Cinephiles commonly subscribe to a widely accepted truism: sequels suck. Except sometimes they don’t – in fact, occasionally they can surpass the original film of the series. Such is the case with Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the acclaimed follow-up to Frankenstein (1931), both directed by James Whale. Based ever so loosely on the original tale by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s tale, this film picks up the story immediately after the end of the first film. We follow Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) as he reluctantly resumes his experiments under pressure from the sinister Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who envisions creating a mate for Frankenstein’s original creature (Boris Karloff). The resulting creation is the Bride, played by Elsa Lanchester, who also appears as Shelley in the film’s prologue. The film deepens the tragedy of the monster, emphasizing his loneliness and desire for companionship.
To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Bride of Frankenstein, conducted last week, click here (if you get an error, simply try refreshing the page).
Bride represents the pinnacle of Universal horror and that studio’s classic cycle of fright films, and deserves to be considered as the greatest horror/monster movie from Hollywood’s golden age. This work is widely deemed the best horror sequel ever made and one of the finest sequels of all time, regardless of genre, as well as one of the rare examples of a subsequent cinematic chapter that bests the original. For proof, ponder that it garners a 98% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 95 Metascore on Metacritic. Time magazine included it in its “All-TIME 100 Movies” list, and Empire placed it among the 500 greatest films of all time. Rotten Tomatoes named it #19 on its “200 Best Horror Movies of All Time,” Collider ranked it among the best movie sequels, and Entertainment Weekly cited it as one of the 20 best horror sequels and #2 of the 25 best monster movies. Meanwhile, The Guardian named it the 18th best horror film ever, and The Boston Herald regards it as the second greatest horror film after Nosferatu.
Per Roger Ebert, “Seen today, Whale’s masterpiece is more surprising than when it was made because today’s audiences are more alert to its buried hints of homosexuality, necrophilia, and sacrilege. But you don’t have to deconstruct it to enjoy it; it’s satirical, exciting, funny, and influential masterpiece of art direction.”
Indeed, Bride of Frankenstein is superior to its predecessor in multiple ways, including narrative, characters, art design, lighting and cinematography, makeup, casting, and music. Overall, it’s a more complete story and fulfilling motion picture. Writer George Turner, in an American Cinematographer
article, praised the film’s impressive sets, including the refurbished Castle Frankenstein with its vast hall, vaulted rooms, ornate windows, and massive furnishings; and the enormous laboratory, 70 feet high and filled with Kenneth Strickfaden’s fantastical machinery; Pretorius’ strange apartment; a hermit’s crowded hut; a morgue; a courtroom; a cistern and waterwheel; and a macabre dungeon where the monster is chained while villagers watch. Among the stunning exteriors are a blasted forest of limbless trees, a waterfall in a lush wood, a fairy tale-style peasant hut, and a hillside graveyard, all backed by enormous sky cycloramas.
You could make a case that Karloff is even better in Bride than he was in his first turn as the monster three years earlier – exhibiting a greater range of emotion and pathos while also being more expressive and empathetic. Here, he can speak, cry, laugh, eat, drink, smoke, and act both more human and inhuman. It’s not a stretch to call this the greatest performance in Karloff’s career, although he’s exceptional in the 1931 original as well as Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher (1945).
But the true scene stealer is arguably Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius, who often delivers the best lines and infuses camp sensibilities into the character that make him an unforgettable personality – one who is as visually striking as his intonations are captivating. Pretorius’s angular frame, sharp facial features, expressive eyes, eccentric hair, trilling tongue, articulate speech, and flamboyant manner combined to make him a thoroughly unique personality and unforgettable character. He’s coded as demonstrably queer and prissy, which would have been evident even to 1935 audiences.
Furthermore, unlike the 1931 film, this one has a complete score, by Franz Waxman, that stands as one of the finest of the 1930s and, debatably, the greatest music written for a horror film until Bernard Herrmann’s contribution for Psycho in 1960. Waxman composed a Wagnerian, operatic orchestration that memorably employs three key leitmotif themes – one for the monster, one for his mate, and one for Pretorius. Interestingly, the soundtrack even beats in rhythm to the steadily thumping heart in Frankenstein’s laboratory.
The creation sequence that ends this film tops the one from the 1931 original with an even more grandiose set and fantastical electrical effects. In the sequel, we get more canted angles, expressionistic facial close-ups, lightning bolts, sparks, and tension. Other visual effects are equally impressive, particularly Pretorius’s tiny homunculi, achieved through ingenious double exposure and optical tricks.
Bride of Frankenstein was a pioneering picture in several ways. It’s the first genuine horror sequel (debatably, Son of Kong, released in 1933, is more horror-adjacent as an adventure/fantasy film). The Bride herself is technically the earliest bona fide female monster character in cinema history, or at least the sound era, although some scholars would point to Maria in Metropolis from 1927 and earlier vampires, witches, and supernatural women depicted in silent cinema. Additionally, Waxman’s composition represents the first original score for a horror movie, with his music written specifically for this film (unlike pre-existing music used for earlier horror pictures like Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). This is also considered by many to be the inaugural horror-comedy in the sound era.
Bride of Frankenstein broke ground by proving that a sequel could surpass its predecessor. Unlike the quick cash-grab follow-ups common in the 1930s and beyond, it delivered a richer, more ambitious work, laying the groundwork for later prestige sequels from Aliens to The Dark Knight.
The film’s tone was unlike anything else of its time. By blending gothic horror with biting satire, irony, and macabre humor, Whale crafted a tonal experiment that foreshadowed everything from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein to Young Frankenstein and even the self-aware scares of Scream. Alternate Ending essayist Timothy Brayton
wrote: “By all rights, the film's intense tonal shifts should not work at all... We’ve got the broadest kind of '30s humor in the form of Frankenstein's housekeeper Minnie (O'Connor); the high camp preening of Thesiger as Pretorius, followed at a slight distance by Clive in sort of "medium camp" mode; and then on the other side, the creature, played by Karloff in the single best performance of a career that is fuller of great acting than you'd probably expect, gets a full range of fascinating, beautiful emotions... So we've got horror, farce, Expressionism, camp, humanism… all these mashed-up tones shouldn't work at all. And yet, for some reason, it all does.”
Visually, Bride of Frankenstein – and its 1931 antecedent – borrowed heavily from German Expressionism, as evidenced by storm-lashed graveyards, looming castles, and twisted lab equipment, drenching all of it in exaggerated shadows and light. These striking aesthetics rippled through noir, horror, and eventually the signature style of later filmmakers like Tim Burton.
Whale’s own perspective as a gay filmmaker added another layer, infusing Pretorius and the film’s themes with camp, theatricality, and queer subtext. This dimension has since made Bride a cornerstone for queer readings of horror.
Additionally, although she appears for only about five minutes, the Bride herself became immortal, proving that female monsters had real pop-culture bite. With her lightning-streaked hair, bandaged body, and serpentine hiss, she remains one of the most enduring icons of horror, reverberating through fashion, parody, and Halloween culture ever since.
Later works that drew inspiration from Bride of Frankenstein visually, narratively, thematically, or otherwise include Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Young Frankenstein (1974), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Bride (1985), Re-Animator (1985), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), Bride of Chucky (1998), Gods and Monsters (1998), Van Helsing (2004), Ex Machina (2014), the Penny Dreadful TV series (2014), Victor Frankenstein (2015), The Shape of Water (2017), Poor Things (2023), and, we have to assume, the forthcoming Bride (2025).
This film remains James Whale’s crowning achievement as a filmmaker. (Considering his perfect batting average directing four horror masterpieces – Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and this movie – he’s worthy of appearing on the Mount Rushmore of greatest horror directors.) Whale was unafraid to infuse humor in his horror, use religious imagery and Christian connotations, and include a significant character imbued with hints of homosexuality. He also deserves props for beginning the film with a distinctly different prologue depicting Mary Shelley – the original author of this tale – discussing its creation with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, two of her literary peers. And he wisely cast the same actress to play both Mary and the Bride. Himself an openly gay man, Whale also ensured that other non-heterosexual actors were cast, including Thesiger and Colin Clive (who was rumored to be gay or bisexual).
As with the first film, Bride of Frankenstein is centrally concerned with the dangers of scientific and spiritual hubris. Pretorius toasts to a “new world of gods and monsters,” in which he and Henry Frankenstein exemplify this new breed of gods of creation, usurping the role of a higher power and ethically exceeding the boundaries of science and technology. Pretorius says: “Follow the lead of nature - or of God, if you like your Bible stories. Male and female created to them. Be fruitful and multiply. Create a race. A man-made race upon the face of the earth. Why not?” Even Henry, who reluctantly agrees to the collaboration, is fearful of this power, remarking: “This isn't science. It's more like black magic.” Also consider how Pretorius lures Henry away from Elizabeth on their wedding night, persuading him to join in the unnatural pursuit of generating life in a way that defies human reproduction.
Another obvious thematic throughline across the franchise? Rejection of the outsider. The creature, and Dr. Pretorius in particular, represents the outcast, a figure who cannot be accepted in mainstream society for reasons fair or unfair. The monster is feared by nearly everyone who can see him, hunted by the villagers, and thoroughly shunned by the bride created for him. And Pretorius must work in secret and perform around the periphery to accomplish his goals.
Some film scholars insist that there’s a gay reading to the film, subtextually suggesting that any male-male relationships in the story represent a threat to society’s established heterosexual order, particularly the bond between the blind hermit and the monster. "No mistake – this is a marriage, and a viable one ... But Whale reminds us quickly that society does not approve. The monster – the outsider – is driven from his scene of domestic pleasure by two gun-toting rubes who happen upon this startling alliance and quickly, instinctively, proceed to destroy it", wrote Gary Morris in a controversial analysis for Bright Lights Film Journal.
Bride also espouses the universal need for companionship. Pretorius urges that he and Henry must work together, and the monster insists that they create a mate for him. Guillermo del Toro was quoted as saying: "If the first one was about the essential loneliness of man, a Miltonian episode about being thrust into a world that you didn't create and didn't understand, then the second one is the absolute compulsion for company, the need not to be alone." In the first film, the brain was the most important organ to the creature, but the irony was that the monster turned out to be a simplistic brute due to having an abnormal brain. In the sequel, fascinatingly, the essential body part is the heart, but the twist is that the monster’s bride acts heartlessly toward her mate. Without the hope of love or companionship, the monster chooses death.
All Frankenstein films, essentially – including this one – explore the danger of the unleashed id, which must be quashed by the social order. The monster is viewed by the populace as a mindless menace capable of extreme violence, which instigates a mob mentality. In Freudian psychology, the id is the unconscious part of the mind that contains basic instincts, drives, and desires, especially those related to aggression, survival, and sex. It seeks immediate gratification without reckoning upon morality or consequences. The viewer may not regard the creature as this perilous id manifestation, but the townspeople do.
Bride of Frankenstein proved that horror – considered the bastard stepchild genre of Hollywood for decades and culprit of schlock and dreck in the minds of snooty scholars – can be high art in capable hands. Bride has withstood nine decades of scrutiny yet continues to rank as or among the very best of its kind. It’s an equally impressive feat that this work set the bar high for sequels of any stripe, demonstrating that a follow-up film can outshine the original, even if that remains an extremely rare phenomenon. Like The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, Terminator 2, Before Sunset, The Dark Knight, and Mad Max: Fury Road, this work gives us hope that subsequent outings can be exceptional. It also serves as a crucial bridge between the original Frankenstein and the continuation of that series, which remains the best old-school franchise in the Universal house of horrors, despite diminishing returns with later Frankenstein sequels. And Lanchester’s Bride endures as the face of female monsterdom, establishing that women can embody horror on par with the best of the big boy beasts.
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