A Tribute to the Magnificent Whale

On Sunday night, the Legend channel (formerly Horror), aired the Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) as part of its Vintage Vault series. When I had finished screaming and hollering with delight, I concluded that BOF is one of the best little movies to emerge from Hollywood in the past 100 years. From its opening moment, the plot veers on a roller coaster from the heights of sublimity to the depths of ludocrity, and back up again. Overall, it is a feast of visual jokes, gothic cliches and an array of characters worthy of a Dickens’ novel: the rather pompous Henry (changed from Victor) Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who is desperate to be seen as the victim but really is the instigator of all of the mischief. Valerie Hobson plays his beautiful girlfriend, Elizabeth, while Dr Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) is the new evil genius. The irascible servant Minnie (Una O’Connor) delivers marvellous comic asides and needless to say, the inimitable Boris Karloff sparkles darkly in his original role as the misunderstood Monster. Highlights include the tender scenes where the all-too-human Monster, longing for food, warmth and friendship is drawn into the cottage of a blind old man and bonds with him, the fabulous steampunky apparatus that elevates the female cadaver to the lightening storm, and the moment she emerges from her bandages, her hairdo a combo of Egyptian queen and Marge Simpson gone wrong. We even get to meet the ghosts of Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), her husband the poet Percy Bysse Shelley and their friend Lord Byron. When the Bride rejects her intended spouse, the Monster’s bitterness is palpably human. But I won’t spoil all the surprises: do see this masterpiece of classic cinema from the magnificent Whale.