Double Dose of Frankenstein

 (Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple.  Today: Continuing my re-dive into Universal's classic "dark universe", it's the first two entries in Universal's Frankenstein series....)

Frankenstein (1931) - dir. James Whale - CriterionChannel
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - dir. James Whale - CriterionChannel

Having just watched two versions of Dracula which utilized the same sets, I was keenly aware that there was some sets reused from one Universal film to the next, especially factoring in the timing.  They're maybe redressed a little differently, lit a little differently or shot from a different angle, but there was certainly a economic efficiency to the Universal horror production line.

Likewise, there was some casting crossover, with Dracula's Renfield, Dwight Frye, here portraying Dr. Henry Frankenstein's assistant Fritz, and Drac's Van Helsing Edward Van Sloan is playing the not so different Professor Dr. Waldman (it would have been really interesting if he played Van Helsing in both shows, but they just weren't thinking of franchise building back then).

Dr. Frankenstein is going mad with his desire to play god and create life from death.  He and his assistant Fritz get busy graverobbing for the needs of his particular project.  We're supposed to read a lot into the fact that the brain that Fritz stole was from a murderous criminal...but we'll come back to that.  Meanwhile, Henry's fiance Elizabeth and best friend Victor are very worried about him and his state of mind.  Along with Henry's former professor, they ascend upon his spire just as a storm is brewing.  They're just in time to watch Henry's creation come to life.

The Monster is, immediately, treated as an abomination. Though his mannerisms are positively child-like, he's a bruiser of a giant unaware of his own strength (did the Monster inspire Lennie in Of Mice and Men?).  Fritz immediately starts whipping and tossing torches in the Monster's face.  I had just seen a part of a documentary about how "trained" elephants are effectively beaten and tortured into submission, experiencing intense trauma and PTSD as a result.  This seems almost exactly what is being done to the Monster.  It's no wonder he lashes out.

Henry and Elizabeth are off to get married, and the whole town is celebrating...or else it Oktoberfest.  Meanwhile the Professor drugs up the Monster and seeks to disassemble him.  The Monster awakens and kills him (it's self defense?) and escapes the Keep.  He encounters a lonely child, Maria, who isn't afraid of him.  They play a game of tossing flowers into the water and watching them float, but the confused, childlike Monster doesn't understand, and tosses the child in, and she doesn't float, nor know how to swim.  She drowns and he flees.  Eventually it leads to the town uniting with torches to hunt the creature down, and they corner him into a windmill, which they torch, thinking the creature will meet his demise.

The whole production, while certainly of its time, is still engaging viewing.  The sets, costuming and lighting are all pretty great.  There are a tremendous amount of outdoor scenes which I love seeing in old black and white films, escaping the sameyness of sets.  The Oktoberfest wedding celebration looks like a great time, but Maria's dad stumbling through the festivities with his dead daughter in his arms it's a genuinely upsetting sequence.  The performances aren't uniformly great, but generally solid (Frye certainly reins it in from his Renflied performance), but Boris Karloff as the Monster is striking, and he does a great job bringing the childlike naivete and innocence into the creature.  It's just unfortunate his particular stilted movements and grunting and groaning have been parodied so much in the past 90 years, but there's still more to his performance than just those.

Deviating greatly from Mary Shelley's text, the film does forge its own path but misses the most interesting aspects along the way.  When the senior Frankenstein is introduced, it's clear that Henry grew up with a difficult father.  It would have been wonderful to explore that relationship in partnership to Henry's "parenting" of the Monster, but it never even thinks to broach those relationships in any meaningful way.  Likewise the mix-up with the Monster's brain, from a "regular brain" to a "corrupt brain", could have led to a nature vs. nurture examination, but the film really doesn't want to examine much.  It seems to be in conflict with itself about whether the Monster should be sympathetic or Monstrous, and it never confidently picks a lane.  It's a problem that carries forward into the sequel.

The Bride of Frankenstein opens, bizarrely, with actors portraying Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley and her dandy husband Percey Bysshe Shelley and their dandier friend Lord Byron, all lounging in front of a fire.  Byron recounts the events of the first movie, and Mary decides to tell them what happened next.  It's the last we see of this trio (we could only have hoped for a Princess Bride-style series of interruptions).

Mary's story opens where we left off, with the windmill burning to the ground.  The burgomaster ( Burger Master!) has been recast, as has Elizabeth, and this film introduces Minnie as the loudmouth servant who is I guess comic relief?  Beneath the windmill the Monster has escaped into the underground stream.  He brutally murders poor lil' Maria's dad (also recast) and mother (heretofore unseen) and runs past Minnie leaving her unharmed and escaping into the woods.  

Meanwhile Henry, recovering from his encounter with his offspring, gets a visit from one Dr. Pretorius.  If Henry was a half-mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius is full-bore.  He shows Henry his own creations that he brought to life, a quintet of wee people he keeps in jars, which he said he grew from seed.  I assume the Anton Arkane from Swamp Thing comics was a riff off Dr. Pretorius.  

Pretorius is looking to Henry to teach him how to create big-people life, and he has a couple of assistant murderers who will acquire the raw materials for him.  The Monster meanwhile, after a couple of fateful encounters, meets a kindly blind hermit who takes him in, teaches him how to talk, drink and smoke, and a little bit of the difference between good and bad...all the things his own dad didn't.  The Monster made a friend, but a pair of fearful hunters break up the friendship and send the Monster running, straight to Dr. Pretorius who is very glad to meet him.  He promises the Monster not just a friend, but a girlfriend. Together they kidnap Elizabeth to force Henry to conduct his work.  

The Bride of Frankenstein is a success, except she recoils in fear when she meets her new friend.  Disheartened, the Monster destroys the lab, and presumably Dr. Pretorius, the Bride, and himself.  It's a tragedy.

But the real tragedy is how this film crafts a stunning looking creature in the Bride, but we only see her for a scant couple minutes at the very end of the film.  There's so much to mine with the Monster learning language and how to express himself, and to have another Monster who is even less wise in the world than he. 

The sequel is bigger in scope, and gunning for more entertainment.  There's more Monster rampaging, which means a lot of senseless killing that seems, once again, to conflict with the sensitivity of the Monster. It's not a better movie than the original, but it's more fun.  It tries for more comedy, more adventure, more action, more horror, more weirdness, and it succeeds, but at the cost of consistency.

With the same director, there's a definite consistency in its visual presentation, but there was a huge shift between 1931 and 1935 in that The Bride of Frankenstein has an actual score accompanying it.  It's not a great score, but it fills the empty spaces that seemed so vacant in both Frankenstein and Dracula.

BUT IS IT HORROR? 
I'm sure in the 1930's these were deemed maybe a little more intense, psychologically disturbing (the producer even introduces the film warning of its morbid themes), but 50 years after, when I was a young'un these were considered basically kids movies.