Review of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) by Forrest P — 24 Apr 2010

I wasn't sure how I would feel about The Bride of Frankenstein going into it, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I was just as impressed with this film as I was with its predecessor, especially on a storytelling level. Perhaps more on a storytelling level.

That being said, there is a flaw in this film that would follow in its successor: it was just a little too convenient and unbelievable in the way they let the monster survive the last film. It also throws out a little bit of credulity that the ending of the last film had, and I wasn't a big fan of that addition.

Still, Bride did a lot more with the characterization of the Monster, and I loved it. There was a very lovely scene with a blind man bonding with the monster. I loved everything that scene was trying and succeeding in doing: giving the Monster a whole other layer.

Colin Clive was just as believable in this movie as he was in the last one, and we definitely needed a performance like him to tie the movie together. There was a wonderful way that Clive was able to keep all the characters completely together in the movie. He was the driving force behind the storyline and without him I feel like it would have tanked.

The story was told very well, as in the last one, with the exception of that very odd and unusual forward at the beginning of the picture. I'm not entirely sure why the filmmakers brought the author onto the screen, but it took me away from the movie continually.

***Warning: Here There Be Spoilers***.

What I wasn't sure if I liked or not was the way the audience only got about five minutes of the woman that Frankenstein made for the Monster. I liked everything they did with her while she was onscreen, but I do feel like more parallelisms could have been drawn between Frankenstein and his wife and the Monster's and his.

***.

Nontheless, The Bride of Frankenstein was a great picture. I am not sure that I would put it on the same level as the original, but it certainly deserves its place as a classic.

8/10.