She's Alive! Creating the Bride of Frankenstein

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It's an old clich that a sequel

is never as good as the original.

But director James Whale set that

on its head with Bride of Frankenstein,

the crowning achievement

of Universal's golden age of horror.

Never had a studio lavished so much

production value and acting talent

on a so-called monster movie.

Bride of Frankenstein

transcended its genre

and remains one of

Universal's best-loved films.

For Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein,

the attempted creation

of the monster's bride

was always part of her original vision.

How James Whale and Universal Pictures

played matchmaker

for Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester

is quite a story.

And, like a good cast,

well worth repeating.

Oh. I thought I was alone.

It's one of the great American films.

It's right up there with

Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard.

It's usually discussed as

"Oh, just a horror movie",

but it's much more complex.

Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is?

And who you are?

Yes. I know.

Made me from dead.

The various story elements,

the intellectual elements,

the artistic and acting elements

that came to bear in this film,

really crystallised all the things

that had been building

in that genre, at that studio, at that time.

I love dead.

Hate living.

You're wise in your generation.

The Bride of Frankenstein

quite simply is the most complex

and most brilliantly achieved

and conceived horror film ever made,

and certainly the crowning jewel in

Universal's initial series of horror films.

You make man like me?

No. Woman.

Friend for you.

It's a wonderful film. It's just delightful.

Certainly there are some scenes

where humour and terror

are all beautifully blended.

When you get into Bride of Frankenstein,

you're making it all up.

There are no rules. The only rules

are those of the imagination.

Whale had an extraordinary imagination.

There are some imaginations which are

best left to go do their own Gothic thing.

This isn't science.

It's more like black magic.

When Universal unleashed

the original Frankenstein in 1931,

it found a new formula

for box-office magic.

In a stunning portrayal, Boris Karloff

was catapulted to international stardom.

James Whale, well-regarded

for his British stage work,

had been imported to Hollywood

for his ability to direct dialogue.

Ironically, as movies were learning

to talk, it was a silent performance

that made the Hollywood careers

of both Karloff and Whale.

Universal's founder, Carl Laemmle,

didn't want his son, Carl Junior, to make

films like Dracula and Frankenstein.

But there was no arguing

with the box office.

As soon as Frankenstein was complete,

the studio began planning a follow-up.

This time it was

the director who objected.

James Whale didn't want to do

a sequel to Frankenstein.

He seemed to be trying to

squirm out of it, as it were,

avoid it, bypass it.

Do something else instead.

He said he'd gotten everything out of

the first one, that he'd "wrung it dry".

Maybe that was the phrase.

You have to remember that Frankenstein

was the Jaws or Star Wars of its day.

It was such a big hit.

The studio had so much invested in it

that finally he agreed to do it.

But again I love the fact that

he only did it on his terms.

Meantime, Universal again teamed Whale

and Karloff for The Old Dark House,

a sardonic thriller that introduced

Whale's mischievous sense of humour.

The Invisible Man, with Claude Rains,

mixed laughs and chills,

and showcased state-of-the-art

special effects.

The effects in The Invisible Man

are just extraordinary.

You still watch them

and wonder how some were done.

You're crazy to know who I am,

aren't you?

All right/ I'll show you.

There's a souvenir for you.

And one for you.

I'll show you who I am and what I am.

How do you like that, eh?

Whale directed some stylish non-horror

films for Universal in the early '30s,

including By Candlelight

in the manner of Lubitsch,

an adaptation of Galsworthy's

One More River,

and a screwball comedy mystery

Remember Last Night?

He always had very mixed feelings

about his horror films.

He liked them, but he wanted

to be an A-list director.

He wanted to make

the big-money projects,

like John Stahl at Universal did.

And, curiously enough,

who remembers who John Stahl was?

But we all remember the movies

made by James Whale.

Junior Laemmle, who was

the general manager at Universal,

had enormous respect for Whale.

I think that he felt that certainly

what Whale had done

with Frankenstein, The Old Dark House,

The Invisible Man,

with the other non-horror-genre films

that he had done,

showed a great stylist at work.

Although Junior Laemmle himself

was not a creative man,

he had a very instinctive feel, I think,

for something that was good.

I think he felt James Whale

was the director at Universal

who probably had the best chance

of putting Universal on par with MGM,

and with Warner Bros,

and with the big boys in Hollywood.

So he really gave him free rein to do

whatever he wanted with the picture.

After rejecting several scripts

for the Frankenstein sequel,

Whale took personal control

over the screenplay's development.

The fact that Whale didn't especially want

to make the film, and then agreed to,

prompted him to offer ideas for the script

to the writers. Suggest things.

At least, we have a very good indication

that he did this.

People such as Elsa Lanchester

mentioned this,

that this was his idea,

that that was his idea.

The little people in the bottles

was his idea.

He insisted that he have

the opening prologue

with Mary Shelley

and Byron and Percy Shelley.

That was essential,

otherwise he wouldn't do it.

Elsa Lanchester, for example, told me

that Whale insisted that she be

allowed to play Mary Shelley,

and also the bride.

It was either that

or he wouldn't make the film.

It was a great thrill to meet

Elsa Lanchester. I met her in 1981.

She said that it was Whale's intention

to show that very pretty people,

which is how Mary Shelley

is presented in the film,

actually inside

have very wicked thoughts.

Can you believe that lovely brow

conceived of Frankenstein?

A monster created from cadavers

out of rifled graves?

The money was available to him

to make a much more elaborate film

than the first one.

Because of the success,

they let him go with the sets,

and go with the care and the time

and the photography and the music,

so that he could polish

and refine and elaborate,

in a way that the earlier films, which were

made faster, wouldn't have permitted.

It's an odd sequel in many ways.

For example, after a brief glimpse of

the monster in the beginning of the movie,

he doesn't show up again for a half-hour,

a third of the way into the movie.

Meanwhile, you've spent most of your

time with this odd character, Dr Pretorius.

I think if you look at Dr Pretorius,

that's an example of how the movie has

changed so radically from the first one.

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