Thursday, October 19, 2006

Movie Review - Bride of Frankenstein

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
directed by James Whale
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD at JL's

For my money, the garbled bats and flat storytelling in Universal's historic reign of terror never matched up. Dracula is always my scapegoat, because it endures, it seems, more as nostalgia for childhood - the earliest monster movie so many kids saw - than for any honest scare. Why Lugosi instead of Schreck or the truly terrifying Caligari? But James Whale was different, and "Bride" is so overstuffed with camp, subtext, and melodrama that it's easy to forget how strange and cold - on par with vigilante, scarecrow Carrefour - Elsa's doomed hiss runs down the spine.