has come up
a lot when discussing other movies. I think it might

(03:54):
be fruitful to begin today's episode by thinking about Bride
of Frankenstein as a sequel, and what can we learn
about sequels from a sequel that works this well. I
don't know exactly how the percentages break out, but I'd
say at least maybe eighty percent of the time sequels
are uninteresting derivations of the original, just sort of like

(04:16):
trying to make a quick buck off of the success
of the original. But sometimes, as we all know, there
are sequels that are not only as good as the original,
not only worthy of it, lots of people consider them
better than the original. Quick list of commonly cited examples
that I would agree with a Terminator, two Star Trek,
The Wrath of Khan, The Empire Strikes Back, multiple Mad

(04:39):
Max sequels. I'd say, you know, Road Warrior, Fury Road,
and there are plenty of other examples you can think
of too, in even less well known franchises.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, yeah, like I would. I'll often throw Blade two
in there. Aliens comes to mind, of course, Return of
the Blind Dead to feature like a recent film that
we did a rerun off. I throw Chronicles of Ritick
in there as well. You know, I generally say when
a sequel works, it either is a second attempt with
improved skills and or budget at the concepts of the first,

(05:13):
or is it's a successful expansion of the original concept,
you know, not just a sell them another scoop of
the same ice cream, but give them something that is transformative.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
You know, I agree, and I think that's exactly what's
going on with Bride Frankenstein. James Wale's original Frankenstein is
really good. It's a solid adaptation of the novel, one
of the best universal monster movies. But Bride of frank
is absolutely divine, and so I'm wondering what exactly it
does that really has this step up quality going into

(05:45):
the second movie in this series. An interesting thing about
Bride of Frankenstein is that it is both a fulfillment
of the promise of the source material, in this case,
Mary Wilston Craft Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus,
and it forges a new path. So in the sense

(06:05):
that it's a fulfillment of the source material, Bride of
Frankenstein includes scenes and themes from Shelley's novel that were
left out of the first movie, and also when it
chooses to include totally new things from out of left field,
they are great inclusions. So to start with, like things

(06:27):
that it brings in from the novel, I think they're
typically things that deepen our emotional understanding of the creature.
So one example is that in Bride of frank the
monster can talk. The monster in the novel, of course,
is amazingly articulate. In the first movie, by contrast, it's
a silent performance. And I've seen film critics and historians

(06:50):
make the interesting observation that Frankenstein was one of the
first mega hits of the early sound film era, and
yet its principal performance from Boris Karla was a mostly
silent one.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah. Yeah, In this we do see some interesting growth
in the monster. He's acquiring language, he's learning to express
himself better, and it makes Carlos's performance all the more enthralling.
There's this crackling confused, traumatized, and yet still hopeful energy
in the heart of the creature, just straining to reach
out and touch the world. Sadly, he lacks many of

(07:23):
the tools he needs, and he finds himself continually on
the other end of human violence and human manipulation. Like
you said, it's not on the same level of the
of the articulate monster we see in the novel who Is.
I think it can is often interpreted as being almost
kind of like a fallen angel. You know, that's that's
the kind of energy he brings. So, you know, not

(07:44):
thee quite the same energy, but it moves a little
closer to that concept and does its own thing with it.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, the articulacy of the creature in the novel, I
think is often and this is actually in the novel itself,
is compared to Satan and Milton's Paradise Lost. Yeah, Carl
in Bride is not like that. He's mostly speaking in
like short clipped statements. And apparently Karloff was wary of
the idea of having the monster speak in Bride. He

(08:11):
wasn't sure that was a good idea, but I think
it was the right move. Even though he's not giving
these these long moving speeches like he does in the book.
He has these heartbreakingly terse memorable lines, you know, like love, dead,
hate living.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Another thing from the novel that's brought in to deepen
the story here is the scene where the monster makes
friends with a blind man living in a cabin. That is,
it's not exactly the same, but it's based on a
section of the novel where the creature observes people living
in a remote cottage and learns language from them, but

(08:50):
is ultimately driven away when sighted people finally catch a
glimpse of him and react with horror to his appearance.
The scene in the book where he read he is
hated because he is ugly is one of the saddest
in the book, and they explore those themes very well
in Bride. I think. Another one the creature's desire for

(09:11):
an undead mate. This is also from the book, but
left out of the first movie for the most part.
In the novel, after the creature realizes that living humans
will all hate him and reject him, he thinks his
only hope of finding love and companionship is for his
creator to make another like him, so he threatens Victor Frankenstein.

(09:34):
He threatens his loved ones to coerce him to make
the creature an undead bride. But then in the book,
Victor I think, abandons the project before it's completed, and
he has a kind of stroke of conscience and he says, no,
I can't do this, and then in a rage, the
creature punishes him by killing his fiance.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
And it's it's in retrospect, looking back on this, it's
so great that they came back and took this part
of the book and did something with it, because I
remember this being like one of the most impactful sections
of the novel, a novel that's full of fantastic ideas
and scenes. But yeah, this section of the book where

(10:17):
the doctor is forced to go back and do this
mad thing one more time and attempt to create a
mate for this monster just so it will leave him
and his loved ones alone, and then decides that for
the greater good, he cannot go through with it.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
I agree exactly. So I think the movie is really
working because it pulls in all of these great resonant
elements from the original source material that you know didn't
fit into the first the plot of the first film,
but On the other hand, there is all kinds of
other stuff that is added purely from the original genius

(10:54):
of the filmmakers, and I think you could you could
bring up a lot of things here. One I wanted
to mention is comedy. I have not read Frankenstein in
a bit, but I don't recall it really having much
humor in it at all. I think it's a very
serious book. And while Bride of Frankenstein deals with serious
themes and has many serious moments, it is also overflowing

(11:17):
with irony and goofiness. Sometimes it's surprisingly goofy Waal understood
horror storytelling according I think to the Grangin Yow tradition
of hot and cold showers, where tales of the macabre
would be alternately play back and forth with comedy performances
and good storytellers in this space, I think understand that

(11:39):
comedy is a wonderful release mechanism for the building tension
of the story. There's something that really works when you
alternate mounting tension and horror with comedy. So and beyond that,
there are also characters in this movie that operate on
the knife edge between horror and comedy at all times.

(12:03):
I think the prime example being probably my favorite character
from this movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, a character who is
not in the novel, invented purely for Bride of Frankenstein.
And that brings us to the other thing I'd mentioned
about this movie, a sort of original genius zany characters.
I love the novel Frankenstein, but it does not have

(12:26):
an ensemble of memorable characters with interesting quirks and personalities.
I think the genius of the novel is in its
scenario and themes, and in the development of the main
character of the creature. Bride of frank on the other hand,
invents this whole ensemble of delightfully jagged weirdos to give

(12:46):
the story flavor. There's a kind of Cohen Brothers quality
to all of the secondary players here, and I think
the greatest example of this is the villain of the movie,
doctor Septimus Pretorius, played by Ernest Thesiger, a flambuoyantly bizarre professor,
a scientist matter than any mad scientist you've ever seen before.

(13:08):
I think basically every single moment Thesiger is on screen
is just gold. He has turned up to eleven from
his very first line, and he does not he does
not stop.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
I agree, that's true. Is just amazing in this.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
And while doctor Pretorius is the greatest, there's room for
all kinds of just you know, goobers and creeps and
buffoons and weird personalities to weave in and out of
the story here.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think the other amazing thing about
this is Okay, so the idea of horror in comedy
working together that that's nothing new, But everything just works
so smoothly in this film it can almost feel like
a surreal experience, especially given how jarring, sometimes intentionally the
transaction transition in and out of horror in comedy may

(13:53):
be in other works. There's just just in general, there's
absolutely nothing rough around the edges with this movie. You know,
there's much to be said again, how frash and exciting
this nineteen thirty five film feels in terms of its
themes and performances, But even its effects are just staggeringly effective.
The monster's basic makeup design is, of course iconic, and

(14:16):
you might expect that since it's iconic and you've seen
it replicated often poorly, you know, on various other forms
so many times, that it would lose some of its punch,
but it really doesn't. It just looks incredible in every shot.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
I totally agree. Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, Like,
you know what the Carlos Frankenstein makeup looks like. You've
seen it a million times, so how could it still
be scary and shocking? But in my opinion, when you
watch the movie, it is like seeing it actually come
to life in motion, situated within the context of the plot.

(14:49):
It doesn't matter how many times you've seen this pulled
out of context on posters and stills and all that,
it's still super creepy. It looks amazing, yeah, at every shot.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
On top of that, everything every shot is perfectly composed,
The dialogue is all tight and interesting, and other effects
are amazing as well. There's a scene late in the
movie in which a model mountain tower collapses in on itself,
and we've seen similar effects that rained from terrible to
great but clearly an effect in so many pictures, But

(15:20):
this one just looks and feels real in a way
that's truly admirable. Oh yeah, So, Joe, what's your elevator
pitch for Bride of Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
You know it's difficult, so maybe it'd be something like
after Frankenstein, you thought you knew what it meant for
death to reign over life and for science to go mad,
But we have such sites to show you yet.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, I think that sums it up well. And of course,
to steal a line from the movie itself, I have
to quote doctor Pretorious about a new world of gods
and monsters. I mean, that's just one of the great
lines of the film and kind of sums up the
spirit and energy of the sequel.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Here in the scene, that line is offered as a toast,
and it is. It's so good. But it's especially good
knowing the line which comes right before it, which is
where doctor Pretorius claims that jin is his only weakness,
and he is clearly not correct in saying that.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
There's another point in the film where he says something
else is his only weakness. Yeah, you're just so many
wonderful little quirks that that they're able to fit into
the dialogue here. All right, Well, let's go ahead and
listen to some trailer audio. Oh yeah, all right, Well,

(17:26):
if you rightfully wish to go and watch Bride of
Frankenstein on your own before you continue with this episode, well,
you're in luck because this is a Universal Monsters movie.
I mean, this is the shining gem of the Universal
Monsters franchise. So this one is widely available in all formats,
and I think it's streaming on Peacock right now if

(17:51):
that is available to you. But any way you do it,
do see this movie in the best quality you can grab.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yes, I would say the same thing. This is one
where it really pays off the highest definition, best visual
quality you can because this is a great looking movie
and you want to get at every bit of it.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
All right, now, getting into the connections here the people
that made this movie, we want to stress here that again,
this was a big sequel. This was a sequel to
a highly successful movie in which director James Waale got
to assemble a massively talented cast and crew. So we
are not going to be able to do justice to

(18:35):
everyone that was involved in bringing this film to life.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, there are a ton of people involved in this
movie that each have fascinating biographies, but because there are
so many of them, I think we're going to have
to give fairly short statements on most of them. Just
know that there's a lot of people here that we
will get to kind of briefly, but they're each worth
looking up.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, yeah, And we may come back to many of
these people in the future. Like we were saying, a
lot of these folks are individuals who if they came
up in a smaller picture or a lesser picture, we
might spend a lot of time talking about who they
were and what their careers consisted of. All right, Well,
starting at the top, of course, with the director, it's
James Whale, who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty seven,

(19:19):
English director of film and the British stage, as well
as an occasional actor himself. He primarily came over to
the Hollywood system because with the transition to talkies they
wanted to invest in directors who were great with dialogue,
and he had that reputation already. He's best remembered for
his horror projects, namely the two Frankenstein films. Nineteen thirty

(19:40):
three is The Invisible Man in nineteen thirty two's The
Old Dark House. His first film, nineteen thirties Journey's End,
was a war drama starring Colin Clive, and even after
Frankenstein he continued to make non horror dramas such as
nineteen thirty threes by Candlelight, and even musicals like nineteen
thirty six's Showboat and late in his career the nineteen

(20:01):
forty adventure film Green Hell, which does have a terrific cast.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Like many of the directors we talk about who were
making great horror films in the early days of sound cinema,
I don't know if it would be right to say
that like horror was a passion of James Whale. I
think he probably wanted to focus more on dramas and such,
But you know, he did the work that he got
and he made great, great horror movies.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah. Yeah, it's time and time again. It's the case
with these directors, like they wanted to go up the
ladder towards bigger A list type pictures, prestige pictures that
had the cast but also didn't deal with these lesser
genres of horror and sci fi. And that was just
part of the cinema world of the time, that was

(20:50):
the industry. And it's just kind of ironic that nowadays
so many of these individuals are best remembered, if not remembered,
exclusively for their genre entries.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
This seems to be a situation where the original Frankenstein
was a huge hit. It made incredible money for Universal,
and that earned James Whale the right to make the
sequel on his own terms, essentially however he wanted, with
very minimal studio interference. So Bride of Frankenstein is the
result of Whale getting more or less total creative freedom

(21:24):
and almost all the resources and support he needed.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
That's right im to understand. He had a lot of
say over the script, presented a lot of ideas for
the script. So yes, this is a film that more
accurately gives us James Whale's vision of Frankenstein. Now, I
should also note that James Whale was an openly gay
man during a time during which this was rare, So
his personal life has long been an area of interest

(21:48):
to both biographers and also just film theorists and people
analyzing his films and discussing the themes explored in them,
and it's especially the case with Bride.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, I've read differing takes over the extent to which
Bride of Frankenstein should be interpreted as intentionally having gay
themes in it. Some film historians read a lot of
gay themes and to Bride others have said, I think
based on some comments about people who from people who
knew James Whale said that they didn't think he was

(22:21):
intending to put anything like that into the film. But
based on the sources available to us, I guess it's
impossible to know for sure, but whether it should be
interpreted as part of Wales's intention or not. Definitely, this
film has been a rich subject for a lot of
gay film historians.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Absolutely now. The source material, of course, is Mary Shelley's novel.
Mary Shelley lived seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one
English writer responsible for a good seven novels and multiple
short stories, but her first novel, eighteen eighteen's Frankenstein or
the Modern Prometheus, was the one that made her a legend.
To this day, it stands as a powerful, entertainer and

(23:00):
richly rewarding novel, highly influential over science fiction. She was
the wife of English poet Percy Shelley, with whom she
also worked. They, along with a friend and poet Lord Byron,
are depicted in this movie.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
I was watching a making of documentary and people were
talking about how apparently Whale insisted on having this framing
narrative in the film, because the movie doesn't start in
the narrative itself. It starts with us seeing Lord Byron
Percy and Mary Wilstoncraft Shelley sitting around a roaring fire
and talking about the idea of the novel. Frankenstein Apparently

(23:40):
Whale thought that this framing was crucial and he insisted
did it be in? And I think it does some
interesting things. Maybe we can talk about that when we
get to the plot section.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, I do think it's essential. It's hard to
imagine this movie without it. But more about that when
we get into the plot. All right. In terms of
the the people involved with writing the screenplay and developing
the story, they're a number of uncredited writing credits that
pop up for this film on the Internet movie database.

(24:11):
We can't go through all of them, so I'm just
going to focus on the two names that are credited
in the actual credits on the film. Adapted by and
screenplay credit goes to William Hurlbut, who lived eighteen seventy
eight through nineteen fifty seven, American writer and screenwriter, certainly
best remembered for this film, but he has forty credits
on IMDb going back to nineteen fifteen and then stretching

(24:31):
up till the mid fifties. Other notable credits include nineteen
thirties The Cat Creeps, the Will of the Dead Man
in nineteen thirty four's Imitation of Life. He also did
additional dialogue on Robert Flore's Daughter of Hong Kong, starring
the legendary anime Won And then we have an adapted
by credit for John L. Balderston, who lived eighteen eighty

(24:53):
nine through nineteen fifty four American playwrights, screenwriter, and journalist
with a NAC for horror and fantasy. His work includes
nineteen thirties Dracula adapted from his own play, nineteen thirty
two is the Mummy, the nineteen thirty three time travel
movie Berkeley Square, nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, and nineteen
forties The Mummy's Hand. He was one of the Love Yeah,

(25:14):
that's quite a pedigree. He was also one of the
writers on nineteen forty four's gas Light, from which we
get the term gas lighting. All right, now getting into
the cast, clearly right at the top, we have the monster.
The monster is played, according to the opening credits, by Carloff.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
First met a first name.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, yeah, I love this. This is of course, we're
of course, of course talking about Boris Karloff. This is
the stage name of British actor William Henry Pratt, who
lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. He's gone
up on the show a couple of times already. His
credits go back to nineteen nineteen, and he already had
a long filmography by the time, with nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein,

(25:53):
in which he of course plays the monster. Afterwards, some
of his big horror roles included nineteen thirty two is
the Mummy and the Old Dark House, nineteen thirty three
is the Ghoul, nineteen thirty four's The Black Cat. After Bride,
he remained very active, playing the monster one more time
in nineteen thirty nine Son of Frankenstein, but he remained
a superstar of horror. He appeared in nineteen forty four's

(26:16):
House of Frankenstein, though not as the monster, and of
course he remained active throughout the rest of his life.
All right, so that is the monster, But of course
we need a true Frankenstein, and Frankenstein is of course
in this movie Henry Frankenstein, the creator played once more
by Colin Clive, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen thirty seven.
Just a tremendous but of course troubled and short lived

(26:39):
British actor who we previously discussed on our early Weird
House Cinema episode about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, in
which he played Stephen Orlock. He's wonderful in that as well.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, he is, and he I think Colin Clive went
back to having worked with James Whale from the stage
like that they had worked together before the transition to
film here.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, yeah, a lot. There are a number of players
in this that had had personal connections to Wale. Whale
to work with them before he knew their talent, and
they were handpicked. Colin Clive is, you know, I've never
seen him outside of a genre movie. I've only seen
him in these horror films, but he is always just
this live wire of anxiety and terror. He's perfect for

(27:25):
a horror movie, of course. In this, he's reprising his
role from nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein. That was only his
third emotion picture. The two Frankenstein films, along with Mad Love,
constitute his only horror pictures. The rest of his nineteen credits,
including the title role in nineteen thirty three's Christopher Strong,
are all more mainstream.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, I think I also only know him for his
horror roles. But I recall in Mad Love he is
he gives a performance of such anxiety. I think the
way I put it then was that it feels like
he is undergoing vision.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yes, in a way you compare the two roles, he's
actually more chill in this movie. Despite being an individual
who's gone through a horrifying and near death experience and
and then is sucked back into that same world once more,
he still feels a little bit more chill. I guess
at least he can throw himself into his work in
a way that Stephen Orlock was no longer able to do.

(28:23):
All right. He has a love interest in this though,
and that is Elizabeth, played by Valerie Hobson, who of
nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety eight Irish born English actor.
She takes over the role here from May Clark, who
played Henry's love interest Elizabeth in the previous film. After this,
she appeared in nineteen thirty five's Werewolf of London and
various other films. Through about nineteen fifty four.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
So the character here is Elizabeth, that is Henry Frankenstein's fiance,
and I think she is supposed to represent goodness and virtue,
you know, So there are like, there's this forking path
in the story where Henry could just choose a good life,
he could just you know, have a life of love
and family and pursuing regular noble career pursuits and all that.

(29:06):
But no, you know, she's that option. Instead, He's going
to go with dangerous knowledge.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yes, And of course he ends up having to choose
that direction, in part because he is manipulated, in part
because she has taken hostage right in the book. Of course,
this is all part of the manipulations of the monster.
But the monster as presented in that first film, the
first Frankenstein film, is of course not a master manipulator.
Like he doesn't even speak. It's a huge step up

(29:34):
in this movie for him to be able to speak.
And you can see where it would have been unrealistic
for suddenly Frankenstein's Monster to be able to, you know,
to lay out some sort of a vast scheme. So
you need a different sort of enemy, a different sort
of villain, and that is, of course doctor Pretorius played
by Ernest Messeger.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
The way to fight evil is with a different kind
of evil. To quote Chronicles of Britag.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
I guess so yeah. That's Lived eighteen seventy nine through
nineteen sixty one, an English actor of stage and screen,
best remembered for this brilliant and flamboyant performance as the
maddest of mad scientists and mad science enablers. His other
credits include thirty two's The Old Dark House, thirty threes
The Ghoul, and nineteen fifty threes The Robe, in which

(30:20):
he plays Emperor Tiberius. It's my understanding he was not
the original studio pick for this role, but after whoever
they wanted for it was not available or it didn't
work out, like this was clearly Wale's pick. Whyal had
a history with this actor, He really looked up to

(30:41):
his his abilities and his talent, and so this was
like the obvious choice for this role. And clearly it's
impossible to imagine anyone else breathing life into this character
the way That'sagre.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Does unreal, just brilliant, absurd, hilarious, mirroring evil. I love
Messeger here doctor Pretorius is a great character, and I yeah,
I could not imagine this going to a different actor.
This is like he is perfect all right.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Up next, we have Elsa Lanchester playing really the title
character of the film, even though the title character, the
bride is is just credited with question marks in the
opening scroll, you know, because it's going to be a surprise,
I guess. But it's a dual role because she also
in the early part of the film plays Mary Shelley,

(31:36):
so she plays both female creator and feminine creation, and
these two performances kind of bookend the rest of the picture.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
I think the choice to have the same actress in
both those roles is significant. Though I don't know exactly
what it means, it feels right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
I think that's one of the beauties about the show's
treatment of some of its more serious subject matter, is
that it's kind of amorphous in a way, like you
can feel the connections. But but the filmmakers don't like
just hammer it home in all cases. So there's plenty
of room for interpretation. Endless room for interpretation.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Really, right, but we should not hold back and sing
Elsa Lanchester is great. She doesn't have actually a ton
of screen time. But the few minutes she is on
the screen, Wow, does she make an impression?

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, I mean she's fun in the intro and then
as the Monster's mate she's accredited or the bride. She
has she has a wonderful and very different energy. It's
almost kind of an Avian energy. It's also also kind
of like a hyper focus. Like while Frankenstein's Monster has
more of a like a lantern level of understandable analysis

(32:47):
of the world and also kind of like a lantern
level anxiety and trauma about it, hers is more laser focused.
She has that like flashlight intensity.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yes, she has I see what you mean when you
say Avian. She has a jerky, almost bird like movements
of the head and the eyes. Once she's brought to
life as the reanimated Bride, is kind of like quick,
jerky adjustments of her attention around the room, and she
seems like she doesn't like what she's seeing.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
No, there's not a lot to like, but we'll get
to that after a bit. Elsa Lanchester lived nineteen oh
two through nineteen eighty six, English actor of film, stage
and TV. This is probably her most iconic role. I mean,
it's just a very iconic role. Everybody knows this look.
Everybody knows that hair, right, I mean, the whole costume
is wonderful, as we'll get into. She'd already been acting

(33:38):
for film for ten years by the time of Bride,
and continue to act through nineteen eighty. Her later screen
credits include forty three's Lassie Come Home, forty six's The
Spiral Staircase, forty nine is The Secret Garden, nineteen sixty
four is Mary Poppins Bat Darn Cat in sixty five
other films of another's fifty eight's Bell Book and Candle,

(33:58):
seventy three's Terror the Wax Museum, seventy six is Murdered
by death in nineteen eighties Die Laughing. She also appeared
on such TV shows as The Magical World of Disney
and Night Gallery. I don't know why I stressed it
like that Night Gallery, not Night Gallery. That's strange. Up next,
we have to mention the character Mini Mani is another

(34:21):
just this is just a ridiculously fun character role, blatantly
there for comic relief. And you know the thing about
comic relief characters in older pictures, they don't always stand
the test of time. Sometimes they don't even stand the
test of time like ten years later, much less with
an eighty eight year old picture. But Minnie is wonderful.
This scared, nosy but also bloodthirsty old maid still delivers,

(34:46):
still absolutely delivers.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
I love the way that she is terrified of the monster,
but she also somehow seems to be following the monster
everywhere it goes. There's one part where the creature is
captured by the authorities and put in like a dungeon,
and Minnie is there looking down through the bars and
she's like, Ooh, wouldn't he ugly? You know, I'd hate
to wake up and find him hiding underneath my bed

(35:08):
at night. But she says it in a way that
suggests she would like to find that.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, she seems kind of like what would later be
known as or maybe was known in the time period.
I forget the time frame on This is a hat
pin Mary. I think it's the term this would be
an older woman at a pro wrestling show who would
try and poke the heels on their way to the
ring with their hat pins. So there's kind of yeah,

(35:33):
blood the faulty to her afraid of the monster, but
also really wants to be there when the monster is tormented.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
But also this is a very broad comic performance I
would say, almost cartoonish, but it works perfectly.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, and the actor here is Una O'Connor who lived
eighteen eighty through nineteen fifty nine. She was only in
her mid fifties. Here she's played up as this old woman,
but she was not an old woman by any stretch
at this point. A tremendous Irish care actor with extensive
stage experience often cast in this sort of role. Though,
like I mean, and clearly why not, She's got it

(36:07):
nailed perfectly. Other films include The Invisible Man from thirty three,
The Informer from thirty five, and The Adventures of Robin
Hood from thirty eight.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Oh Man. Next, just to make sure we don't leave
him out, we should mention Dwight Frye, who has a
small role in this film as Carl, who is essentially
the new Egor, even though actually Egor wouldn't come until later,
is the new Fritz, and he's played by the same
actor who played Fritz in the original Frankenstein. So Dwight

(36:36):
Frye lived eighteen ninety nine to nineteen forty three. He
was Wrinfield in Todd Browning Stracula. He apparently at first
had a more substantial part in the movie, but it
was allegedly cut down by censors.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, there's apparently like fifteen minutes or so that the
sensors cut out of this film just because they really
wanted to play it safe. A lot of it was
stuff that they thought might come off as blasphemous talking,
you know, getting in to the whole thesis of creating life.
I think some of it too, was Mary Shelley's dress.
They thought some angles on it were maybe a little
too risque for the time period, that sort of thing.

(37:09):
And some sort of subplot here with carl And and
whatever he's up to outside of his grave robbing side gig.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
I think he was supposed to murder the mustache guy, oh.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
The burgomaster. Yeah. Yeah, So you mentioned that he's the
egor of the film. He was very much the egor
of the film. But yeah, the timeline of this is
interesting because we were chatting about this off of Mike earlier.
There is no egor in the novel Frankenstein. There is
no egor in the first Frankenstein movie. Instead, you have,
like you said, Fritz played by Dwight Frye, and then

(37:46):
they bring him back to play Carl, which is essentially
the same sort of character. And then it's not till
nineteen thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein that we get Igor. Igor,
we get this role that is played by Bella Lagosi.
But in retrospect, it's like, that's what we think of
as this position, this sort of like deranged henchman to

(38:08):
doctor Frankenstein. We think of it as the Egor role.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
I also think it's interesting that the actual character named
Egor was played by Bella Lagosi, so you would think
you would really remember that casting, you would associate Bella
with the character. But I very much think of Dwight
fry when I think of Igor.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, yeah, he's good in this role. He's got some
good henchman energy. He'd go on to have small roles
in other Frankenstein films, various other pictures. He also pops
up in nineteen thirty one's The Maltese Falcon. All right,
real quick. The Burgo Master, who we mentioned, is very fun,
a very very fun mustachio of performance. This character is
played by the actor E. E. Clive, who lived eighteen
eighty three through nineteen forty. He was also in thirty

(38:49):
three is The Invisible Man, another one I'm going to
point out real quick in passing again, we don't have
time to go into all of these characters. Opi Hedgy
plays the Blind Hermit, an Australian born actor, one of
his final roles. He lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen
thirty six.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Oh, he brings a lot of humanity to the story
he does.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
It is a really, it's a shame not to spend
more time on Hi because it is. He gets a
lot of screen time, brings humanity to the role and
brings humanity out of the monster. But let us not
forget Lord Byron. He's barely in the film, just in
that opening bit that I believe was rather cut down.
But Gavin Gordon plays Lord Byron. He lived nineteen oh

(39:27):
one through nineteen eighty three. He was a Mississippi born
American actor whose credits include nineteen thirty three's Mystery of
the Wax Museum, fifty four is White Christmas, fifty six
Is the Ten Commandments, the Eldest film from fifty eight
Keen Creole, and also the nineteen fifty nine movie The
Bat opposite Pencent Price.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
I love him in this role, but I have no
idea what he's trying to do with this accent.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
It is so over. I mean, it's a wonderful campy
way to start off this film. It kind of sets
the tone once you've seen Gavin Gordon Lord Byron, I mean,
where can you go? You are? You know, you're already
in the clouds.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
It's like part really like rolling the rs on the
Irish accent, but then also part English accent, part Southern accent.
It is, it's something, it's something else.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yes, now a very small role, but one that's a
lot of fun for film film fans and you know,
and horror fans certainly. There's a scene, of course, where
we're talking about the We have the hermit who's blind.
He forges this relationship with the monster, but then sighted
people show up and ruin it. The two sided people
that show up are a couple of lost hunters, one

(40:37):
of whom is played by John Kerodine. Oh yeah, who's
literally in everything, it.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Seems, in every movie ever made, so of course he
would be in this one too, but yeah, you wouldn't
have known.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, it's it's an uncredited role, but it's also unmistakable
because he does have some lines, and also, I mean
it's just clearly John Carradine, you know he has he
has that lean and hungry look even though he's very young. Here.
He lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty eight. We've
discussed him on the show before. Very long career, all
manner of films he was in. He had already had

(41:12):
uncredited roles in thirty three's The Invisible Man and thirty
four's The Black Cat. He'd go on to be a
horror staple and would play Dracula in nineteen forty four's
House of Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I don't really know exactly why he should be lost.
Wouldn't he just know to get on the night train
to Mundo Fie.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
You'd think you would think you would, all right, just
a few quick behind the scenes references. They're just because
I'm not going to go into him in depth, but
just got to mention them, just because they're part of
the alchemy here. Franz Waxman did the score. He lived
nineteen oh six through nineteen sixty seven. Two time Oscar
winner for nineteen fifty one Sunset Boulevard in fifty two

(41:53):
is A Place in the Sun. He also scored nineteen
forties Rebecca in nineteen forty one Suspicion it is. It
is a very classic Hollywood score, but it is also
a very good score. A lot has been written about this.
It's not necessarily the kind of music I listened to
an Isolation or anything, but it is not. This is
no sloppy score here. This is one of those scores

(42:14):
where there's a lot of thought that goes into what
different musical themes match up with the characters and so forth.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Agreed, Now, this is also an amazing looking film and
one with a superb makeup effects, so I think we
should call out those credits.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
That's right. On the makeup front, we have Jack P.
Pierce credited for the monster makeup. He lived eighteen eighty
nine through nineteen sixty eight. He also did the makeup
on nineteen forty one's The Wolfman and Yeah, the cinematographer
on this was John J. Mescal, who lived eighteen ninety
nine through nineteen sixty two, also known for thirty four
as the Black Cat.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
I've watched some interviews with people talking about what it
was like to work with Jack Pearce supplying makeup. There's
a story of Elsa Lanchester talking about the the painstaking,
delicate procedure that he would use to apply the makeup
for the scar running underneath the bride's jaw, which she

(43:11):
was like ultimately was only on screen for about a
second that you could actually see, but that you know,
he really was taking a kind of religious care to
make it perfect.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, I mean in that level of craftsmanship just matches
up with everything else we see in the film. All right, well,
shall we get into the plot of this baby a
bit more?

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Okay, Well, we start on a dark and stormy night.
We see a retigenous castle perched up on a rocky
mountaintop in the dark, with light pouring out from one
of the windows and thundercracks rain battering the stonework towers.
It's perfect Gothic setting, and inside the castle we get
some poets. There are three writers sitting around a roaring fireplace.

(44:03):
There's also a quick shot of a lady who looks
almost like she's being pulled by like sled dogs indoors.
I think she's actually just walking dogs on a leash,
and she has a you know, like one of those
large wide skirts, so you don't see her legs moving much.
But yeah, she's like walking dogs indoors for some reason,
she's quickly out of frame. And then we get to

(44:24):
this prologue, this framing idea with the characters of Percy
Bis Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Wolstoncraft Shelley, who again
is the author of the novel Frankenstein. Oh and by
the way, if you don't know the backstory Frankenstein, the
novel began as a spooky story that Mary Shelley dreamed
up for a sort of contest. I think when these

(44:45):
three and at least one other writers, you know, some
group of them, were staying at a mansion near Lake
Geneva one year.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah, this would go on to be sort of the
germ for the nineteen eighty six film Gothic, in which
Gabriel Byrne plays By, Julian Sands plays Shelley, and Natasha
Richardson plays Mary as a kin Russell film.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
By the way, oh really, I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
It's been a while. I don't remember much about it.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Is there somebody playing John Paulodorian That was the at
least one other writer. There was John Paulodori, who ended
up turning a story from this Summer get together into
a novel or novella called The Vampire.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yes, and he is played by the always excellent Timothy Spall. Oh.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Okay, now, as we mentioned, the guy playing Lord Byron
really gets into his part. In fact, I decided to
type out his opening monologue here because he's he's looking
out the window at the storm, and he says, how
beautifully dramatic, the crudest, savage exhibition of nature at her
worst without and we three, we elegant three within. I

(45:50):
should like to think that an irate Jehovah was pointing
those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the unbowed
head of George Gordon, Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner. But
then he says, but I cannot flatter myself to that extent.
Possibly those thunders are for our dear Shelley, referring to

(46:10):
Percy Heaven's applause for England's greatest poet. But then Percy says, well,
what about my Mary? And Byron says, oh, she is
an angel. And Mary looks up from her embroidery with
this flashing smile and says, you think so ooh, and
I love that because her smile is a little bit creepy.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Yeah, yeah, because as they're about to allude to here,
you know, they're talking about how great they are, these
two male poets, but they have to acknowledge that Mary,
even though they're kind of treating her like this very
fragile thing, that she has already created something that is
terrifying to everyone there, and then they're already at least

(46:52):
a bit in awe of her creative powers.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
That's right. I've read that at some point James Whale
said to someone that with this opening scene and in
the movie in general, he wanted to emphasize that quote.
Pretty people can harbor the most twisted imaginations. So we
have Byron here chattering somewhat condescendingly about how, oh, Mary

(47:14):
you are, this delicate, beautiful, angelic creature, and yet she
has written a story so dreadful it curdled my blood. Meanwhile,
she's just blasting out this creepy smile with gleaming eyes
and giggling, and she says, why shouldn't I write monsters?
And there's something in this that suggests, buddy, you ain't
seen nothing yet.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
They're also kind of toying with the prestige of Lord
Byron and Percy Shelley here his famous and influential writers,
while of course Mary's work I think ultimately casts a
far greater shadow over the following centuries, you know, far
greater than both of them combined. I don't know. My
fellow English majors may respectfully disagree on the matter.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
Oh no, I would totally agree, and I think it'd
be kind of hard to argue with that. So not
to knock either of Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. I
enjoy them both. I think they're both necessary reading if
you want to understand the Romantic movement in English literature,
and that each wrote some poetry that's still wonderful to
read today, I think, especially Percy. But it could be

(48:17):
argued that Mary essentially is the founder of modern science fiction,
and I think that's like hugely more significant in the
long run, and especially in the way that she established
themes like the themes of Frankenstein are themes that are
still explored in science fiction and science fiction horror to

(48:38):
this day, especially ideas about the dark side of the
power unleashed by advances in science and technology. You know, Frankenstein.
It was a story about how not all increase of
human power is good, and sometimes in blithely plowing ahead
with newly acquired scientific and technological powers, if you don't

(49:00):
think through the consequences, you make monsters, or you make
a monster out of yourself. It's one of the most
enduring themes of modern storytelling, and it still finds new
ways of being entertaining, frightening and socially insightful. You'll encounter
hundreds of novels and movies and all kinds of interesting
stories coming out this year that are still hashing through

(49:23):
themes that Mary Shelley raised in Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah. Yeah, and each time it's retold, you can do
it in a way that reflects modern anxieties and moderns.
It's abilities all right. But the other part of this
whole intro is that basically we get a previously on Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Yes, I love that. So the framing narrative with Mary
Shelley serves as a way to remind us what happened
in the previous movie. It's sort of narrated by Byron.
He's basically like a kid explaining the plot of his
favorite movie, except he's explaining the plot of the movie
Frankenstein to the author of Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Though it's perfect for what they're putting together here. Yes,
this was before man's plaining was a thing. I mean, well,
obviously it was a thing already, but before it was
a term. It's what we have here.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
So the broad strokes go like this Frankenstein. The man
Henry in the movie, even though he's named Victor in
the book, creates a monster out of corpses. He uses
science to bring this dead man to life. There is
an unfortunate series of events. The monster escapes the laboratory
and roams the country. He is at first a gentle

(50:30):
and childlike, but he accidentally kills a young girl without
realizing what he is doing, and this raises an angry mob,
which pursues the creature. The creature flees to a windmill
with the unconscious Henry, carrying Henry with him, and then
the creature is seemingly killed in the blaze after the
angry mob sets the windmill on fire. So like Byron

(50:52):
goes back through all that and then elsa Ancester is like,
oh for real, though that's not the end of the story.
Would you like to know what happened next? And yes, yes, Elsa,
we would.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
And so it's time to Halloween too. This baby right
to just go pick up right where the last one
left off and start the new journey.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
I love that no time passes in between. Yeah, it's
just right there. The mill is still burning. So the
action begins with the mill burning down, presumably having killed
the monster. Henry Frankenstein lies unconscious at the foot of
the flaming tower, having been thrown nearly to his death
by his own creation. Henry's friends and servants load him

(51:29):
into a wagon to be taken back to his family estate.
I think they believe he is dead at this point,
but he's not. Meanwhile, the angry villagers cheer and they
shake their torches and pitchforks at the demise of the
hated Boris Karloff, and we get zoom ins on several
characters in the crowd. Here. There is, as we mentioned earlier,
Henry's talkative housekeeper Mini wearing this what would you call

(51:53):
this piece of headwear that she has on that I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I was trying to figure it out. Is it like
some sort of a cultural thing that I'm supposed to
pick up on or it's something historic. But yeah, it
threw me for a curve trying to figure out, like
what it's supposed to tell us the viewer about her role.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
I do not know what it is. It kind of
makes her head look like a venus fly trap. H
She is discussing how happy she is to know the
monster is roasting in the inferno there as she also
explains with apparent glee, how the insides of a body
are the last part to burn in a fire. That's
just science. There's also this old, blustery guy with a

(52:35):
big mustache, the Burgomaster. He's wandering around telling everyone that
it's time for them to go to bed now, and
I just love for this guy to do a buddy
cop team up with Christopher Lee from the Devil rides
out and they can tell everyone to go to bed.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
He's a go home, go to bed also.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Though, then, amidst these funny characters, we have tragic characters
the parents of the girl who was killed accidentally by
the monster in the previous movie. As the crowd gets
bored wanders away from the wreckage of the mill, the
girl's father, Hans, decides that he will not be satisfied

(53:13):
until he sees the creature's charred bones, so he starts
picking his way down. He climbs into the rubble, but
then slips and tumbles down into the cellar of the
burning mill, which is now flooded with water. And oh,
in a beautifully unsettling series of shots, we see, in
the dark, with water falling all around, a pale hand

(53:36):
reach out across the stone work of the wall, and
then from behind a corner emerges carl Off. The creature
is burned but still alive, and then the light of
the fire reflects off of the flowing water and projects
shimmering patterns on the monster's face. All over this great
makeup and the creature you can see it. He no

(53:59):
longer has as the innocent and childlike nature that he
had in the movie before. Now the creature just immediately
descends on Hans and murders him. He pushes his head
under the waters of the flood. He's full of rage.
And then Hans's wife comes to help her husband, but
the hand that reaches up from the cellar is not
the hand she expects. It's the monster coming out, and

(54:21):
the monster throws her down to her death in the
rubble below.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
This is a great way to reestablish the monster, because
again we all know what everyone going into this film
knew what the monster would look like. Retroactively watching this film,
you know, some decades later, we know what the monster
looks like. But the monster is so perfectly reintroduced here
in this dark, shadowy, submerged world, and then proceeds to

(54:46):
just brutally murder these two sympathetic characters, Like when he
throws the old woman back down, and like it was
obviously one of these you know stunts where they have
a dummy that is standing in for the of the woman,
but she like lands head first on the water wheel
and the mill and then tumbles down. It's it's brutal.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
I totally agree, And I've always found something so profoundly
dark about this opening. The set design is about as
dank and heavy as one could possibly achieve. Like we
begin in this flooded basement underneath the ruins of a
burning building. It is as close as it could be
to meeting the creature again in Hell. And the creature

(55:30):
was supposed to be the ugliest thing imaginable before a
monster just scrabbled together out of dead flesh. And now
somehow he is even worse. His hair is singed off
by the fire, his skin has been melted and torn open,
He's got all these scars. He murders the grieving parents
of the child that he never meant to harm in

(55:51):
the first place, and then he staggers out under a
sky that is so gray and dismal it's like the
sun has never existed. This is such a opening, absolutely,
But then in a reversal that will pressage that the
tone of the film going forward, and a lot of
Wales other works as well. It goes straight from the

(56:11):
sourest gloom ever committed to film to a comedy bit. So,
the monster staggers up to Minnie, who is still wandering
around on the hillside, apparently looking for somebody whose business
she can get up into, and she sees the monster,
and she starts making looney Tunes noises for what feels
like a solid minute before running away.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, it does just goes so looney tunes. It's it's wonderful,
And yet again everything feels balanced, it doesn't feel jarring somehow,
And part of that may be that we started out
so campy. We started out so broad and we're already
weaving in and out smoothly between the comedy and the horror.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Yeah, and you said the word camp. I think that's important.
A lot of critics and film historians have pointed to
the importance of the camp sensibility within the rich Tonal
architecture of Bride Frankenstein. Camp is core to what this
movie is, I think, especially once Ernest Thesiger arrives and

(57:13):
in the role of doctor Pretorious. But anyway, so to
come back to the plot, Henry Frankenstein is carried unconscious
and apparently dead back to his family estate, where he
is greeted by his good hearted fiance Elizabeth. And I
should add also that this is true for pretty much
the whole movie. But the sets here are tremendous. The
Frankenstein home is full of arches and firelight and all

(57:37):
kinds of gothic flare. It's photographed beautifully, so you can
just see in every moment that Universal like really opened
up the purse to allow Whale to make the best
movie he could.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, just beautiful, beautiful sets.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Somewhere in the sequence, Many comes back and reports that
the monster is still alive, that she saw him and
of course she is ignored. I think it's the head
butler who tells to shut up and then says, we
don't believe in ghosts around here. So they initially think
that Henry is dead, but then he moves suddenly in
the presence of Elizabeth, and so she's like, oh, he's

(58:13):
still alive, and she nurses Henry back to health. All
the casting is good, but I wanted to call out
the casting of Elizabeth as also quite good. You know,
it's a little bit more thankless of a role than
a lot of the other roles in the film, where
actors really get to ham it up. Elizabeth doesn't quite
get to do that. But I think Hobson is selected

(58:34):
because she comes off as a beacon of undiluted love
and kindness in the middle of this wretched setting. I
mentioned this earlier, but I think she represents the other life,
the life of virtue and bliss that Henry could have
had if he had just been content rather than questing
into these domains of unknown knowledge and power. Like Elizabeth

(58:56):
is as good as gold, and they could have been
happy and had that golden life together, but he wanted more.
He had that Faustian temptation. He wanted, He wanted more
than it is healthy for a person to want.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
She's like the girlfriend on the second season of The
Bear For you TV viewers, I don't know the Bear well,
same role, like saying you don't maybe you could, We
could have a life together and you don't have to
go through this painful experience of opening this restaurant or
reopening it, which is kind of the same thing. It's like,
we have a reopening of a destructive project in this

(59:30):
in this a personally destructive project in this film, just
like in that show.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
And we yeah, and we see some remorse. Like while recovering,
Henry wonders if he is being punished for his experiments
in creating the monster. He says, perhaps death is sacred
and I've profaned it. But his remorse is only half
the picture. It's kind of fleeting because he also still thinks,
you know, in piecing together a superhuman strangling machine out

(59:56):
of the mangled odds and ends of dead bodies, I
might have really been on to something. He says, quote
I dreamed of giving to the world the secret that
God is so jealous of the formula for life. So
Henry has not completely abandoned his ambitions.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Yeah, there's at least yeah, there's some embers still hot
in there. Of course, it's left for us to wonder, well,
does he actually have the wherewithal to do this again?
Is he just sort of idally dreaming? And maybe that's
the case, Maybe he wouldn't have the courage and the
strength to go through with that nightmare again as long

(01:00:34):
as nobody comes along and encourages him to pick it
up again.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Right, that's right, And here things really start cooking into
the picture comes doctor Septimus Pretorious. What can we say
of Doctor Septimus Pretorious? The look, the attitude, the scowl.
He's so ernest messager. Is this tall, gaunt man with
light colored, frizzy, curly hair, and he he puts on

(01:01:01):
this amazing scowl, this resting stink face that throughout pretty
much the whole movie. And from his very first line
he is committed to being a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Yes he is. He is a lot. He has so
much the I mean the most the most entertaining character
in this film. Among so many other entertaining characters, he
has to stand out as one of the most the
most entertaining characters in just cinema in general, Like, yeah,
it's everything we see from him is golden here, it's

(01:01:36):
it's it's almost a shame that we don't get to
experience this same actor in this same role in other pictures.
But and again, that's kind of what.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Makes it special, that's right. So he arrives at the
door of the Frankenstein estate. He says he must see
Henry tonight on a secret matter of grave importance, and
I guess it's many who lets him in, Like, okay,
grave importance, So we love. Doctor Pretorius is a professor,
a former mentor of Henry's, but has recently been ejected

(01:02:06):
from the academy for reasons that are only vaguely alluded
to with summaries, such as fore knowing too much. But
once doctor Pretorius has gotten Elizabeth out of Henry's bedroom,
he goes to Henry's bedside and says that he knows
of Henry's experiments, He knows about the monster, and he says,

(01:02:27):
we've got to work together. He wants their experimentation to
go on, no longer as master and pupil, but as
fellow scientists. In fact, he says, in Henry's absence, he
has continued his own forbidden studies in secret and managed
to create life of a sort on his own. So
Henry initially tries to resist doctor Pretorius's recruitment. He's like, no, no,

(01:02:51):
I have to get married to Elizabeth. But when he
hears that his former teacher has also found the formula
for life, he says he must see what he has accomplished.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
And you know, you might expect that doctor Pretorius has
created something more or less like the monster, but maybe
not as good, you know, like it's it's it's it's
less powerful, there's something imperfect about it. And I think
this is a this is a this would be a
good guess, but this film is not going to align

(01:03:24):
with the easy guesswork you might have in Blaze here
like this, Well, what he has been working on is tremendous.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
That's right. So they go back to Pretorius's lab to
see what he has done, and here we come to
the famous Homunculi scene. First at his lab, Pretorious, this
is the part where he offers a toast to a
new world of gods and monsters, and then he gets
out this huge black box to show Henry what's inside,
talking the whole time about how enthralling it is to

(01:03:52):
create life. He says, my experiments went in a different
direction than yours, But science, like love, is always full
of surprises. Why does he say that? Like love? There
seems to be something really inherently sensual about doctor Pretorius's
idea of science.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Yeah. I mean it is all consuming, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
So he unveiled. Pretorious unveils these glass jars with tiny
living people inside them, and I should just say that
the effects here are spectacular. He has created homunculi. And
he explains that he first created a woman who was
so lovely that he had to make her a queen.

(01:04:36):
So she's here in this regal gown on a throne.
And he says, next, since he had a queen, he
had to make a king, and the king is apparently
obsessed with getting out of his jar and getting to
the queen. Then he says he made another tiny man
quote who looked so disapprovingly at the other two that
they made him an archbishop. Now I guess this somehow

(01:04:59):
got past the Hay Code prohibition, and it's making fun
of the clergy, or I don't know, to be fair,
I'm not sure exactly how the Hayes code affected this movie,
but this was left in for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah, I mean it's like, likewise, there are some other
lines we've already touched on that feel like if you
were gonna be picky about blasphemous statements, might have been
picked on. But I don't know. It's like, I'm not
sure offhand what they cut compared to what they kept.
And maybe they let this slide too, because it's like
it's not as much about the clergy being dumb as
it is about like, just look how awful this king is.

(01:05:33):
He's like, this clergy member is just done with them.
But to be clear, these are little people wearing full costumes.
They're like a miniature king and queen, a miniature archbishop
or whatever it's it is. This is so comedically weird.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Yes. Oh and the fourth homunculus, by the way, is
a devil. It's the devil. Messeger says, there's a resemblance
to me, don't you think doctorious than muses? That wouldn't
life be simpler if we were all devils? No nonsense
about angels and being good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
He's really laying it out out there. He's like, look,
there's no good. There's no bad. There's just the work
at hand. And we've got a team up again. Because
I've got my ideas, you've got your ideas. Together, we
can really make the perfect being.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
Oh. Also he made a ballerina and a mermaid.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, I'd forgotten that there were so many additional creature
being some unculi that he had made, because this scene
goes on a while, and a lot of effort went
into into making each of these homunculi tubes. It's very impressive.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
So Henry is appalled by this. I'm not quite sure
exactly why Henry is so appalled by the homunculi compared
to the monster he made, But he says, this isn't science,
it's more like black magic. And doctor Pretorius says, you
think I'm mad, Perhaps I am, But listen to Henry Frankenstein. Well,
you were digging in your grave, piecing together dead tissues. I,

(01:07:03):
my dear pupil, went for my materials, to the source
of life. I grew my creatures like cultures, grew them
as nature does from seed. Yeah, and I think that
means exactly what it sounds like. I think Pretorius here
is operating on the basis of the ideology of spermist preformationism.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Yeah. I believe we discussed in some past episodes of
Stuff to Blow your mind.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
The idea that, like the human body, it's sort of
an alternative to cell theory, is that like the human
body is fully formed, just very tiny in the sex cells,
and the spermists thought that they were that the human
bodies were in the sperm, not in the eggs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Yeah. So I mean already they're laying out a really
cool idea and one that the film will will fulfill.
The idea that on one hand, doctor Pretorius is all
about growing new life. Slickenstein is about assembling new life
and instilling energy in it. And if you bring these
two disciplines together, well then there's there's no limit to

(01:08:09):
what you can create.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
That's right. So Pretorius beckons Henry to join him. He says,
together they can discover all the secrets of creating life.
He says, leave your Charnel house and follow the lead
of nature or of God if you like your Bible stories.
So doctor Pretorius wants to not only create life from
non life, but together with Henry, he thinks that they

(01:08:33):
can make two living beings that can join in sexual
union and reproduce with one another, giving rise to a
whole new line of created creatures. Henry is horrified. He
claims he won't do it, but Pretorius is mighty persuasive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Yeah, he doesn't even really have to get heavy handed
at this point. He's just like like, do it, do it.
You're doing it. Come on, you're doing it. He's like, okay. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Meanwhile, so we leave that scene for a while and
we revisit the creature. So the creature, having escaped to
the burning mill, wanders through a forest, which is an
absolutely gorgeous bucolic indoor forest set. You know, I love those.
It's got a canopy of slanted pine trees and a
rushing waterfall, and the creature drinks from a stream, but

(01:09:26):
he sees his face reflected in the water and then
strikes out at it in anger. He hates his own image.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
And again, I just want to drive home that while
there's so much about Carlos Frankenstein's Monster that has become
a stereotype of the horror genre that has become kind
of cliche, when you see the actual performance, there is
so much more nuance to it. You know, it's easy
to think of it as just you know, like firebag,
you know, and sort of think of the like the

(01:09:54):
Phil Hartman Saturday Night Live version of the thing. But yeah,
there's just so many additional levels to it, Like there
is this real authentic feeling of this being that cannot
communicate properly about the world around him, but has like
intense emotions and trauma and even a little bit of
hope still remaining about how he connects to it all.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
I totally agree that the Frankenstein creature is so much
more complex than the impression you would get from the parodies.
And as I said earlier, that does go straight back
to the novel. The creature is an extremely complex and
thoughtful and emotional being in the novel. So in this scene,
there's a shepherdess leading some lambs through the forest. The

(01:10:37):
shepherdess sees the creature and she screams in terror and
falls into the water, and the creature actually goes and
saves her from drowning. And you know, I think something
interesting is going on here. Where just in the scene before,
a character fell into the water with the creature, and
the creature drowned that character on purpose. He was so
filled with rage. Here somebody falls into the water and

(01:11:00):
he tries to save their life. So I think this
is also supposed to communicate something about the creature just
being so filled with churning emotions and contradictions. It doesn't
know what it is. The creature doesn't know if he
is if he is good or evil, and doesn't know

(01:11:21):
which path to embrace. He's just sort of flying back
and forth from one to the other. But anyway, so
the woman falls in the water, he saves her, but
then she is of course terrified of him. She starts
to scream, and the creature is frightened by this. He
tries to stop her screaming by covering her mouth, which
just makes it worse. And then men with guns come

(01:11:43):
and start shooting at the creature. They wound him, but
he escapes into the wild and the townspeople raise a
mob to chase the monster once again. This is another
chased by the crowd scene, And one thing I wanted
to point out is how the forest set changed from
the previous scene to this one. So when the monster

(01:12:03):
is wandering alone before the mob attacks him, before he
has been you know, seen and hated again by humanity,
the forest is lush and lovely and alive, and now
that he is again being hunted and despised. The trees
are all these straight, bare trunks without leaves or branches,
and it's set against a dark sky and these crooked rocks,

(01:12:25):
And I think the film uses set and setting to
infuse the scenes with emotion.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
I'm glad you mentioned this, because this is something that
I don't think I actually I didn't think about it
as I was watching. I was so caught up in
the action of it all. But I think you're absolutely right,
Like they're they're manipulating their their tightly controlled set world
here uh to uh to imbue the scene with just
the right amount of just the right emotion and just
the right energy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
So this all has a momentum of its own. That
the creature is caught by the mob, bound up like
tied to a pole, taken into town, thrown into a dungeon,
chained up to this heavy wooden chair that looks like
some kind of torture device. All throughout the creature is
groaning in pain and misery. This is the scene where
Minnie is looking down the window at the dungeon and

(01:13:12):
is like ooh, ooh, she's just getting too excited about this.
But of course, first chance he gets Karloff, snaps the chains,
breaks out of prison, kicks down the heavy wooden doors. Meanwhile,
that mustachioed character, the Burgomaster from the guy from earlier
who was telling everybody to go to bed, there's a
really funny part where he's trying to clear the crowd.

(01:13:34):
He's saying, nothing to worry about, just an escaped lunatic,
quite harmless, while the monster is kicking down the door
of the prison in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Yes, yeah, this is great because, yeah, this part is funny,
and yet at the same time, the daytime rampage is
still terrifying, and I think it's more terrifying because it
is in the daylight.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
I agree. So there's this rampage, the monster harms people
in the process of escaping the town, but eventually gets
out into the woods. And so eventually this leads up
to the part where the monster is drawn to the cabin.
The cabin in the woods where the old hermit lives.
He's drawn by the sound of music. So this old
blind man lives alone in a cottage and he's playing

(01:14:16):
ave Maria on the violin. The creature likes the music,
and so he comes to the door of the cabin,
and unlike everyone else who fears and rejects the monster,
the blind man welcomes the creature into his house. He
offers him hospitality, and he offers him friendship, gives the
creature food, He cares for his wounds, and he shows

(01:14:38):
him kindness. When the creature is unable to speak, the
old man says, perhaps you are afflicted too. I cannot
see and you cannot speak. But he says, I've prayed
many times for God to send me a friend. God
has taken pity on my loneliness, and we can be
friends to each other. And so this turns into a
really beautiful short story in the middle of the the movie. Here,

(01:15:00):
you know, the blind man does not even understand how
uncommon the friendship he's offering is to the person he's
offering it to, and so the creature seems he accepts
the hospitality, and the creature goes on to live with
this blind man for some unspecified length of time, during
which he learns to speak. The old man teaches him words,

(01:15:24):
teaches him about bread, wine and cigars, and oh boy,
when you know what he's learning about cigars. At first,
fire bad, so the creature doesn't like that, but he
figures out pretty soon that he likes smoking cigars.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Yes, these things are hilarious but also very poignant as well,
like he's because the monster is learning to enjoy life
for the first time, and the blind man is sharing
the enjoyments of life with him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
After gaining a vocabulary, the creature learns to express his
feelings in words, and he says things like alone, bad, friend, good.
But this happy interlude is broken when two hunters, including
John Kridy and come to the cabin asking for directions,
and uh oh, they see the monster, you know exactly what.
A fight breaks out, the cabin catches fire, and everyone

(01:16:14):
runs off in their separate directions. So the creature's chance
here and having a good life is thwarted, and the
creature wanders at night through a desolate cemetery in a rage.
And this graveyard set is fantastic. It's like the graveyard
at the end of the world. High contrasts, dead trees
reaching like ghostly fingers. There's mist rising from the consecrated earth,

(01:16:37):
and then in his anger and despair, the creature is
literally toppling monuments and grave markers. He hates every work
of man, but he decides to hide out. The creature
tries to hide from the angry mob by climbing down
into a subterranean crypt. And what's this. Down in the crypt,
he sees three figures coming carrying lanterns, descending into the catacomb,

(01:16:59):
and one of them is our old friend, doctor Septimus Pretorious.

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
M Yes, now before even encountering him. Though, this is
already so perfect because the monster earlier in the film
emerges from the underworld and and has all these encounters,
seems to find a new a new way to look
at life, and now he is forced to descend back
into the underworld. You know, it's it's like all his
attempts have failed. But sometimes in the underworld you do

(01:17:25):
run into the devil and inter Yet doctor Pretorious and
his guns.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
His two oh my god, she's accompanied by these two
cursed wax and goons, one of them played by Dwight Fry.
The characters are named Carl and Ludwig. They're here to
do the heavy lifting for this midnight grave robbing mission.
There's there's supposed to be criminals of some sort of
Pretorious threatens to send them back to the gallows where
they belong if they don't get on with the body removal,

(01:17:54):
So they select a grave. They steal the woman's body
from the grave. Looking on, Pretorius says, I hope her
bones are firm. But eventually so they get the body.
The grave robbers leave, but Pretorious stays. And then this
is probably my favorite scene in the movie, where he
Pretorious is just like, I rather like this place. I
shall stay here for a bit and just has himself

(01:18:15):
a cackling picnic in the middle of the catacomb, wine, cheese, skeletons.
He won't stop laughing. He's having a great time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
I think he has her bones, that the woman's bones
like piled up there in the middle of his little
pic neck.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Right, Oh, is that what it is? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
If not her bones, someone else's bones. Either way, it's
a it's a gothic delight. I should I should also
point out like he's already like he's shown that he's
such a you can't trust anything, he says, because this
whole thing to Frankenstein was like, we're done with with
dead bodies, old boy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
The next thing we see from him. Is he's down
there grave robbin with a couple of goods.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
That's right, Okay, I think you're right. Actually, I was
thinking about the that the goons still took the with them,
but I think they got these bones out and he's
like just hanging out with the bones. I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
But yes, tremendous saint just cackling in the crypt.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
But the monster comes out of hiding and meets doctor Pretorius.
Pretorius says, oh, I thought I was alone, and then
he shares his food, wine and cigars. But the creature
much like the old man did in the cottage in
the woods, except whereas that was wholesome and friendly, there's
a different subtext here. Instead, it feels more like he's
being enticed into a deal with the devil here.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
Yes, yes, So they sort of get.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
To know each other, and then Pretorius explains his plans
to the monster. He says that he promises that he
will make the monster a friend, a woman like him
to be his wife. So this takes us into the
last act of the movie. Henry and Elizabeth are married
again by the time we meet them, and I'm going
to skip more lightly over the plot now, but Basically,

(01:19:57):
Pretorius comes to Henry and Elizabeth home and he confronts
Henry for help about making the bride. He's like, I've
got to make this undead woman. You're gonna help me.
Henry tries to refuse, but he's got an ace up
his sleeve. He has the monster kidnap Elizabeth as a hostage,
so Henry will have no choice but to help him
do unholy science.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
So together they work on bringing this dead woman to life,
and there's one hilarious part where they're trying to get
a heart that will be appropriate, and the heart they
have doesn't work. Henry says he needs a better one,
so Pretorius calls up Carl, that's Dwight Fry, and he's like, Carl,
go to the accident hospital. We need a fresh heart

(01:20:42):
from a young woman. And you know where this is going, yeah, exactly.
So Carl just like goes and murders someone and then
he shows up with a heart, and Henry's like, wow,
this is a really fresh heart. Good job, and Carl's
like it was a police case. But anyway, so they

(01:21:05):
do all their unholy science and the bride is brought
to life. During an electrical storm, wrapped up like a
mummy in these bandages. And eventually the bandages are peeled
back and the reveal this is the bride of Frankenstein.
It's Elsa Wnchester. Uh what what would you say to
describe her here?

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Rob oh Well, I already mentioned the Avian energy, and
certainly everybody knows the look the hair, but god Like,
initially she's still wrapped in bandages. You don't know what
you're gonna see. You know, there's their elements of a
mummy to the way she's wrapped up. And then when
we start taking them off, yeah, you begin to see
that she is. This what they've they've really managed to

(01:21:44):
look for the bride. That is this uncanny place between
otherworldly beauty and and and and really the grave.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
That's right, and tragically so they So the monster comes
out after his bride has been created, and the monster
hopefully approaches her, saying friend, friend. But here's where the
real tragedy comes in. Even she from beyond the grave
rejects Karlof, rejects the monster. She screams, she finds him

(01:22:14):
terrifying and ugly, and she.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Kind of does this hiss thing. Eventually, too. Maybe that's
towards the end, but I really like that moment as
well because it also sort of served to underline the
fact that like she is, she is monster as well,
like she's not I mean in the same way that
that Karlov's monster is also a victim. Yes, she is
also a victim. She did not ask to be brought

(01:22:36):
into this world. But she is also not human in
the same way that the monster is not human.

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
That's right. She immediately seems to recognize the wrongness of
her own existence, like you know, love dead, hate living,
and she hisses, and that hiss signals almost that like
she doesn't want to exist. The hiss apparently was elsa
Lanchester idea, and she got the idea from observing geese.

(01:23:04):
You know geese his Yeah, so she was trying to
do like a goose's threatening hiss.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Oh, very good, excellent addition.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
So in the very end, the creature just defeated by
by this rejection. He allows Henry and Elizabeth to escape
the castle. He tells them to live, but as for himself,
the bride and doctor Pretorius, he says, we belong dead
and flips this lever that had been established would would

(01:23:33):
reduce the I think Pretorius said it would reduce their
castle to atoms. It doesn't quite do that, but it
does cause a great destruction.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
Yes, again, this is the beautiful discuction scene that I
was talking about at the top of the episode. Just oh,
it's so beautiful. Everything I mean in the film, certainly,
but this, this last stretches last third of the picture.
I mean that the laboratory looks amazing, the lightning effects,
the kites they send up, the the the resurrection or

(01:24:03):
energizing of the bride is so wonderful. Everything is just
pitch perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
I totally agree, And I guess that's got to be
the end, right, that's Bride of Frankenstein. I will just
say again, I love this movie. I think it's like
top tier weird horror, just unbeatable.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Yeah, and solid ending too. We cut to the Frankenstein's
not the monsters, Henry and Elizabeth, you know, reunited and
it's a nice little moment. Kind of serves as a
nice cap, but it doesn't feel kind of like unearned
and tacked on, like the happy moment at the end
of the first Frankenstein, like this one feels like it.

(01:24:43):
It honestly got to that feel good moment at the
end where everything's put right. Yeah, like Joe said, it's
a beautiful movie. Go see it if you haven't seen it,
and if you've seen it before, even a few times,
go watch it again because you know you love it.
Just a reminder out there that Stuffed to a Blow
your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside

(01:25:06):
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie
here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see
a list of all the movies we've covered over the
years here, you can go to U. We can go
to letterbox dot com. It's l E T t e
r box d dot com. That's a site where people
create accounts and review movies and make lists of movies. Well,

(01:25:27):
we have a username on there, it's weird House, and
you can see a wonderful visual list of all the
movies we've covered thus far, and sometimes a peek ahead
at what's coming up next. I also blog about these
films at some mutomusic dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway,
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: The Bride of Frankenstein