At left is a scene from my favorite horror/monster movie, Bride of Frankenstein. That's Elsa Lanchester as the Bride (always capitalized) in James Whale's 1935 sequel to the original, a sequel that everyone agrees is better than the first film. (Click the pic for a much larger view of our Halloween greeting!)
I spent the other night watching the 2 documentaries that appear on the Frankenstein Legacy Series Universal put out on DVD about 2 years ago. In addition to the 5 films, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, and House of Frankenstein, the 2-disc set contains some other features and a menu that's remarkably hard to navigate (just try finding the docs on disc 2). (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman appears on the Wolfman Legacy Series disc).) Bride is an absolutely wonderful film, a sequel, a monster movie featuring Karloff at his best, and a black comedy all rolled into one. Director James Whale really didn't want to do a sequel, but the studio convinced him. Originally set to be the Return of Frankenstein (the name applies to the creator, in this case played by Colin Clive, not the monster), Whale fussed with the script and kept Universal rolling over a barrel to get the things he wanted. What did he want? Well, the unconventional Ms. Lanchester for one thing, as both the Bride and Mary Shelley, the author of the original Frankenstein. Also, that quirky prologue with Shelley, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, one that caused the censorship board a collective heart attack due to Lanchester's prominently plunging neckline. Whale set out to make the most outrageous movie he could. Given the time and the censorship issues involved, he was surprisingly successful, and the documentary points out what he was trying to do, what he was allowed to do, and how he still, for the most part, made it work the way he wanted it to.
Bride is just a wonderful film, one filled with warm nostalgia for me. I have a great love for just about all the Universal monster flicks of the 30s and 40s, especially the Frankenstein series. By the time Bride was released in 1935, Whale was one of the most respected directors in Hollywood and the feather in Universal's cap. A smaller studio with very few A-level productions, Whale gave the studio prestige even when doing a so-called "monster" film (then the term was met with derision...now it's with fondness). And Karloff--and that's what he was called at that point in time, by just his last name--was at the pinnacle of his career. This soft-spoken English gentleman made his living scaring the pants off of people, young and old alike. He never fretted about being typecast, and he viewed the monster as his dear, old friend.
Bride's particular brand of nostalgia for me comes from when I first encountered it. For many years it was the holy grail of my young life. We had cable TV in the 60s in my hometown of Tamaqua, PA, and we received stations from both Philadelphia and New York. The 3 stations we got from NYC were independent (WOR, WNEW, WPIX) and as such they were pretty low rent at times. WPIX showed a form of "Chiller Theater" on Saturday nights at 7:30, I believe. It was the lowest of the low. My dad, who called this type of TV fare "kook shows," would use our watching them as a convenient out to go hang out with his buddies at the the cigar store downtown.
Creepier than the movies shown on WPIX was the opening of "Chiller Theater," featuring scenes culled from some of the movies. What always got me was the shot of Vampira, wriggingly her way towards the camera, her narrow waist cinched down to a belt size of 6, it seemed, her skinny arms and long fingernails and zombie-fied eyes staring blankly at the viewer...ME! Always got me, even though the "source material" was the worst horror/SF movie ever made--even to a 9-year-old--Plan 9 From Outer Space. WPIX's "Chiller" showed the dregs of the 50s: She-Demons, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Daughter, Plan 9...and it seemed like they had only about 10 or 12 films that they kept showing and showing and...
So that made WFIL's late-night version of "Chiller Theater" even more alluring. Broadcasting from Philadelphia and starting either at 11:30pm or 12:00am, WFIL offered TWO big horror/monster/SF features each Saturday night and they had the classics. All the Universal monster movies were offered to stations starting in the late 50s, in a package called "Shock Theater". Some stations had hosts, some didn't...some had them for a time, some never did. It was a constant battle with my mom to stay up to see these classics (proclaimed so by my older brother, Rick, and Forry Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a publication banned for a time in our house), and finally, around the age of 11 or so, I won. "But don't come crying to me if you have nightmares," she said. (I could have nightmares from watching these movies? I got them from reading FM...that's what started the ban.)
First up at bat (pun intended) was Bride of Frankenstein, one late Saturday night. I was hooked. Even though now I realize the rest of the films that followed went increasingly downhill at a faster and faster rate, to be eventually redeemed by, of all people, Abbott and Costello, I still love them all. Even though Universal execs nixed the ongoing storyline from Son to Ghost to Meets the Wolfman (you see, Ygor's brain was transplanted into the Monster's body at the end of Ghost, so Lugosi playing the Monster in Meets makes sense, especially since the Monster would speak with Ygor's--Lugosi's--voice, but the effect was ridiculous and the Monster became mute once again). But I love Bride the most. I love Elsa with that 'do and that HISSSS, Colin Clive with his over-acting and his sad, tortured real life, Ernest Thesiger for the wonkiest performance ever captured on film, and most of all, I love Karloff, with his scary, poignant, lonely performance of the ultimate outsider, the monster we all loved to hate, the monster we all eventually just plain loved, and the monster we all called, simply and wrongly, Frankenstein.
I grew up in new york in the early 1960's and I agree the opening for chiller theatre always scared the pants out of me with vampira seeming to reach out for you. they definitely played some turkeys though the cyclops, the indestructible man, the hideous sun demon etc. Do you remember supernatual theatre on wor on saturday nights they had some films that frightened me for years like carnival of souls and the manster
Posted by: anthony deluca | February 12, 2006 at 01:36 PM
YES!
On all counts!!The Bride rules!
Nicely written, Gary.
Fred
Posted by: Fred Hembeck | November 01, 2005 at 03:36 PM