Bride Of Frankenstein

“What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

Such are the words of Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s novel, as he pleads with his creator for a measure of compensation. After the tremendous success of James Whale’s Frankenstein in 1931, and several failed attempts at coming up with a script for a sequel, they were the hook upon which Universal Pictures hung its hopes. Their eventual script was, appropriately enough, assembled from pieces of several others; yet unlike most films which develop in that way, it took on a life of its own, and proved to have staying power.

Despite its title, the film, which opens with Shelley revealing to Byron and her husband that she has more to tell, actually features very little of the Bride. It’s more about the events leading up to her creation, and it also fits in some of the further adventures of the original creature which are mentioned in the novel but had not been addressed in the first film. Critically, this included the part where he learns to speak, something that Boris Karloff was loathe to do because he felt it would make his character’s actions seem too considered, and therefore less sympathetic – that it would rob him of his childlike quality. In this, he underestimated his own ability. If anything, the creature is more sympathetic here – less childlike, but more tragically aware of himself as an outsider, as someone who can always expect to be rejected.

The other major part of the plot involves the relationship between Henry (Victor) Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and a new character, the sinister Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who drives the action by persuading him to return to his research and by manipulating the creature. This often feels like an effort to redeem Henry, who also takes on a more heroic cast in expressing his love for Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson), the conventional heroine who functions as a template and point of contrast for the Bride. Nevertheless, Henry is clearly excited at having an excuse to resume his work, and he cannot escape culpability. Pretorius – though he will go on to contribute a good deal to the stereotype of the ‘mad scientist’ as it develops in cinema – is really just a source of temptation, with only Henry capable of, as it were, full scale creation. The miniature creatures Pretorius creates introduce comic elements and have their own tragedy, but are more like the imps of the Devil than the human-like beings through whose creation Frankenstein threatens the dominion of God.

Though Whale himself was an atheist, he was fully aware of the religious dimension of the story, and the film is peppered with Biblical imagery, especially in relation to the crucifixion; there’s an intimation that Henry perceives the creature as one who might die for his sins, one whose destruction could be his salvation, even as he works to satisfy his demands. Indeed, the creature, in his strange innocence, ultimately becomes the tale’s moral arbiter, though Whale is surely aware of the injustice this represents for the Bride, whose only intimation of her own perspective is part of what dooms her.

Even in the 1930s, a childlike woman without speech would not have stood out in the way that Karloff’s interpretation of the original creature did. Rather than further stressing her vulnerability, Elsa Lanchester (who also plays Mary Shelley, creating an implicit parallel between these two female figures called upon to please men) must work to establish her as an independent being with her own agency, limited though it may be. Though fairly inexperienced at the time, she delivers a stunning performance. Her scream of protest has echoed through the decades ever since, but it’s her smaller gestures which really make the character, as she navigates existence in an unfamiliar shape, clearly recognising that something is amiss but with no understanding of what has been done to her. Though there is something here of the frightened animal that Karloff originally evinced, she also has a puppet-like aspect to her early movement, emphasising the extent to which she is being manipulated as her frantic eyes reveal the wrongness of it.

Alongside this performance, the Bride has, of course, an iconic image. The costuming and make-up work on every character is first class, and its influence can be seen in practically every interpretation of the Gothic onscreen since. Similar praise is due to the production design and to the score, which, though dismissed at the time as over the top, has a good deal of depth and complexity to it. As such, it speaks to Whale’s understanding that although there are grand themes at work here, the real power of the piece – as often in the Gothic, comes from the ways in which they clash, rather than from something built out of their unity. In accordance with the form favoured by the Hays Code, order is restored at the end, and the approved characters escape, but the hearts of viewers are firmly with those who do not.

Reviewed on: 16 Nov 2025