Director: James Whale
Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye
Have I seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, I’m more mystified that it has taken me this long in the course of these reviews and not managed to re-watch this one yet. What have I been doing this whole time?
Did I Like It: I mean, I think I get why. I’ve always had a certain partiality to Bride of Frankenstein (1935), so it usually gets my attention when I’m in the mood for anything Whale. The relationship between this film and its sequel is not unlike that of Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). One is a perfectly fine horror movie that captured the imagination of people with its iconography and pathos, while the sequel is an exercise in blissful artistic anarchy.
This is not to take away from the original, though. Here, Whale manages to still tap into his better instincts more often than not with a perfect exercise in tone, supported by perfect (and yes, sometimes perfectly campy) performances, right from the little fellow (Van Sloan, who is unrecognizable from his later role as Dr. Waldman or even his Van Hellsing in Dracula (1931)) who comes out from behind the curtain before the film to warn us about what we are about to experience* to the blustery Baron Frankenstein (Frederick Kerr).
I would put it at the very top of the early Universal horror films, just a hair below its transcendent sequel, but certainly ahead of Dracula, which may yet qualify as a sedative.
* I don’t know why more movies didn’t do this back then or even now, as it is legitimately charming and even here manages to be a little unnerving, promising horrors that might have diminished in the last 90 years. I mean, I do get it. The preamble was added by a studio afraid that the God-fearing in the movie houses would riot if they saw a man try to give life on a corpse. Once they only mildly objected, future horror films could get away with just letting reel one being without additional comment.