She's Alive! Creating the Bride of Frankenstein Page #5

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and prestige productions.

But Universal was burdened with debt

and in 1936 Carl Laemmle lost his studio.

Whale had this amazing niche for five

years, working under Junior Laemmle.

He almost acted as an independent

filmmaker today. He really had control.

There was nobody -

either a studio person or a producer -

over his shoulder, telling him what to do.

When the Laemmles lost control

over Universal, that was gone.

Whale suddenly found himself

working for people

who were not in sympathy

with his methods at all.

It was much closer to the factory

assembly-line form of filmmaking

that they were doing at MGM

and the other studios.

Whale worked very badly

in those conditions.

Whale's last stand at Universal

was The Road Back,

an uncompromising sequel to

All Quiet on the Western Front.

Under pressure from Germany, the studio

regime severely cut the picture

and it died at the box office.

Whale retired from Hollywood in 1941.

Although financially secure for life,

he did not live to enjoy the critical

acclaim his work finally received.

Disabled and disoriented by a series

of strokes, he took his own life in 1957.

Without Whale's masterful touch,

the later Frankenstein films were

of little interest to their star.

My father played the monster three times.

The third time was Son of Frankenstein,

and at that point he decided

he would not do it again.

He felt that the story line

had been exhausted

and the monster, as he had created him,

had done all that he should

be asked to do.

He was afraid that it would become

the brunt of bad jokes and bad scripts,

and there are those

that would agree with him.

Bill Condon's Academy Award-winning

film Gods and Monsters

featured a reunion between the stars of

Bride of Frankenstein and their director.

Hey, you/ With the camera/

We got a historical moment here.

This is Mr James Whale,

who made "Frankenstein"

and "Bride of Frankenstein".

And this - forget the baby a second - is

the monster

and his bride.

Oh, Karloff. Right/

Don't you just love being famous?

The figure of the bride is so iconic

that she crops up in all kinds of films.

There's this absolutely wonderful Bride of

Frankenstein parody in Small Soldiers.

The Bride of Frankenstein shows up in

the Bride of Chucky in a very clever way.

She's alive/ Alive/

We belong dead.

You can do a little drawing of the bride

and people will say "I know what that is."

I remember building little Aurora kits

of the Bride of Frankenstein

when I was a little kid,

way before I could see the movies,

and being totally enchanted by these

creatures lumbering across my desk

when I went to sleep at night. It felt safe.

Some of these youngsters -

seven, eight, nine years old -

they know the script

backwards and forwards.

Of course, with the advent of video, it

brought it into everybody's living room,

and now on DVD.

It perpetuates the availability,

and the appeal is long-lasting

and multi-generational.

It's a brilliant film, it's a work of genius.

I think it's a picture in which the acting,

particularly the performances of Karloff

and Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger,

transcend anything you saw being done

in Hollywood at that time.

Brilliant, almost operatic performances.

And if ever somebody

needs to study a film

to see how a director injects

his own personality into a picture,

Bride of Frankenstein

is the perfect example.

You can almost watch it and feel like

you spent an evening with James Whale,

listening to his wit, his ideas, and

listening to his remarkable personality.

It's all there in that movie.

It's like an evening with Jimmy.

1935 was an incredible year

for horror movies.

In addition to Bride of Frankenstein,

there was Werewolf of London,

The Raven, Mark of the Vampire and

Mad Love. All these are classics,

but, almost 70 years later, Bride of

Frankenstein towers above them.

As a follow-up, James Whale was

scheduled to direct Dracula's Daughter

as a baroque black comedy even more

outrageous than Bride of Frankenstein.

But the script was too much

for the censors.

We missed the daughter,

but we still have the bride,

and that's something to be grateful for.

I'm Joe Dante.

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