1 00:00:13,247 --> 00:00:17,604 Hello. This is Scott MacQueen, and we're about to watch the perfect horror movie, 2 00:00:17,687 --> 00:00:22,397 James Whale's 1935 Universal production of Bride of Frankenstein. 3 00:00:23,647 --> 00:00:27,356 Wanting nothing to do with a sequel to his 1931 film Frankenstein, 4 00:00:27,447 --> 00:00:31,725 James Whale responded to the inevitable with style, wit and production value. 5 00:00:31,807 --> 00:00:37,643 He extracted the absolute best in concept and craft from his cast and technical staff. 6 00:00:38,927 --> 00:00:43,523 Every department excels under a director who knew exactly the effect he wanted: 7 00:00:43,607 --> 00:00:47,486 An opera of the macabre, distilling ideas and fusing imagery 8 00:00:47,567 --> 00:00:52,277 of a myriad antecedents, instilling them with subtext and theme. 9 00:00:52,367 --> 00:00:56,997 Mastery, control and purpose inform every frame of this remarkable film. 10 00:00:58,607 --> 00:01:02,441 A stellar cast of largely British principals is amended at the bottom 11 00:01:02,527 --> 00:01:07,043 with "The Monster's Mate" played by... a question mark. 12 00:01:45,687 --> 00:01:49,680 The servant walking Lord Byron's hounds is Irish actress Una O'Connor. 13 00:01:49,767 --> 00:01:52,645 We'll meet her again in her principal role as Minnie, 14 00:01:52,727 --> 00:01:55,082 housekeeper of Castle Frankenstein. 15 00:01:55,167 --> 00:01:59,604 This whimsical doubling foreshadows that of actress Elsa Lanchester. 16 00:01:59,687 --> 00:02:03,316 In an hour or so, we'll meet Elsa as the monster's bride. 17 00:02:03,407 --> 00:02:05,762 Here she is as Mary Godwin. 18 00:02:05,847 --> 00:02:09,601 The cast list notwithstanding, she's not Mary Shelley yet. 19 00:02:11,207 --> 00:02:14,961 The prologue was conceived by Whale and first written by Edmund Pearson. 20 00:02:15,047 --> 00:02:19,040 Pearson created anachronisms, as he put it, "for the benefit of the censors". 21 00:02:19,127 --> 00:02:21,846 In historical reality, English poet Percy Shelley 22 00:02:21,927 --> 00:02:24,521 abandoned his wife Harriet and their two children 23 00:02:24,607 --> 00:02:27,121 to live abroad with his lover, Mary Godwin. 24 00:02:27,207 --> 00:02:29,118 Mary bore their love child, William. 25 00:02:29,207 --> 00:02:31,721 They wed only after Harriet's convenient suicide, 26 00:02:31,807 --> 00:02:35,197 coincident with the publication of Frankenstein in 1818 - 27 00:02:35,287 --> 00:02:40,202 its author also anonymous, like the cipher in the Universal cast list. 28 00:02:40,287 --> 00:02:44,917 Originally, the prologue celebrated the naughty behaviour of its principals. 29 00:02:45,007 --> 00:02:47,726 "We are all three infidels, scoffers at marriage ties, 30 00:02:47,807 --> 00:02:50,958 believing only in living fully and freely" stated Mary 31 00:02:51,047 --> 00:02:55,916 in dialogue cut from the prologue - along with lingering views of Elsa's décolletage. 32 00:02:56,007 --> 00:02:58,237 When Mary refers to "such an audience", 33 00:02:58,327 --> 00:03:01,444 she doesn't mean her reading public, but her circle of friends. 34 00:03:01,527 --> 00:03:04,485 Contract player Frank Lawton was considered to play Shelley. 35 00:03:04,567 --> 00:03:07,877 David Niven tested for the part, but was rejected. 36 00:03:08,647 --> 00:03:12,083 Screenwriter John Balderston worked the prologue into his second draft, 37 00:03:12,167 --> 00:03:16,558 but only in William Hurlbut's final script was the precision achieved 38 00:03:16,647 --> 00:03:19,684 that makes Bride of Frankenstein so memorable. 39 00:03:19,767 --> 00:03:23,840 Eight writers worked on it, but the story and language of Bride of Frankenstein 40 00:03:23,927 --> 00:03:28,876 is ultimately due almost entirely to William Hurlbut and James Whale. 41 00:03:53,847 --> 00:03:58,079 This shot of the funeral cortege was the original opening of Frankenstein, 42 00:03:58,167 --> 00:04:00,476 curiously still missing from prints today. 43 00:04:00,567 --> 00:04:05,004 As originally recorded, Franz Waxman's music for the prologue ran 5¾ minutes, 44 00:04:05,087 --> 00:04:08,966 indicating that the sequence has been trimmed by nearly two minutes. 45 00:04:09,047 --> 00:04:12,278 Waxman scored the prologue as salon music of the early 19th century, 46 00:04:12,367 --> 00:04:16,440 utilising strings and celeste to create a delicate minuet in A-B-C-A form: 47 00:04:16,527 --> 00:04:18,757 Statement, development, followed by a scherzo 48 00:04:18,847 --> 00:04:21,759 as the original picture's horrors are relived in flashback. 49 00:04:21,847 --> 00:04:25,317 The scherzo is a minor-key desyncopated variation of the minuet. 50 00:04:25,407 --> 00:04:27,477 At each depiction of the monster 51 00:04:27,567 --> 00:04:30,764 is sounded a nine-note ascending/descending chromatic run, 52 00:04:30,847 --> 00:04:32,678 patterned on the monster's growl. 53 00:04:32,767 --> 00:04:35,679 It will recur as a danger motif several times in the score, 54 00:04:35,767 --> 00:04:39,646 usually in conjunction with a five-tone third-interval motif for the monster. 55 00:04:39,727 --> 00:04:44,562 The motif that we heard in the main title is saved for Karloff's first entrance. 56 00:04:44,647 --> 00:04:47,286 That was Torben Meyer being throttled by the monster - 57 00:04:47,367 --> 00:04:49,676 the only new footage in the flashback. 58 00:04:49,767 --> 00:04:53,646 Meyer played the Danish tenant in Universal's Murders in the Rue Morgue. 59 00:04:53,727 --> 00:04:56,366 Some thought the prologue immaterial. 60 00:04:56,447 --> 00:05:00,076 Film editor Ted Kent argued for its complete elimination. 61 00:05:00,167 --> 00:05:04,206 As the flashback ends, the demure 'A' section of the minuet returns. 62 00:05:04,287 --> 00:05:08,246 The anticipatory mood is reflected as the violins play the minuet col legno, 63 00:05:08,327 --> 00:05:09,760 tapping the wood of their bows on the strings. 64 00:05:10,807 --> 00:05:13,367 The metre slows, the musical phrase fails to complete, 65 00:05:13,447 --> 00:05:16,564 the key changes to minor with drawn strings. 66 00:05:23,807 --> 00:05:26,401 In what period and place is this story occurring? 67 00:05:26,487 --> 00:05:29,479 Post-Tesla generators, telephonic electrical devices 68 00:05:29,567 --> 00:05:31,797 and 1930s marcelled hairstyles 69 00:05:31,887 --> 00:05:34,481 will coexist with a peasantry by Brueghel. 70 00:05:34,567 --> 00:05:39,004 Burgomasters and serfs with Teutonic names like Hans and Karl 71 00:05:39,087 --> 00:05:43,603 speak in accents hailing from Glasgow, County Cork and Pasadena. 72 00:05:43,687 --> 00:05:46,804 Quote: "I've taken the rest of the story far into the future 73 00:05:46,887 --> 00:05:50,038 and made use of developments which science will someday know, 74 00:05:50,127 --> 00:05:55,042 100 years to come", said Mary Shelley in dialogue removed from the prologue, 75 00:05:55,127 --> 00:05:58,756 rationalising an alternate universe peppered with anachronisms. 76 00:05:58,847 --> 00:06:01,839 Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado takes place in a Japan 77 00:06:01,927 --> 00:06:04,157 that is suspiciously like Victorian England. 78 00:06:04,247 --> 00:06:07,683 In similar fashion, the English-born Whale has created a Goldstadt 79 00:06:07,767 --> 00:06:09,997 that is really a British never-never land. 80 00:06:10,087 --> 00:06:15,445 Several 1935 press squibs actually stated that the locale for the picture is England. 81 00:06:16,087 --> 00:06:18,647 In a contemporary interview, Whale explained. 82 00:06:18,727 --> 00:06:22,606 "The whole of the theatre, both stage and screen, is unreal, 83 00:06:22,687 --> 00:06:25,360 and if, for 1½ hours, the audience can be transported 84 00:06:25,447 --> 00:06:28,803 into a strange atmosphere in which unnatural things happen, 85 00:06:28,887 --> 00:06:31,447 but appear to happen naturally and believably, 86 00:06:31,527 --> 00:06:35,156 the object of the film producer is accomplished." 87 00:06:35,847 --> 00:06:41,558 "While the intention is a thrilling melodrama", states a production note, 88 00:06:41,647 --> 00:06:45,083 "it is punctuated by the comedy of the burgomaster and the housekeeper, 89 00:06:45,167 --> 00:06:49,558 who voice the scepticism of the audience in the manner of The Invisible Man." 90 00:06:49,647 --> 00:06:52,957 Whale knew during the writing who would play these two. 91 00:06:53,047 --> 00:06:56,198 Essentially reprising their roles from that 1933 film 92 00:06:56,287 --> 00:06:58,755 are Whale favourites EE Clive as the burgomaster 93 00:06:58,847 --> 00:07:01,441 and Una O'Connor as Minnie, the housekeeper. 94 00:07:01,527 --> 00:07:04,325 The parts were written for these specific performers. 95 00:07:04,407 --> 00:07:08,400 The unforgettable role of Dr Pretorius was apparently tailored for Claude Rains. 96 00:07:08,487 --> 00:07:10,523 It is not known why Rains bowed out. 97 00:07:10,607 --> 00:07:12,723 According to later studio memos, 98 00:07:12,807 --> 00:07:16,004 he declined the Basil Rathbone part in Son of Frankenstein 99 00:07:16,087 --> 00:07:17,964 because it was a horror picture. 100 00:07:18,047 --> 00:07:20,925 Ernest Thesiger, another Whale favourite, filled the gap, 101 00:07:21,007 --> 00:07:24,079 dramatically changing the movie's orbit. 102 00:07:24,167 --> 00:07:28,479 The old Baron Frankenstein, referred to here, is never mentioned again. 103 00:07:28,567 --> 00:07:31,286 In the preview version, the news of Henry's alleged death did the old man in. 104 00:07:33,607 --> 00:07:37,998 The baron wasn't shown, but the priest and altar boys attending last rites were, 105 00:07:38,087 --> 00:07:41,602 and they can still be found in one or two production stills. 106 00:07:41,687 --> 00:07:44,997 The parents of Maria, the child drowned in the original film, 107 00:07:45,087 --> 00:07:47,760 are played by Reginald Barlow and Mary Gordon. 108 00:07:47,847 --> 00:07:52,079 Michael Mark, the father in Frankenstein, was called Ludwig. 109 00:07:52,167 --> 00:07:54,237 Reginald Barlow, here called Hans, 110 00:07:54,327 --> 00:07:59,037 appeared in the concurrent Werewolf of London as the estate caretaker, Timothy. 111 00:07:59,127 --> 00:08:02,563 Upon reviewing the November 30th, 1934, shooting script, 112 00:08:02,647 --> 00:08:06,720 Joseph Breen, the omnipotent censor of the Production Code Administration, 113 00:08:06,807 --> 00:08:09,958 wrote the studio "We counted ten separate scenes 114 00:08:10,047 --> 00:08:13,483 in which the monster either strangles or tramples people to death - 115 00:08:13,567 --> 00:08:16,525 this in addition to murders by secondary characters." 116 00:08:16,607 --> 00:08:19,041 "Such a great amount of slaughter is unwise, 117 00:08:19,127 --> 00:08:23,359 and we recommend earnestly that you do something about toning this down." 118 00:08:23,447 --> 00:08:26,837 Whale balked: "Kill them all. Let Breen sort them out." 119 00:08:26,927 --> 00:08:32,160 Whale's first cut contained no less than 21 deaths either committed or alluded to. 120 00:08:32,247 --> 00:08:33,566 After Breen's sorting, 121 00:08:33,647 --> 00:08:37,322 the casualty rate plummeted to a mere ten confirmed decedents. 122 00:08:37,407 --> 00:08:41,798 Franz Waxman's famous five-note motif for the monster, usually played by brass, 123 00:08:41,887 --> 00:08:43,923 provides the backbone of the score, 124 00:08:44,007 --> 00:08:47,079 and will recur in various guises and developments, 125 00:08:47,167 --> 00:08:51,638 including flutter tonguing for danger and harmon mutes for comic effect. 126 00:08:51,727 --> 00:08:54,161 As developed, it comments both on the creature 127 00:08:54,247 --> 00:08:56,556 and other characters' reactions to him. 128 00:08:56,647 --> 00:09:01,198 Poor Mary Gordon is Hans' wife. Her Mrs Hudson suffered for years 129 00:09:01,287 --> 00:09:04,836 the eccentricities of Basil Rathbone in the Sherlock Holmes films. 130 00:09:04,927 --> 00:09:08,886 The Scottish-born actress is tossed into the cistern here by Boris Karloff, 131 00:09:08,967 --> 00:09:12,323 and would be throttled by Lon Chaney in The Mummy's Tomb. 132 00:09:12,407 --> 00:09:15,080 She survived a rematch with Karloff in The Body Snatcher, 133 00:09:15,167 --> 00:09:19,001 only to see Boris bludgeon her wee doggie and steal her son's corpse. 134 00:09:19,087 --> 00:09:21,157 That's Hollywood for you. 135 00:09:21,247 --> 00:09:24,603 Jack Pierce brilliantly extrapolated Karloff's make-up in Bride, 136 00:09:24,687 --> 00:09:29,203 creating several stages of distress and regeneration, all in narrative continuity. 137 00:09:29,287 --> 00:09:31,755 The wounded monster healed progressively. 138 00:09:31,847 --> 00:09:35,840 Karloff seems fleshier because he is more padded than in the first film. 139 00:09:35,927 --> 00:09:40,398 The need to speak means that he does not remove his dental plate this time, 140 00:09:40,487 --> 00:09:42,842 forfeiting the cadaverous sunken cheek. 141 00:09:42,927 --> 00:09:45,202 Nor did Pierce paint him with as many hollows. 142 00:09:45,287 --> 00:09:48,677 The hollow in the monster's cheek became an annoying grace note 143 00:09:48,767 --> 00:09:52,646 until, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, it looked like Bela Lugosi's monster 144 00:09:52,727 --> 00:09:57,118 and llona Massey's heroine both sported duelling beauty marks. 145 00:09:58,407 --> 00:10:03,003 Elizabeth, the true bride of Frankenstein, played by a 17-year-old Valerie Hobson - 146 00:10:03,087 --> 00:10:04,918 truly a child bride. 147 00:10:05,007 --> 00:10:07,396 Whale would have liked Mae Clarke, his original, 148 00:10:07,487 --> 00:10:10,718 but her frail health by 1935 made this impossible. 149 00:10:10,807 --> 00:10:14,595 D'Arcy Corrigan, who plays the morgue attendant in Murders in the Rue Morgue, 150 00:10:14,687 --> 00:10:16,484 delivers the bad news to Valerie. 151 00:10:16,567 --> 00:10:20,003 He is flanked by the family of Whale's longtime companion David Lewis. 152 00:10:20,087 --> 00:10:22,442 His mother, Fanny Levy, is the chubby peasant, 153 00:10:22,527 --> 00:10:24,995 his father, Pon Levy, the stout, bearded man. 154 00:10:25,087 --> 00:10:29,524 David's sister, Leah Bishan, is the sweet-faced girl blinking back tears. 155 00:10:29,607 --> 00:10:33,805 Leah's daughter recalls Uncle Jimmy helping the Levys survive the Depression 156 00:10:33,887 --> 00:10:38,039 with extra work in Bride, One More River and The Road Back. 157 00:10:39,767 --> 00:10:42,804 How soon after Frankenstein was a sequel planned? 158 00:10:42,887 --> 00:10:47,403 According to Robert Florey, that film's disinvited director, almost immediately. 159 00:10:47,487 --> 00:10:50,479 Florey submitted an unsolicited seven-page treatment, 160 00:10:50,567 --> 00:10:54,003 which was returned to him without comment in February 1932. 161 00:10:54,087 --> 00:10:58,763 Frankenstein hit, a money machine, and Carl Laemmle Junior wanted more. 162 00:10:58,847 --> 00:11:02,203 James Whale refused, finding the entire premise repellent. 163 00:11:02,287 --> 00:11:06,041 Former newspaperman Tom Reed wrote a sequel in June and July 1933, 164 00:11:06,127 --> 00:11:10,006 floating random chunks of the Shelley novel into his own mindless stew. 165 00:11:10,087 --> 00:11:14,319 The now-educated monster demands a mate, killing Elizabeth for body parts. 166 00:11:14,407 --> 00:11:16,875 Henry destroys himself and his creatures. 167 00:11:16,967 --> 00:11:20,357 The old baron, written as the grumpy Frederick Kerr from the first film, 168 00:11:20,447 --> 00:11:24,645 monopolises the first half of the script until the monster mercifully chokes him. 169 00:11:24,727 --> 00:11:29,118 Then bad comedy with villagers, the bishop, a gay dance-instructor, take over. 170 00:11:29,207 --> 00:11:32,165 Henry steals the legs of Frau von Hassenbagovitz 171 00:11:32,247 --> 00:11:34,556 from a pompous undertaker's embalming room, 172 00:11:34,647 --> 00:11:37,878 he ambulance-chases a train wreck to scavenge body parts, 173 00:11:37,967 --> 00:11:41,482 and steals the hydrocephalic head of a suicided circus giantess 174 00:11:41,567 --> 00:11:42,761 to build the bride. 175 00:11:42,847 --> 00:11:45,600 A glimmer or two emerge from the dross to be retained - 176 00:11:45,687 --> 00:11:49,396 the monster seeing his reflection in a pool, his education in speech, 177 00:11:49,487 --> 00:11:53,560 the befriending of a blind man, the mate, the destruction of the lab, 178 00:11:53,647 --> 00:11:56,081 and the thematic seed of religious piety. 179 00:11:56,167 --> 00:12:00,080 Josef Berne and Morton Coyne prepared an independent treatment 180 00:12:00,167 --> 00:12:03,682 based on Reed's material that was equally uneventful. 181 00:12:06,087 --> 00:12:08,237 By September 1933, Kurt Neumann was announced to direct, 182 00:12:08,327 --> 00:12:10,318 but the returns on The Invisible Man 183 00:12:10,407 --> 00:12:14,559 made Whale the obvious commercial - protesting - choice. 184 00:12:14,647 --> 00:12:18,799 "They've had a script prepared", he told The Invisible Man's writer, RC Sherriff, 185 00:12:18,887 --> 00:12:20,639 "and it stinks to heaven." 186 00:12:20,727 --> 00:12:23,366 Whale was preparing One More River with Sherriff, 187 00:12:23,447 --> 00:12:26,996 a property Whale was passionate about, but that made the Laemmles yawn. 188 00:12:27,087 --> 00:12:30,363 A bargain was made: One for James, one for the Laemmles. 189 00:12:30,447 --> 00:12:32,677 Whale resigned himself to the sequel. 190 00:12:32,767 --> 00:12:35,361 Two original treatments were evolved independently 191 00:12:35,447 --> 00:12:40,441 by mystery writers Lawrence Blochman and Philip MacDonald, in December 1933. 192 00:12:40,527 --> 00:12:42,916 Blochman's treatment seems partially inspired 193 00:12:43,007 --> 00:12:46,158 by Todd Browning's 1932 film Freaks. 194 00:12:46,247 --> 00:12:51,116 Henry and Elizabeth, incognito, have joined a travelling carnival as puppeteers. 195 00:12:51,207 --> 00:12:54,119 They re-enact the monster's drama with marionettes. 196 00:12:54,207 --> 00:12:56,960 All the carnival oddities have spouses and lovers - 197 00:12:57,047 --> 00:13:01,006 even Emma, the lion tamer, who boasts about how she beats her husband 198 00:13:01,087 --> 00:13:03,999 even as she dallies with Fifi, the giantess. 199 00:13:04,087 --> 00:13:06,601 Enter the monster, wanting a love match. 200 00:13:06,687 --> 00:13:08,917 The bride is produced in a carnival wagon 201 00:13:09,007 --> 00:13:12,761 and the enraged monster dies in the jaws of Emma's lions. 202 00:13:13,607 --> 00:13:16,724 Philip MacDonald's story was absolutely up to date, 203 00:13:16,807 --> 00:13:20,004 equally original as Blochman's and equally useless. 204 00:13:20,087 --> 00:13:23,636 War clouds over Europe, and Henry has developed his delta death ray, 205 00:13:23,727 --> 00:13:27,322 that he wishes to sell to the League of Nations as a deterrent to war. 206 00:13:27,407 --> 00:13:29,967 Henry has neglected his sickly wife Elizabeth, 207 00:13:30,047 --> 00:13:33,244 over whom family friend Victor Moritz is still spooning. 208 00:13:33,327 --> 00:13:37,081 A nocturnal demonstration of the ray inadvertently revives the monster, 209 00:13:37,167 --> 00:13:40,523 and a second exposure gives him superhuman strength. 210 00:13:40,607 --> 00:13:43,519 The monster plays with the apparatus' dials like a child, 211 00:13:43,607 --> 00:13:47,316 inadvertently raining death and destruction across Europe, 212 00:13:47,407 --> 00:13:49,079 decimating whole cities. 213 00:13:49,167 --> 00:13:53,638 A remorseful Henry apologises to his creature, vaporises him with the ray, 214 00:13:53,727 --> 00:13:56,366 and then immolates himself in its beam. 215 00:13:59,007 --> 00:14:03,239 It was written that Elizabeth's vision would be a classical grim reaper, 216 00:14:03,327 --> 00:14:07,002 a ghost of Christmas yet-to-come, bearing a strong whiff of the monster. 217 00:14:07,087 --> 00:14:10,124 It would have been dangerous to go over the top so early on, 218 00:14:10,207 --> 00:14:12,198 with so many fancies yet to come. 219 00:14:12,287 --> 00:14:15,723 Far better to drop the other shoe with the arrival of Dr Pretorius, 220 00:14:15,807 --> 00:14:18,480 a literal figure of death. 221 00:14:18,567 --> 00:14:21,445 We're ready for our wake-up call, Dr P. 222 00:14:22,607 --> 00:14:25,883 Promethean hubris drives the story - or this telling of it. 223 00:14:25,967 --> 00:14:27,764 Henry rationalises his blasphemy 224 00:14:27,847 --> 00:14:31,044 by conjecturing that his actions are part of the divine plan: 225 00:14:31,127 --> 00:14:33,880 The devil didn't make him do it, God did. 226 00:14:34,447 --> 00:14:37,678 Having created a shambling revenant with unpredictable powers, 227 00:14:37,767 --> 00:14:42,716 Frankenstein refuses to take responsibility for its care or destruction. 228 00:14:42,807 --> 00:14:45,719 Whale was a man of absolutely no religious convictions, 229 00:14:45,807 --> 00:14:48,037 according to his biographer, James Curtis. 230 00:14:48,127 --> 00:14:50,595 It is fashionable to view the religious parable 231 00:14:50,687 --> 00:14:53,645 and Christ imagery in Bride of Frankenstein as mocking, 232 00:14:53,727 --> 00:14:56,525 and to attribute it to Whale's nonconformity. 233 00:14:56,607 --> 00:15:01,078 This view assumes the fey Dr Pretorius is the director's absolute alter ego, 234 00:15:01,167 --> 00:15:04,159 and that the godless reprobate represents an alternative 235 00:15:04,247 --> 00:15:06,886 to the vulgar Philistines of Goldstadt. 236 00:15:06,967 --> 00:15:11,438 As the movie unfolds, I will suggest that the story's thesis is larger. 237 00:16:12,167 --> 00:16:16,957 His entrance here is yet another one of Whale's bravura stage entrances. 238 00:16:17,367 --> 00:16:19,676 Several pages of dialogue, eliminated here, 239 00:16:19,767 --> 00:16:22,440 made it clear that this is an old acquaintance. 240 00:16:22,527 --> 00:16:24,916 Pretorius had been Henry's teacher at school, 241 00:16:25,007 --> 00:16:27,726 passing on his forbidden Promethean knowledge. 242 00:16:27,807 --> 00:16:31,595 Henry's indiscretions in monstermaking had been traced to the doctor, 243 00:16:31,687 --> 00:16:33,803 causing Pretorius to be sacked. 244 00:16:33,887 --> 00:16:38,517 Pretorius also made it clear that the monster is most likely immortal. 245 00:16:46,607 --> 00:16:50,486 The invisible man merely dreamt of walking into the holy of holies. 246 00:16:50,567 --> 00:16:54,355 Dr Pretorius has done it, and stolen God's fire. 247 00:16:54,447 --> 00:16:57,359 Like all worthy devils, Pretorius is magnetic. 248 00:16:57,447 --> 00:17:01,156 He fascinates us with wit, intelligence, self-assurance. 249 00:17:01,247 --> 00:17:04,239 He tempts us by giving voice to our worst impulses. 250 00:17:04,327 --> 00:17:08,718 He controls destiny, irresponsibly and without consequence. 251 00:17:08,807 --> 00:17:12,322 Disdainful of women, contemptuous of mankind and God, 252 00:17:12,407 --> 00:17:15,797 utterly self-absorbed, ingenuous about vice, 253 00:17:15,887 --> 00:17:18,560 Pretorius is literally one hell of a guy. 254 00:17:18,647 --> 00:17:21,525 He is the climax of a noble line of cinematic Mephistos 255 00:17:21,607 --> 00:17:24,075 that include Mr Scratch in All That Money Can Buy 256 00:17:24,167 --> 00:17:28,877 and Emil Jannings' primordial Mephistopheles in FW Murnau's Faust. 257 00:17:30,287 --> 00:17:34,166 The return of Frankenstein malingered while Whale shot One More River 258 00:17:34,247 --> 00:17:37,717 and developed A Trip To Mars, which was ultimately abandoned. 259 00:17:37,807 --> 00:17:40,879 He asked RC Sherriff to work on the sequel of Frankenstein, 260 00:17:40,967 --> 00:17:45,643 but Sherriff refused, as he said, "to spend his summer writing pulp". 261 00:17:46,247 --> 00:17:49,444 Whale conceived a prologue with Mary Shelley as a frame, 262 00:17:49,527 --> 00:17:52,724 and Edmund Pearson wrote the earliest treatment. 263 00:17:53,647 --> 00:17:58,004 Whale hired John Balderston, coauthor of the Dracula and Frankenstein plays, 264 00:17:58,087 --> 00:18:00,203 and coauthor of the film The Mummy. 265 00:18:00,287 --> 00:18:04,565 Now Hollywood's horror specialist, Balderston would contribute to such films 266 00:18:04,647 --> 00:18:08,196 as Mad Love, Dracula's Daughter and Mark of the Vampire. 267 00:18:08,287 --> 00:18:12,041 Raised in the Quaker faith, John Balderston balanced grim brutality 268 00:18:12,127 --> 00:18:15,403 and equally grim religious moralising in his stories. 269 00:18:15,487 --> 00:18:21,005 He worked through June and July 1934 on a workmanlike but unmagical script 270 00:18:21,087 --> 00:18:23,555 that supplies a road map but no gas. 271 00:18:23,647 --> 00:18:26,400 Rough narrative lines are there, but no spirit. 272 00:18:26,487 --> 00:18:31,959 Elsa Lanchester is indicated as the player for Mary Shelley and the monster's mate. 273 00:18:32,047 --> 00:18:36,325 The soul of the picture arrived with William Hurlbut in November 1934. 274 00:18:36,407 --> 00:18:41,435 Born in Illinois in 1886, Hurlbut had been a New York playwright for 30 years. 275 00:18:41,527 --> 00:18:43,722 He arrived at Universal as a dialogue writer - 276 00:18:43,807 --> 00:18:46,640 on pictures such as The Cat Creeps - when talkies came in. 277 00:18:46,727 --> 00:18:50,561 Trained as an illustrator, background in theatre, a confirmed bachelor, 278 00:18:50,647 --> 00:18:53,002 Hurlbut and Whale shared much common ground. 279 00:18:53,087 --> 00:18:55,078 Whale wanted to treat the film as a hoot, 280 00:18:55,167 --> 00:18:58,159 and he found the idea of a female monster delirious. 281 00:18:58,247 --> 00:19:00,841 He preferred the title "Bride of Frankenstein". 282 00:19:00,927 --> 00:19:04,556 With Hurlbut, Whale re-engineered the story on fanciful, witty lines. 283 00:19:04,647 --> 00:19:10,802 Dr Pretorius, his miniature creations, Minnie, and the burgomaster, were born. 284 00:19:10,887 --> 00:19:13,003 Balderston's piety was rather suspect. 285 00:19:13,087 --> 00:19:16,716 In his finale, the monster jealously kills Henry and the mate. 286 00:19:16,807 --> 00:19:20,322 In an unbelievably maudlin scene, a priest, Father Gerard, 287 00:19:20,407 --> 00:19:24,116 convinces the monster to accept God - and indeed, he proves his love 288 00:19:24,207 --> 00:19:28,041 by dispatching the hapless brute with a lightning bolt. Deus ex machina. 289 00:19:28,127 --> 00:19:30,925 With Hurlbut, Whale developed the spiritual subtext 290 00:19:31,007 --> 00:19:33,805 into something meaningful and special. 291 00:19:42,767 --> 00:19:46,680 To a new world of gods and monsters. 292 00:19:47,687 --> 00:19:49,917 The perfect line, the perfect staging: 293 00:19:50,007 --> 00:19:54,637 English gin in a chemist's retort, as drunken science toasts itself. 294 00:20:15,167 --> 00:20:19,001 The cabinet of Dr Pretorius. He has donned a medieval skullcap, 295 00:20:19,087 --> 00:20:21,726 an archaic fashion associated with alchemy, 296 00:20:21,807 --> 00:20:25,243 as depicted in Murnau's Faust and Paul Wegener's The Golem. 297 00:20:25,327 --> 00:20:27,602 More like black magic than science. 298 00:20:27,687 --> 00:20:32,363 Pretorius is wardrobed in black, with high, white, nearly clerical collar and cuffs, 299 00:20:32,447 --> 00:20:34,563 like an English country vicar. 300 00:20:34,647 --> 00:20:36,922 The skullcap makes the image discordant: 301 00:20:37,007 --> 00:20:41,080 The Reverend Dr Pretorius, High Priest of Satanic Arts. 302 00:20:42,927 --> 00:20:45,282 Special effects men John Fulton and David Horsley 303 00:20:45,367 --> 00:20:49,360 shot the little people over two days in full-scale jars against black velvet. 304 00:20:49,447 --> 00:20:52,757 This was meticulously lined up to match the production plates 305 00:20:52,847 --> 00:20:55,281 of Thesiger, Clive and the practical jars. 306 00:20:55,367 --> 00:20:59,042 The film, or foreground plate, of the tiny people was rotoscoped, 307 00:20:59,127 --> 00:21:01,516 then matted into the background plate. 308 00:21:01,607 --> 00:21:05,725 As usual with John Fulton, the optical work is flawless. 309 00:21:06,687 --> 00:21:09,076 Joan Woodbury, formerly Nana Martinez, 310 00:21:09,167 --> 00:21:11,727 was at the start of her career portraying the queen. 311 00:21:11,807 --> 00:21:14,526 In short order, she was a busy B-picture ingénue. 312 00:21:14,607 --> 00:21:18,566 The king is the image of Henry Vlll, 16th-century English sovereign. 313 00:21:18,647 --> 00:21:23,437 Henry defied the Catholic Church to divorce Catherine of Aragon. 314 00:21:23,527 --> 00:21:27,122 The rutting monarch is portrayed by English actor Arthur S Byron. 315 00:21:27,207 --> 00:21:31,405 No, not Sir Joseph Whemple in The Mummy - that was Arthur "Pops" Byron. 316 00:21:31,487 --> 00:21:33,796 Elsa Lanchester's husband, Charles Laughton, 317 00:21:33,887 --> 00:21:37,641 had just copped an Academy Award playing Henry for Alex Korda. 318 00:21:37,727 --> 00:21:39,957 Norman Ainsley is the drowsy archbishop. 319 00:21:40,047 --> 00:21:43,403 The religious parody is probably institutional, not canonical. 320 00:21:43,487 --> 00:21:46,320 The screenplay even indicated the cleric's mitre askew 321 00:21:46,407 --> 00:21:49,240 at a "deliberately nonepiscopal angle". 322 00:21:49,327 --> 00:21:53,366 Peter Shaw plays the devil - not as a cloven-hoofed satyr, as in the script, 323 00:21:53,447 --> 00:21:55,324 but as an urbane Mephisto. 324 00:21:55,407 --> 00:22:00,037 Franz Waxman provides an off-kilter quotation from Faust by Charles Gounod. 325 00:22:00,127 --> 00:22:04,996 He would again write musical miniatures for Todd Browning's The Devil-Doll. 326 00:22:20,087 --> 00:22:24,000 Monte Montague is the stunt double as the mini monarch is airlifted to his jar. 327 00:22:24,087 --> 00:22:25,998 If you slow down the soundtrack, 328 00:22:26,087 --> 00:22:29,682 you can hear an engineer say "And the king gets picked up by the ears." 329 00:22:29,767 --> 00:22:32,600 Montague was the sleepy policeman in The Invisible Man. 330 00:22:32,687 --> 00:22:37,283 Bride received its only Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Recording. 331 00:22:37,367 --> 00:22:39,961 Kansas DeForest plays the tiny toe-dancer. 332 00:22:40,047 --> 00:22:44,757 Josephine McKim, in blonde wig and fins, was a 1932 Olympic swim champion. 333 00:22:44,847 --> 00:22:47,407 She was also Maureen O'Sullivan's nude body double 334 00:22:47,487 --> 00:22:50,399 in the erotic underwater pas de deux with Johnny Weissmuller 335 00:22:50,487 --> 00:22:53,126 in 1934's Tarzan and His Mate. 336 00:22:53,807 --> 00:22:57,482 In the right front bottle, seen from behind, is Billy Barty as the baby, 337 00:22:57,567 --> 00:23:01,116 seated in a highchair, rending a flower to bits and waving his rattle. 338 00:23:01,207 --> 00:23:04,597 Whale went over the top here, and wisely eliminated the main business. 339 00:23:04,687 --> 00:23:09,078 The tyke is described as "looking like it might develop into Boris Karloff." 340 00:23:09,167 --> 00:23:14,241 "I think this baby will grow into something worth watching", quipped Pretorius. 341 00:23:36,607 --> 00:23:40,600 The censors softened Pretorius's reference to scripture as "fairy tales" 342 00:23:40,687 --> 00:23:42,359 to "Bible stories". 343 00:23:42,447 --> 00:23:46,884 Thesiger restores blasphemy with his inimitable reading of the line. 344 00:23:52,487 --> 00:23:55,559 A book novelisation was prepared in England in 1936 345 00:23:55,647 --> 00:23:58,605 by author Michael Harrison, writing as Michael Egremont. 346 00:23:58,687 --> 00:24:03,363 Harrison recalls consulting the script and a single screening - but once was enough. 347 00:24:03,447 --> 00:24:07,201 In his story, Harrison coyly enunciates the flamboyant homosexuality 348 00:24:07,287 --> 00:24:09,357 that Thesiger brings to the character. 349 00:24:09,447 --> 00:24:13,565 Quote: "I disobey the Biblical injunction 'be fruitful and multiply'." 350 00:24:13,647 --> 00:24:16,798 "'You"' he tells Henry, "'have the choice of natural means, 351 00:24:16,887 --> 00:24:19,879 but as for me, I am afraid there is no course open to me 352 00:24:19,967 --> 00:24:23,516 but the scientific method.' He chuckled throatily." 353 00:24:23,607 --> 00:24:25,325 Curtain down on act one. 354 00:24:25,407 --> 00:24:30,117 Bride of Frankenstein has three neat acts, each lasting about 25 minutes. 355 00:24:37,607 --> 00:24:40,360 Karloff portrays the monster as a lost soul 356 00:24:40,447 --> 00:24:44,918 desperately seeking contact with humanity and desiring friendship. 357 00:24:45,767 --> 00:24:50,522 He's met by a population that responds with nothing but cruelty and anger. 358 00:25:46,887 --> 00:25:50,197 Whale's brilliance in cutting is evident here. 359 00:25:52,127 --> 00:25:55,722 Cutting back to the hand already over the mouth, 360 00:25:55,807 --> 00:25:58,605 truncating the action for effect. 361 00:26:26,767 --> 00:26:29,725 Among the villagers is John George, a diminutive actor 362 00:26:29,807 --> 00:26:33,436 whose stature - or lack of it - made him a fixture as a decorative gargoyle 363 00:26:33,527 --> 00:26:38,123 in pictures like Babes in Toyland, East of Java and Trick for Trick. 364 00:26:38,207 --> 00:26:43,235 You'll spot him again, pushing to the front of the crowd before the dissolve. 365 00:26:51,047 --> 00:26:55,837 The sets for the earlier forest scenes are lush with waterfalls, grass and fir trees. 366 00:26:55,927 --> 00:26:58,441 Here, as the monster is pursued by the mob, 367 00:26:58,527 --> 00:27:03,123 Whale, himself a former stage designer, has instructed art director Charles D Hall 368 00:27:03,207 --> 00:27:05,801 to provide an expressionistic forest of the dead - 369 00:27:05,887 --> 00:27:09,596 dirt, rocks, leafless trees like upright telephone poles, 370 00:27:09,687 --> 00:27:12,485 all the better to play the monster's crucifixion. 371 00:27:12,567 --> 00:27:15,445 Whale is often incorrectly called expressionistic - 372 00:27:15,527 --> 00:27:18,485 Whale used expressionism when it suited him, 373 00:27:18,567 --> 00:27:21,604 as in this sequence and the "OI' Man River" number in Show Boat. 374 00:27:21,687 --> 00:27:23,837 Bride, if anything, is rococo, 375 00:27:23,927 --> 00:27:27,124 a robust co-mingling of baroque, gothic, the decorative, 376 00:27:27,207 --> 00:27:30,040 the expressionistic and the derivative. 377 00:27:35,367 --> 00:27:39,918 Dwight Frye, body snatcher to the stars, is first glimpsed leaning against a tree. 378 00:27:40,007 --> 00:27:43,158 David Lewis's sister is again kibitzing with the rabble. 379 00:27:43,247 --> 00:27:45,283 There's Dwight. 380 00:27:45,367 --> 00:27:48,006 Mr Levy, wearing spectacles and leaning on his cane, 381 00:27:48,087 --> 00:27:51,079 has just darted behind EE Clive. 382 00:27:56,767 --> 00:27:59,201 The point is not that the monster is Christ. 383 00:27:59,287 --> 00:28:01,847 In Christian theology, Jesus is the redeemer. 384 00:28:01,927 --> 00:28:05,237 His death and resurrection contain the promise of eternal life. 385 00:28:05,327 --> 00:28:09,081 The monster is the son of man, a gross parody of all that is human, 386 00:28:09,167 --> 00:28:13,126 lacking the divine spark and therefore a mockery of the divine. 387 00:28:13,887 --> 00:28:16,003 Whale was an ironist, not a parodist. 388 00:28:16,087 --> 00:28:19,762 He doesn't crucify the monster to suggest that Golgotha was a cosmic joke, 389 00:28:19,847 --> 00:28:24,398 he punches our buttons by inverting a fundamental tradition of Western culture: 390 00:28:24,487 --> 00:28:29,277 The monster, the son of man, is resurrected from the dead, then crucified. 391 00:28:29,367 --> 00:28:33,519 Strangely enough, the film would open on Good Friday, 1935. 392 00:28:38,287 --> 00:28:40,881 Everything about the look of the film is stylised. 393 00:28:40,967 --> 00:28:42,878 Nowhere do we see a natural sky. 394 00:28:42,967 --> 00:28:47,165 With glowering, painted skies, it's as if a thunderstorm is always looming. 395 00:28:47,247 --> 00:28:50,557 Here, the sky is filled with an architectural matte painting 396 00:28:50,647 --> 00:28:52,956 by Jack Cosgrove and Russell Lawson. 397 00:28:53,047 --> 00:28:55,641 These are the only back-lot exteriors in the picture, 398 00:28:55,727 --> 00:29:00,926 tightly composed on the German village set from All Quiet on the Western Front. 399 00:30:12,967 --> 00:30:16,721 The monster's jailer here, who gives EE Clive some lip, 400 00:30:16,807 --> 00:30:20,038 is Charlie Murphy, curator of the Universal zoo in the early '30s 401 00:30:20,127 --> 00:30:24,962 and a frequent bit player in action pictures for Universal and Republic. 402 00:30:25,647 --> 00:30:28,844 Thanks to Breen, much of the monster's rampage was cut - 403 00:30:28,927 --> 00:30:30,679 actually improving the picture. 404 00:30:30,767 --> 00:30:33,486 The fatter film contained a vignette in the morgue, 405 00:30:33,567 --> 00:30:36,604 followed by an inquest sequence where Minnie and others 406 00:30:36,687 --> 00:30:39,076 admit not actually witnessing any murders. 407 00:30:39,167 --> 00:30:42,318 The pompous burgomaster is insisting there is no monster 408 00:30:42,407 --> 00:30:47,527 when the creature plucks him through a window and cuffs him about the head. 409 00:30:47,607 --> 00:30:50,121 Just as Minnie was spared at the ruined mill, 410 00:30:50,207 --> 00:30:53,165 the burgomaster is a fool figure, the voice of the audience - 411 00:30:53,247 --> 00:30:56,523 he can be humbled, but he must not be killed. 412 00:30:56,607 --> 00:30:59,838 Fleeing in the crowd, we then met Auntie and Uncle Glutz, 413 00:30:59,927 --> 00:31:02,122 played by Tempe Pigott and Gunnis Davis, 414 00:31:02,207 --> 00:31:05,517 and their nephew, played by Dwight Frye in his amalgamated state. 415 00:31:05,607 --> 00:31:08,883 At their house, nephew killed his uncle and stole his hoard, 416 00:31:08,967 --> 00:31:10,719 blaming it on the monster. 417 00:31:10,807 --> 00:31:14,117 The scene closed as nephew pondered the convenience of a scapegoat 418 00:31:14,207 --> 00:31:17,802 and mused that the monster might soon visit auntie. 419 00:31:33,527 --> 00:31:36,485 The communion girl who speaks is Helen Parrish, 420 00:31:36,567 --> 00:31:39,365 sister of film director Robert Parrish. 421 00:31:39,447 --> 00:31:42,598 Helen grew up to become a leading lady in Three Smart Girls Grow Up 422 00:31:42,687 --> 00:31:46,202 and was Boris Karloff's ingénue in You'll Find Out in 1940. 423 00:31:46,287 --> 00:31:49,643 A shot of Frieda's mother carrying the body was cut by the censor. 424 00:31:49,727 --> 00:31:53,561 Gossiping with Una O'Connor is David Lewis's mother, Fanny Levy, 425 00:31:53,647 --> 00:31:56,798 earning her seven and a half dollars a day extra-player's pay. 426 00:31:56,887 --> 00:31:59,720 Poor old Newman has been hacked to death by the monster. 427 00:31:59,807 --> 00:32:02,605 That's Walter Brennan handling the murder weapon. 428 00:32:02,687 --> 00:32:05,121 Mr and Mrs Newman's moans were dubbed in later 429 00:32:05,207 --> 00:32:07,198 to lessen the official body count. 430 00:32:07,287 --> 00:32:10,245 Perhaps they aren't dead yet, but, in Monty Python fashion, 431 00:32:10,327 --> 00:32:13,364 are feeling much better after the dissolve. 432 00:32:33,767 --> 00:32:36,520 The Gypsy camp was added during reshoots in April 433 00:32:36,607 --> 00:32:38,996 to bridge the deletions in the village. 434 00:32:39,087 --> 00:32:43,000 Maurice Black plays the Gypsy man, and Elspeth Dudgeon is his sour mother. 435 00:32:43,087 --> 00:32:47,478 She's made up to evoke Eva Moore's crusty matriarch in The Old Dark House. 436 00:32:47,567 --> 00:32:50,559 Elspeth also appeared in that film - billed as John Dudgeon - 437 00:32:50,647 --> 00:32:53,081 as the 102-year-old family patriarch. 438 00:32:53,167 --> 00:32:55,840 Whale used her again in Show Boat and The Great Garrick. 439 00:32:55,927 --> 00:32:57,997 She is memorable as the titular villain 440 00:32:58,087 --> 00:33:02,797 in a loony 1938 horror comedy for Warner Bros, Sh/ The Octopus. 441 00:33:02,887 --> 00:33:05,321 Elspeth played the octopus, not the imperative, 442 00:33:05,407 --> 00:33:08,080 and her transformation as the grandmother from hell 443 00:33:08,167 --> 00:33:11,637 was an unsung high point of '30s horror movies. 444 00:33:30,287 --> 00:33:33,006 In a sequence inspired by Shelley's novel, 445 00:33:33,087 --> 00:33:35,806 the monster finds refuge with a blind hermit. 446 00:33:35,887 --> 00:33:40,165 Whale had shut the picture down February 19th to March 2nd, 1935, 447 00:33:40,247 --> 00:33:44,763 waiting for OP Heggie to finish a picture at RKO Radio Pictures. 448 00:33:44,847 --> 00:33:48,476 Whale was on dangerous ground here - with the censor and the audience. 449 00:33:48,567 --> 00:33:51,365 One false step, and this delicately charged material 450 00:33:51,447 --> 00:33:53,961 could explode into maudlin sentimentality, 451 00:33:54,047 --> 00:33:57,119 ecclesiastical heresies or baggy-pants burlesque. 452 00:33:57,207 --> 00:34:00,438 The integrity of this performance from Heggie was crucial, 453 00:34:00,527 --> 00:34:03,963 or we would have had Mel Brooks 45 years ahead of schedule. 454 00:34:04,047 --> 00:34:08,484 The hermit is a saintly figure, aged, bearded, possessed of inner sight, 455 00:34:08,567 --> 00:34:12,480 deliberately wardrobed to suggest a New Testament figure. 456 00:34:29,327 --> 00:34:34,959 Breen had cautioned Whale that his script contained references to Dr Frankenstein 457 00:34:35,047 --> 00:34:37,083 that "compare him to God, 458 00:34:37,167 --> 00:34:41,001 and which compare his creation of the monster to God's creation of man." 459 00:34:41,087 --> 00:34:43,521 "All such references should be eliminated." 460 00:34:43,607 --> 00:34:47,236 Craftily, Whale and Hurlbut retained these as shooting drew nearer. 461 00:34:47,327 --> 00:34:50,399 Three weeks before production, Whale helpfully reminded Breen 462 00:34:50,487 --> 00:34:53,081 of his oversight in his last communication: 463 00:34:53,167 --> 00:34:55,442 "There are points about God, entrails, 464 00:34:55,527 --> 00:34:58,803 immortality and mermaids, which you did not bring up again, 465 00:34:58,887 --> 00:35:04,200 and I am very anxious to have the script meet with your approval in every detail." 466 00:35:36,967 --> 00:35:39,322 Greg Mank asked Valerie Hobson late in her life 467 00:35:39,407 --> 00:35:43,082 if she could pinpoint why Bride of Frankenstein remained so popular. 468 00:35:43,167 --> 00:35:48,195 She replied "Karloff is so moving, like one of the great clowns who make you cry." 469 00:35:48,287 --> 00:35:51,882 "I think this was the secret of its enduring success." 470 00:36:26,447 --> 00:36:29,439 Franz Waxman asked for Clifford Vaughan as his orchestrator 471 00:36:29,527 --> 00:36:32,724 specifically because of Vaughan's expertise with the organ. 472 00:36:32,807 --> 00:36:35,446 The instrument is associated with sacred music, 473 00:36:35,527 --> 00:36:38,803 evident in this solo rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria". 474 00:36:38,887 --> 00:36:42,482 Oliver Wallace, later a mainstay of Disney's music department, 475 00:36:42,567 --> 00:36:45,684 was the session player on a Wurlitzer-style theatre organ. 476 00:36:45,767 --> 00:36:48,918 Elsewhere, the organ is used for profane colour, 477 00:36:49,007 --> 00:36:51,760 notably in the danse macabre of the crypt sequence 478 00:36:51,847 --> 00:36:55,203 and in multiple renditions of the bride's theme. 479 00:36:55,287 --> 00:36:58,359 Vaughan also orchestrated for staff composers Edward Ward 480 00:36:58,447 --> 00:37:01,007 and Heinz Roemheld in 1934-35. 481 00:37:01,087 --> 00:37:05,205 He was also a fine composer, contributing the memorable main title and recap music 482 00:37:05,287 --> 00:37:08,279 to Universal's first Flash Gordon serial. 483 00:38:45,727 --> 00:38:49,686 Film editor Ted Kent maintained that he executed the glowing crucifix 484 00:38:49,767 --> 00:38:51,962 behind this scene all on his own. 485 00:38:52,047 --> 00:38:55,119 Whale didn't much care for it, but let it stay. 486 00:38:55,207 --> 00:38:58,165 Symbols of Christian ritual are hidden in plain sight. 487 00:38:58,247 --> 00:39:02,604 When the monster says "Bread good, wine good", 488 00:39:02,687 --> 00:39:05,406 he is really reading the Eucharist. 489 00:39:05,487 --> 00:39:09,685 This is his Last Supper, complete with the holy sacraments of bread and wine. 490 00:39:09,767 --> 00:39:12,520 Soon the Romans will come for him. 491 00:39:12,607 --> 00:39:16,680 Perhaps this explains Dr Pretorius's otherwise inexplicable name: 492 00:39:16,767 --> 00:39:18,962 From "praetor", a Roman magistrate. 493 00:39:19,047 --> 00:39:23,484 Like his namesake, Pretorius is his own law, meting out life and death. 494 00:39:23,567 --> 00:39:28,402 Thesiger would play a genuine praetor in the CinemaScope epic The Robe. 495 00:39:30,127 --> 00:39:32,561 In teaching the monster the pleasures of a cigar, 496 00:39:32,647 --> 00:39:36,276 Whale lets the creature indulge in the director's own trademark habit. 497 00:39:36,367 --> 00:39:39,677 When fire threatened to engulf Whale's home in the early 1950s, 498 00:39:39,767 --> 00:39:42,361 his cigars were the one thing he cared to rescue, 499 00:39:42,447 --> 00:39:46,042 and stood by, calmly puffing, as he watched the blaze. 500 00:39:46,127 --> 00:39:49,199 Karloff thought giving the monster speech was stupid, 501 00:39:49,287 --> 00:39:52,484 and destroyed whatever impact he had. He argued against it. 502 00:39:52,567 --> 00:39:57,846 Karloff was right, for speech removed the alien remoteness of the creature. 503 00:39:57,927 --> 00:40:03,365 But the monster could now no longer be the totemic black Injun of the first film. 504 00:40:03,447 --> 00:40:06,484 He had to be an evolving character and interact with the others, 505 00:40:06,567 --> 00:40:10,082 or he would become the lifeless prop Karloff sensed coming into being 506 00:40:10,167 --> 00:40:12,123 after Son of Frankenstein. 507 00:40:12,207 --> 00:40:15,404 Universal publicists refused to believe the novelty was gone. 508 00:40:15,487 --> 00:40:18,160 A New York Times squib reported that, during production, 509 00:40:18,247 --> 00:40:21,796 Laemmle insisted that Karloff wear a veil over his monstrous features 510 00:40:21,887 --> 00:40:26,039 when walking to and from the stage - the same gambit they had milked in 1931. 511 00:40:26,127 --> 00:40:28,083 The Times reporter was sceptical - 512 00:40:28,167 --> 00:40:32,922 who, in 1935, didn't know already what the monster looked like? 513 00:41:17,047 --> 00:41:20,642 The melody being fiddled is an original by Franz Waxman 514 00:41:20,727 --> 00:41:25,118 called "Children's Theme", that will be quoted later at the end of this sequence. 515 00:41:25,207 --> 00:41:28,722 The hunters - on the left, John Carradine, and Robert Adair. 516 00:41:28,807 --> 00:41:32,277 Whale had used Carradine in a small part in The Invisible Man. 517 00:41:32,367 --> 00:41:36,838 In the 1940s, Carradine added the role of Dracula to his considerable résumé. 518 00:41:36,927 --> 00:41:39,316 In late life, Carradine raised eyebrows 519 00:41:39,407 --> 00:41:44,481 by insisting that he had turned down the role of the Frankenstein monster in 1931. 520 00:41:45,287 --> 00:41:47,164 Karloff emits the warning growl 521 00:41:47,247 --> 00:41:52,321 which Franz Waxman picked up on as the monster's secondary danger-motif. 522 00:42:32,687 --> 00:42:35,918 Shortly, the monster will stumble into a group of children 523 00:42:36,007 --> 00:42:38,521 and be posed before an icon of Jesus Christ. 524 00:42:38,607 --> 00:42:41,724 He beseeches the children, and is again rejected by humanity. 525 00:42:41,807 --> 00:42:45,959 Marilyn Harris, the drowned Maria of the first film, is the children's leader. 526 00:42:46,047 --> 00:42:49,642 Also fleeing in the gaggle is child actress Carmencita Johnson. 527 00:42:50,607 --> 00:42:53,326 Whale upgraded Marilyn's silent bit with one word of dialogue, 528 00:42:53,407 --> 00:42:55,967 making the part a higher-paying speaking role. 529 00:42:56,047 --> 00:42:59,756 He would use Marilyn again in Show Boat and The Road Back. 530 00:42:59,847 --> 00:43:03,601 Balderston's July 23rd script had the angry monster wrestle and destroy 531 00:43:03,687 --> 00:43:06,884 a stone angel in the cemetery - literally a fallen angel. 532 00:43:06,967 --> 00:43:11,040 Hurlbut's shooting script had the monster come upon a crucified Nazarene, 533 00:43:11,127 --> 00:43:13,083 etched against a glowering sky. 534 00:43:13,167 --> 00:43:17,638 Seeing it as a living figure, tortured as he has been, the monster toppled the effigy 535 00:43:17,727 --> 00:43:21,242 and attempted to free it from the cross. 536 00:43:21,327 --> 00:43:23,841 The Breen office told Whale in no uncertain terms 537 00:43:23,927 --> 00:43:25,963 to find another monument. 538 00:43:26,047 --> 00:43:28,356 Whale salvaged the ghost of the intention 539 00:43:28,447 --> 00:43:31,359 by including the unmolested Christ icon in the margin. 540 00:43:31,447 --> 00:43:35,884 Censor cuts in Frankenstein perverted the poignant encounter with a little girl 541 00:43:35,967 --> 00:43:38,117 into an act of paedophilic depravity. 542 00:43:38,207 --> 00:43:40,437 As if Pretorius, the burgomaster and Minnie 543 00:43:40,527 --> 00:43:43,166 jointly ran the Production Code Administration, 544 00:43:43,247 --> 00:43:48,526 the most resonant Christian image was twisted into an act of godlessness. 545 00:44:19,887 --> 00:44:22,640 Casting sheets show that Dwight Frye was originally cast 546 00:44:22,727 --> 00:44:25,525 for his part here as Ghoul Number One. 547 00:44:25,607 --> 00:44:28,075 A screenplay anachronism retained Fritz, 548 00:44:28,167 --> 00:44:31,637 the hunchback assistant who had been killed in the first film. 549 00:44:31,727 --> 00:44:35,356 Dwight Frye Jr recalls that Whale helped his father by creating roles, 550 00:44:35,447 --> 00:44:39,599 and Frye's Karl is an amalgam of four characters in the Hurlbut script - 551 00:44:39,687 --> 00:44:43,805 Pretorius's servant, first Ghoul, Nephew Glutz and Fritz. 552 00:44:43,887 --> 00:44:46,606 This is why Frye has two different partners. 553 00:44:46,687 --> 00:44:50,680 Neil Fitzgerald, here in the crypt, is Rudy, aka Ghoul Number Two. 554 00:44:50,767 --> 00:44:55,079 Ted Billings, as Ludwig, will help to fly the kites at the climax. 555 00:45:00,807 --> 00:45:06,404 Dwight Frye's reading of the tombstone gives the story a definite anchor in time. 556 00:45:06,487 --> 00:45:09,285 He tells us the girl died in 1899. 557 00:45:09,367 --> 00:45:13,599 Corruption is complete, and now, years later, only her bones remain. 558 00:45:13,687 --> 00:45:18,761 As Universal's press book stated in 1935, "The time of the story is the present" - 559 00:45:18,847 --> 00:45:21,805 though clearly an alternate universe. 560 00:46:40,207 --> 00:46:44,883 Déjeuner sur le crypte. The drunken doctor blows smoke in the face of death, 561 00:46:44,967 --> 00:46:48,403 just as Henry tossed dirt at the grim reaper in the original film. 562 00:46:48,487 --> 00:46:51,285 Franz Waxman titled this cue "Danse Macabre", 563 00:46:51,367 --> 00:46:54,677 using organ and padded xylophone to mock the skeletal décor 564 00:46:54,767 --> 00:46:56,758 in three-quarter time. 565 00:46:57,207 --> 00:46:59,801 This is the role of a lifetime for Ernest Thesiger. 566 00:46:59,887 --> 00:47:03,721 A true eccentric, his performance draws much from his private persona. 567 00:47:03,807 --> 00:47:07,720 Valerie Hobson remembered him as a terribly sweet man with a good heart. 568 00:47:07,807 --> 00:47:11,436 "I don't think he had a very strong male approach to things," 569 00:47:11,527 --> 00:47:13,597 she told historian Greg Mank. 570 00:47:13,687 --> 00:47:16,997 "He was one of the very first people to make, almost, camp fun." 571 00:47:17,087 --> 00:47:20,045 "He did it as a serious thing, you know." 572 00:47:20,127 --> 00:47:23,836 "Sort of the arched eyebrow and arched nostril." 573 00:47:23,927 --> 00:47:28,364 Elsa Lanchester recalled him as weird, strange and acid-tongued. 574 00:47:28,927 --> 00:47:31,316 Thesiger opened in the play A Sleeping Clergyman 575 00:47:31,407 --> 00:47:34,922 at the Theatre Guild, New York, on October 8th, 1934. 576 00:47:35,007 --> 00:47:38,397 When it closed after 40 performances, he was able to train west 577 00:47:38,487 --> 00:47:41,604 to join the cast of Bride after the New Year. 578 00:47:41,687 --> 00:47:46,522 Reading Pretorius's dialogue, it is easy to hear Claude Rains' brushed-velvet tones 579 00:47:46,607 --> 00:47:48,962 and imagine the cynical, twinkling bemusement 580 00:47:49,047 --> 00:47:51,925 with which he played Captain Renault in Casablanca. 581 00:47:52,007 --> 00:47:56,125 That same dialogue plays very differently when enunciated by the man who, 582 00:47:56,207 --> 00:48:00,041 in The Old Dark House, spoke the phrase "Have a potato" 583 00:48:00,127 --> 00:48:03,676 and endowed it with seven levels of malevolence. 584 00:48:05,167 --> 00:48:07,601 Thesiger's best film roles are all macabre. 585 00:48:07,687 --> 00:48:10,326 Less well-known than The Old Dark House and The Ghoul 586 00:48:10,407 --> 00:48:14,559 are his parts as Marley's undertaker in the Alistair Sim version of Scrooge, 587 00:48:14,647 --> 00:48:19,675 the asthmatic industrial tycoon, swathed in furs, in The Man in the White Suit, 588 00:48:19,767 --> 00:48:23,282 a 19th-century wraith who must release his dead lover's soul 589 00:48:23,367 --> 00:48:28,521 from the body of a possessed girl in the 1948 British thriller A Place of One's Own, 590 00:48:28,607 --> 00:48:31,724 and the milk-toast Mr Hoover, the silk-stocking killer 591 00:48:31,807 --> 00:48:36,198 of the 1938 Warner Bros British production They Drive by Night. 592 00:48:36,287 --> 00:48:38,642 Pretorius's preoccupation with the female being 593 00:48:38,727 --> 00:48:41,287 radiates an unhealthy, prurient interest. 594 00:48:41,367 --> 00:48:45,326 As the monster realises the implication of the word "wife", Thesiger's glance 595 00:48:45,407 --> 00:48:50,606 suggests that Pretorius will be a most interested spectator on the honeymoon. 596 00:49:55,007 --> 00:49:59,444 Whale had a good film editor in Ted Kent, but Kent was the first to credit his director 597 00:49:59,527 --> 00:50:02,439 with pinpointing precisely where and when to cut, 598 00:50:02,527 --> 00:50:04,961 both to punch dialogue and to catch the eye. 599 00:50:05,047 --> 00:50:09,723 Notice these opposing shots of Thesiger and Clive, each pushing in to close-ups. 600 00:50:09,807 --> 00:50:14,801 This symmetrical pairing of shots will be seen again in the creation sequence. 601 00:50:35,167 --> 00:50:39,797 Another bravura entrance here, as the monster is revealed at the door. 602 00:50:44,007 --> 00:50:47,556 The successively closer cuts play on our memory of the first film 603 00:50:47,647 --> 00:50:49,365 and repeat its impact. 604 00:50:49,447 --> 00:50:52,723 Whale reveals his strange characters in this fashion frequently - 605 00:50:52,807 --> 00:50:55,401 Rains in The Invisible Man, Karloff in The Old Dark House, 606 00:50:55,487 --> 00:50:58,126 even Colin Clive in One More River. 607 00:50:58,527 --> 00:51:00,643 This time the monster is the master, 608 00:51:00,727 --> 00:51:06,245 as the "sit down" tutorial from the first film is inverted, with Henry as pupil. 609 00:51:52,247 --> 00:51:55,398 In Hurlbut's script, Elizabeth is stolen off-screen. 610 00:51:55,487 --> 00:51:59,196 Valerie and Boris were to appear together for only one shot in the cave. 611 00:51:59,287 --> 00:52:02,597 Whale realised he had omitted the beauty-and-the-beast ritual, 612 00:52:02,687 --> 00:52:07,363 and seized this opportunity to make, not a parody, but a reprise, 613 00:52:07,447 --> 00:52:10,007 of Elizabeth's symbolic rape in the first film. 614 00:52:10,087 --> 00:52:14,478 The setting is again the bedroom, but with Frau Frankenstein no longer a Fraulein, 615 00:52:14,567 --> 00:52:18,082 the bed is less functional furniture than associative backdrop 616 00:52:18,167 --> 00:52:21,762 to Elizabeth's abduction by her robber bridegroom. 617 00:53:09,927 --> 00:53:13,761 Here's another example of Whale and Hurlbut's good theatrical instincts. 618 00:53:13,847 --> 00:53:18,284 As written, Pretorius and Dr Frankenstein remain together during this episode. 619 00:53:18,367 --> 00:53:22,360 Pretorius merely shrugs at the suggestion that he is behind the abduction. 620 00:53:22,447 --> 00:53:26,360 On the set, Whale contrived for Pretorius to make another grand entrance, 621 00:53:26,447 --> 00:53:29,837 smashing the bric-a-brac while the camera dollies in to a low angle 622 00:53:29,927 --> 00:53:32,521 to punch the impact of the moment. 623 00:54:38,847 --> 00:54:43,204 Here's another Whale trademark: Moving his camera through the wall of a set. 624 00:54:43,287 --> 00:54:45,960 The watchtower set from the first film is revisited, 625 00:54:46,047 --> 00:54:49,323 with a crossbeam now spanning the staircase - 626 00:54:49,407 --> 00:54:53,844 just in case one feels like hanging oneself from a convenient rafter. 627 00:54:54,367 --> 00:54:56,642 The mordant pleasantries about slimy steps 628 00:54:56,727 --> 00:54:59,366 and the charms of the house are ad-libs. 629 00:54:59,447 --> 00:55:02,917 The next four minutes are mainly the contribution of John Balderston. 630 00:55:03,007 --> 00:55:07,398 The immediate necessity of a fresh heart is a full incident retained from his script. 631 00:55:07,487 --> 00:55:09,921 Pretorius's line to Henry about "once upon a time 632 00:55:10,007 --> 00:55:13,682 being burnt at the stake as wizards for the experiment" is rather ingenuous. 633 00:55:13,767 --> 00:55:16,804 He fails to consider that kidnapping, grave-robbing, 634 00:55:16,887 --> 00:55:20,243 corpse mutilation and murdering young girls for their body parts - 635 00:55:20,327 --> 00:55:24,002 have I forgotten anything? - Might merit the gallows, if not the stake. 636 00:55:24,087 --> 00:55:27,602 This line was spoken in Balderston's script by a professor of anatomy, 637 00:55:27,687 --> 00:55:31,760 while energising dead frog parts with a galvanic battery. 638 00:55:31,847 --> 00:55:34,725 In his screenplay, Balderston shamelessly rehashed 639 00:55:34,807 --> 00:55:37,002 the medical-school business of the first film, 640 00:55:37,087 --> 00:55:39,760 even to reviving the deceased hunchback Fritz. 641 00:55:39,847 --> 00:55:43,317 Apparently nothing is impossible when your boss is Dr Frankenstein. 642 00:55:43,407 --> 00:55:45,682 Fritz procures a desiccated specimen, 643 00:55:45,767 --> 00:55:49,919 enraging Henry, who demands a fresh one, and offers the 1,000-crown bounty. 644 00:55:50,007 --> 00:55:54,956 Fritz obliges - in the Great Depression people would do anything for money. 645 00:56:39,207 --> 00:56:43,723 Having appeared in every crowd scene in the film for seven and a half dollars a day, 646 00:56:43,807 --> 00:56:49,006 it seemed the only way to get rid of David Lewis' sister, Leah Bishan, was to kill her. 647 00:56:49,087 --> 00:56:52,875 But it was worth it for Leah - records show that the Goldstadt street victim 648 00:56:52,967 --> 00:56:58,678 was a 50-dollar turn. Hardly 1,000 crowns, but not to be sneezed at in 1935. 649 00:57:00,167 --> 00:57:02,476 One myth that has been repeated over the years 650 00:57:02,567 --> 00:57:06,799 held that the fresh heart for the bride was at one time intended to be Elizabeth's. 651 00:57:06,887 --> 00:57:10,721 A still of Dwight Frye hovering near Valerie Hobson with a knife, 652 00:57:10,807 --> 00:57:15,005 and the bride's instantaneous attraction to Henry, have been cited as proofs. 653 00:57:15,087 --> 00:57:17,078 At no time was this ever considered. 654 00:57:17,167 --> 00:57:20,284 More's the pity that it wasn't - it's in tune with the story, 655 00:57:20,367 --> 00:57:25,316 and Elizabeth died anyway in the final cataclysm - at least, until the preview. 656 00:58:05,967 --> 00:58:11,485 The monster's recitation of the work ethic to Henry is also courtesy of Balderston. 657 00:58:12,167 --> 00:58:15,443 Cinematographer John Mescall had first worked for Whale 658 00:58:15,527 --> 00:58:19,486 on The Invisible Man before filming By Candlelight, The Kiss Before the Mirror, 659 00:58:19,567 --> 00:58:22,206 Bride of Frankenstein and Show Boat for the director. 660 00:58:22,287 --> 00:58:24,005 Mescall was an alcoholic. 661 00:58:24,087 --> 00:58:26,999 On the set he was efficient and produced luminous work - 662 00:58:27,087 --> 00:58:31,603 provided that he made it to the set, which the studio ensured by sending a car daily. 663 00:58:31,687 --> 00:58:35,123 Despite a good rapport, Whale finally sacked Mescall for drunkenness 664 00:58:35,207 --> 00:58:38,483 on the set of the much-troubled The Road Back. 665 00:58:38,567 --> 00:58:42,924 By the late '50s, he was working for Roger Corman, and ended his days on skid row. 666 00:58:43,007 --> 00:58:47,797 His work on Bride ranks it as one of the most exquisitely photographed films ever. 667 00:58:47,887 --> 00:58:52,165 In a 1935 interview with Movie Makers, magazine of the Amateur Cinema League, 668 00:58:52,247 --> 00:58:54,522 Mescall spoke of his use of Rembrandt lighting 669 00:58:54,607 --> 00:58:57,883 and asserted that, despite the greasepaint Jack Pierce applied, 670 00:58:57,967 --> 00:59:00,765 the monster was never intended to be a jolly green giant, 671 00:59:00,847 --> 00:59:03,566 but "a dead-white corpse." 672 00:59:03,927 --> 00:59:07,397 With variations, Rembrandt lighting is used throughout - 673 00:59:07,487 --> 00:59:11,526 a hard and contrasty light, with deep, rich shadows and brilliant highlights. 674 00:59:11,607 --> 00:59:15,566 It involves neither a straight crosslight nor a flat light from the front, 675 00:59:15,647 --> 00:59:18,684 but a combination of the two, with the light originating 676 00:59:18,767 --> 00:59:22,237 from a point in front and to one side of the objects to be photographed. 677 00:59:22,327 --> 00:59:25,000 This tends to impart a roundness to the features, 678 00:59:25,087 --> 00:59:27,760 and this pseudo-stereoscopic effect is heightened 679 00:59:27,847 --> 00:59:32,523 by having a dark background behind the bright side of the face, and vice versa. 680 00:59:32,607 --> 00:59:35,963 "It was our desire to maintain an eerie, mysterious atmosphere." 681 00:59:36,047 --> 00:59:40,882 "Supplementary lights were projected from odd angles, especially for Karloff." 682 00:59:40,967 --> 00:59:43,435 "Many settings were filled with dark shadows." 683 00:59:43,527 --> 00:59:48,442 "The sets themselves had distorted walls, involving many angles and offsets." 684 00:59:48,527 --> 00:59:50,961 "In scenes in which only the monster appeared, 685 00:59:51,047 --> 00:59:53,163 the camera, with a short-angle lens, 686 00:59:53,247 --> 00:59:56,045 was placed low and comparatively close to the subject, 687 00:59:56,127 --> 01:00:00,086 and thus was gained the impression of a distorted figure and unusual height." 688 01:00:00,167 --> 01:00:03,284 "In contrast, we placed the camera at a high elevation 689 01:00:03,367 --> 01:00:05,562 in photographing the rascally Pretorius, 690 01:00:05,647 --> 01:00:08,366 and thus achieved the effect of a bulging cranium." 691 01:00:08,447 --> 01:00:12,486 "To give the effect of deadness, Karloff's make-up was blue-green in colour, 692 01:00:12,567 --> 01:00:15,400 and the light was projected through blue filters." 693 01:00:15,487 --> 01:00:17,762 "When other characters appeared with him, 694 01:00:17,847 --> 01:00:20,805 the make-ups of the others were pink or reddish in tone, 695 01:00:20,887 --> 01:00:23,845 and lights of a corresponding shade had to be trained on them, 696 01:00:23,927 --> 01:00:27,442 while the blue lights must be shielded from them." 697 01:00:46,167 --> 01:00:48,681 The laboratory scenes are patterned in equal parts 698 01:00:48,767 --> 01:00:52,362 on sequences from two silent films produced in Europe. 699 01:00:52,447 --> 01:00:56,884 They are the creation of the female robot in Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis, 700 01:00:56,967 --> 01:00:58,605 filmed in Germany, 701 01:00:58,687 --> 01:01:02,726 and the medieval climax of the 1926 Rex Ingram film The Magician, 702 01:01:02,807 --> 01:01:04,923 filmed in France. 703 01:01:59,407 --> 01:02:02,717 Kenneth Strickfaden built the electrical apparatus. 704 01:02:02,807 --> 01:02:06,163 "I got my start in high school from my interest in science" he said. 705 01:02:06,247 --> 01:02:09,080 "Otherwise, I might have been a teenage werewolf." 706 01:02:09,167 --> 01:02:12,921 His high-voltage Art-Deco assemblages - all sizzle and no steak - 707 01:02:13,007 --> 01:02:16,363 are the original light show, a defining image of science fiction. 708 01:02:16,447 --> 01:02:20,281 Mrs Strickfaden didn't think much of horror pictures. "She's no fan" he said. 709 01:02:20,367 --> 01:02:25,999 "I have to remind her that she lives in a house built and paid for by Frankenstein." 710 01:02:33,767 --> 01:02:36,235 Universal's publicity claimed, after the fact, 711 01:02:36,327 --> 01:02:39,364 that an intense hunt had been mounted to engage the bride. 712 01:02:39,447 --> 01:02:43,486 The exhibitor's trade magazine, Universal Weekly, named a few also-rans: 713 01:02:43,567 --> 01:02:47,640 Brigitte Helm, the malevolent female robot from Metropolis, 714 01:02:47,727 --> 01:02:51,640 Phyllis Brooks, a fashion model just edging her way into supporting roles, 715 01:02:51,727 --> 01:02:53,843 and Arletta Duncan, a Universal bit player 716 01:02:53,927 --> 01:02:56,805 who had been Mae Clarke's maid of honour in Frankenstein. 717 01:02:56,887 --> 01:02:59,924 Poor Arletta - always a bridesmaid, never a bride. 718 01:03:00,007 --> 01:03:04,125 But Whale knew who he wanted, and Elsa Lanchester's name, with a question mark, 719 01:03:04,207 --> 01:03:08,997 is prominent on the cast page of Balderston's first draft of June 9th, 1934. 720 01:03:09,087 --> 01:03:12,284 It's still there six weeks later in the July 23rd script, 721 01:03:12,367 --> 01:03:16,599 only now Elsa is indicated as both Mary Shelley and the mate. 722 01:03:16,687 --> 01:03:19,326 Ted Kent's montage for the creation sequence 723 01:03:19,407 --> 01:03:22,956 is as artistically valid as anything by Sergei Eisenstein - 724 01:03:23,047 --> 01:03:26,960 and it won't give you an urge to take up collective farming. 725 01:04:18,167 --> 01:04:22,843 It was noted in the 1970s that the first three notes of the bride's musical theme 726 01:04:22,927 --> 01:04:27,523 are the same as the first three notes of the song "Bali Hai" from South Pacific. 727 01:04:27,607 --> 01:04:32,237 By the 1990s, this casual observation became conflated into an urban legend 728 01:04:32,327 --> 01:04:37,003 that had Franz Waxman receiving a hefty settlement from Oscar Hammerstein. 729 01:04:37,087 --> 01:04:40,363 The Waxman archives confirm that no litigation occurred. 730 01:04:40,447 --> 01:04:44,679 Franz would hardly sue the librettist of a Richard Rodgers composition, 731 01:04:44,767 --> 01:04:48,919 and there are, after all, only eight notes in the diatonic scale. 732 01:04:49,007 --> 01:04:54,764 Waxman's score for Fritz Lang's 1933 French production Liliom for Fox Europa 733 01:04:54,847 --> 01:04:58,635 caught Whale's ear - particularly the ethereal music for the heaven sequence, 734 01:04:58,727 --> 01:05:01,719 with its airy colouring of celeste and ondes Martenot, 735 01:05:01,807 --> 01:05:03,718 an early electronic instrument. 736 01:05:03,807 --> 01:05:06,640 Mere days before production started on January 2nd, 737 01:05:06,727 --> 01:05:09,116 Whale and Waxman met at a Christmas party. 738 01:05:09,207 --> 01:05:13,200 Whale explained that nothing in the story would be resolved, everyone would die, 739 01:05:13,287 --> 01:05:18,202 and offered Waxman the job if he would give him an unresolved musical score. 740 01:05:18,367 --> 01:05:22,565 The orchestra for the Bride sessions was conducted by Constantin Bakaleinikoff. 741 01:05:22,647 --> 01:05:25,923 Session photographs show 32 players on the recording stage, 742 01:05:26,007 --> 01:05:28,077 14 of whom are violinists. 743 01:05:28,167 --> 01:05:33,480 Orchestration sheets reveal that at its largest the orchestra had 40 players. 744 01:05:33,567 --> 01:05:38,322 Waxman music appeared memorably in Universal's Flash Gordon serials. 745 01:05:38,407 --> 01:05:42,923 Cues from his score have been recorded by Charles Gerhardt and Erich Kunzel. 746 01:05:43,007 --> 01:05:46,761 In 1993, Kenneth Alwyn conducted the first substantial recording 747 01:05:46,847 --> 01:05:49,077 of the nearly complete score. 748 01:05:54,527 --> 01:06:00,204 Waxman's use of timpani here echoes the heartbeat of the monster bride. 749 01:06:01,087 --> 01:06:04,682 Boris's monster in the first film looked like triage at an auto wreck, 750 01:06:04,767 --> 01:06:07,076 his face and torso swathed in bandages, 751 01:06:07,167 --> 01:06:11,240 naked legs truncating in size 16, triple-E foot splints. 752 01:06:11,327 --> 01:06:14,922 The script called for the mate to give the effect of an Egyptian mummy, 753 01:06:15,007 --> 01:06:18,966 and this was realised exactly, including leg bindings. 754 01:07:12,247 --> 01:07:14,317 Will the bride be beautiful or ghastly? 755 01:07:14,407 --> 01:07:19,003 Whale fools us with quick, progressively closer cuts, deliberately non-matching, 756 01:07:19,087 --> 01:07:21,078 alternating from diffuse to crisp. 757 01:07:21,167 --> 01:07:23,840 He even has the actress' mouth stuffed with wadding 758 01:07:23,927 --> 01:07:27,078 to distort and swell her features for one flash cut. 759 01:07:27,167 --> 01:07:32,400 Dr Pretorius, bridesmaid to the bride. Franz Waxman provides wedding bells. 760 01:07:40,167 --> 01:07:44,604 The script described Elsa's 'do' as "curled close to her head, 761 01:07:44,687 --> 01:07:47,360 hanging straight and dark on either side." 762 01:07:47,447 --> 01:07:49,165 Keeping to the mummy idea, 763 01:07:49,247 --> 01:07:53,798 Whale and Jack Pierce memorably designed this Nefertiti number. 764 01:07:57,727 --> 01:08:01,276 Lanchester's own hair is marcelled and swept back on a wire cage. 765 01:08:01,367 --> 01:08:04,086 She looks like she has stuck her finger in a socket. 766 01:08:04,167 --> 01:08:06,522 The white electric bolts from her temples add the final exclamation points. 767 01:08:08,407 --> 01:08:10,841 Monster coiffure would never be the same. 768 01:08:10,927 --> 01:08:15,955 Elsa's streaks and tips set a fashion craze - for Rafaela Ottiano in The Devil-Doll, 769 01:08:16,047 --> 01:08:17,958 Ramsay Ames in The Mummy's Ghost, 770 01:08:18,047 --> 01:08:20,481 Humphrey Bogart in The Return of Doctor X, 771 01:08:20,567 --> 01:08:23,764 even Boris Karloff himself in The Walking Dead. 772 01:08:23,847 --> 01:08:27,886 Elsa Lanchester told Greg Mank "Jack Pierce did really feel 773 01:08:27,967 --> 01:08:32,006 like he made these people, like he was a god who created human beings." 774 01:08:32,087 --> 01:08:37,639 Lanchester elaborated in her memoirs: "He had his own sanctum sanctorum, 775 01:08:37,727 --> 01:08:40,764 and as you entered you did not 'go in', you 'entered'." 776 01:08:40,847 --> 01:08:42,599 "He said 'Good morning' first." 777 01:08:42,687 --> 01:08:46,726 "If I spoke first, he glared and slightly showed his upper teeth." 778 01:08:46,807 --> 01:08:50,482 "He would be dressed in a full hospital doctor's operating outfit." 779 01:08:50,567 --> 01:08:54,765 "At five in the morning, this made me dislike him intensely." 780 01:09:11,367 --> 01:09:16,566 Another baroque camera angle, with a short lens to keep the bride distorted. 781 01:10:00,887 --> 01:10:05,244 No one can explain the presence of this lever - unless it's the lever to heaven. 782 01:10:05,327 --> 01:10:07,522 Lanchester said she cultivated her hiss 783 01:10:07,607 --> 01:10:11,202 by observing angry swans at Regent's Park in London. 784 01:10:11,287 --> 01:10:15,439 The Production Code Administration saw Whale's original cut on March 20th 785 01:10:15,527 --> 01:10:17,643 and demanded changes. 786 01:10:17,727 --> 01:10:21,276 Subsequently, the picture was previewed at 92 minutes on April 6th, 787 01:10:21,367 --> 01:10:24,120 and in this form reviewed by the Hollywood Reporter. 788 01:10:24,207 --> 01:10:26,323 Breen approved it on April 15th. 789 01:10:26,407 --> 01:10:30,241 Mere days before the April 19th, San Francisco, Good Friday opening, 790 01:10:30,327 --> 01:10:33,842 Whale relented on the script's "positively final fade-out", 791 01:10:33,927 --> 01:10:37,124 and reshot the ending so that Henry and Elizabeth would live. 792 01:10:37,207 --> 01:10:40,358 Yes, there was going to be a Son of Frankenstein. 793 01:10:40,447 --> 01:10:43,484 Waxman's unresolved musical ending now had a coda, 794 01:10:43,567 --> 01:10:45,603 cracked from the creation cue. 795 01:10:45,687 --> 01:10:50,602 James Whale's biographer, James Curtis, tells us that Whale had the last laugh. 796 01:10:50,687 --> 01:10:53,963 Taking friends to a revival showing in the late 1940s, 797 01:10:54,047 --> 01:10:56,845 the director was snickering at his ironic creation 798 01:10:56,927 --> 01:10:59,566 when an irate moviegoer whipped around in her seat. 799 01:10:59,647 --> 01:11:03,686 "If you don't like the show" she commanded, "you can damn well leave." 800 01:11:05,327 --> 01:11:08,000 65 years later, no one in the audience is leaving.