The Bride! (2026)

This movie reminded me again that Mary Shelley’s reputation, along with regard for her 1818 novel Frankenstein, has continued to grow almost exponentially even within my lifetime. Here she is a brooding cackling witchy ghost figure who appears to so-called “The Bride,” offering mocking counsel and support. Jessie Buckley plays both The Bride and Shelley in what seems to be intended as a bravura tour de force over-the-top rereading of the Frankenstein story. And Buckley is impressive, a main feature of the picture and carrying it with talent and charisma. But it feels more like showcase than performance. Much of the movie is that way, in fact, heaving with ideas intriguing and otherwise in a very busy stew that never manages to quite come off. Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed it and it’s full of stars: Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, even brother Jake Gyllenhaal as Ronnie Reed, an unconvincing song and dance star of the 1930s. He’s no Fred Astaire, not even close. The Bride! sets out to retell the bride part of the Frankenstein story, based partly on Shelley’s novel and partly on the Universal Frankenstein franchise of the time. For better or worse, the vibe is generally more out of Badlands or the Raymond Pettibon cover for the Sonic Youth album Goo (“I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road”). As long as we’re dwelling in the 1930s the picture also slips in obvious references to Bonnie and Clyde. But there’s more. The picture also reaches for Herman Melville’s brilliant Bartleby story, because why not? The Bride offers up a regular refrain of “I would prefer not to.” Buckley also plays the role with a kind of Tourette’s variation. She doesn’t swear but erupts in thesaurus-like streams: “Freeze!” she says at one point, holding a gun on people. “Firm up, stiffen, thicken.” I thought The Bride! had a lot of potential with all of its various elements but there might actually be too many of those elements, from Melville to the 1930s setting to the Frankenstein legend itself. The picture is unfortunately not greater than the sum of its parts but some of the parts are pretty good. Approach with caution.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

USA, 106 minutes

Director: Mel Brooks

Writers: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Mary Shelley

Photography: Gerald Hirschfeld

Music: John Morris

Editor: John C. Howard

Cast: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman, Richard Haydn, Mel Brooks, Danny Goldman

Young Frankenstein is so scrupulously faithful to the 1930s Universal franchise that it fairly fits itself into the canon itself. You must start with the 1931 Frankenstein and 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, of course. But then I say it’s your choice: the star-studded 1939 Son of Frankenstein (Boris Karloff! Bela Lugosi! Basil Rathbone!) or this affectionate send-up. It boasts a luminous black & white palette, old-fashioned wipes from one scene to the next, and arguably cowriter Gene Wilder’s greatest single performance. It comes with all the trimmings too, including the little girl, the bride, the blind man, pitchforks, torches, elaborate mechanical wind-up law enforcement out of Peter Sellers, and more.

Wilder is Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced fronk-un-steen in a running gag), grandson of the mad scientist Victor (renamed Henry in the old movies for some reason). Frederick is a professor of human anatomy and biology trying to live down his grandfather’s crimes, constantly needled by his students. Wilder, as ever, and perhaps more so here, is a paradox of style, a quiet-mannered player who uses off-beat pauses, the position of his head, and the volume of his speaking voice to convey great stores of molten angst, rage, and depression, which erupt in calibrated, pitch-perfect sobbing rants. The ongoing, never-ending, exhausting battle over the pronunciation of his name is just a foretaste of what’s to come with the driven, neurotic, obsessed fool Wilder has made of Dr. Frankenstein.

Frankenstein (1931)

USA, 70 minutes

Director: James Whale

Writers: John L. Balderston, Mary Shelley, Peggy Webling, Francis Edward Faragon, Garrett Fort, Richard Schayer, Robert Florey, John Russell

Photography: Arthur Edeson, Paul Ivano

Music: Bernhard Kaun

Editor: Clarence Kolster

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerr, Dwight Frey, Marilyn Harris

The original film production of Mary Shelley’s landmark Frankenstein novel (written when she was 19) incredibly is now almost a century old itself. As a kid I used to stay up late to get a look at it whenever I could. The two bridge tables of writers credited at IMDb for the screenplay are a reasonable approximation of the convoluted history of the Shelley property, originally published in 1818 and followed in five years by the first of a long series of stage productions. The most recent before this movie was put on just in 1927—Peggy Webling wrote that. Balderston adapted her play for this script, with story elements by Schayer. It sounds like Faragon and Fort actually blocked out and typed up the screenplay, with uncredited contributions from Florey and Russell. Director James Whale puts his own stamp on it, including hiring Boris Karloff out of the commissary to play the monster. Whale reportedly liked him for the part because he thought Karloff resembled himself. While I’m at it, makeup artist and designer Jack P. Pierce also counts as an auteur on this enterprise. He is responsible for the look and feel of the Frankenstein monster as we think of it today, including the flattop head, neck bolts, and tattered outfit.

The short picture starts in a curious way, often lopped off of the TV broadcasts. The gentle and mild-mannered Edward Van Sloan (who plays Henry Frankenstein’s mentor Dr. Waldman in the movie proper) steps out from behind a theatrical curtain to issue a friendly warning about the movie: “It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation: life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to, uh... well, we've warned you.” And then on to the opening titles.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

USA, 75 minutes

Director: James Whale

Writers: Mary Shelley, William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston, Josef Berne, Lawrence G. Blochman, Robert Florey, Philip MacDonald, Tom Reed, R.C. Sherriff, Edmund Pearson, Morton Covan

Photography: John J. Mescall

Music: Franz Waxman

Editor: Ted J. Kent

Cast: Elsa Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Valerie Hobson, Una O'Connor, E.E. Clive, Dwight Frye, O.P. Heggie, Gavin Gordon, Douglas Walton, Walter Brennan, John Carradine

Bride of Frankenstein is old enough that we are still seeing experimental ways of making and marketing movies. Boris Karloff is credited as "Karloff," which seems mindful of the way sophisticated French film stars of the time such as Arletty literally made glamorous names for themselves. Elsa Lanchester never properly gets credit for playing the Bride, only for playing Mary Shelley in the odd frame story. Bride of Frankenstein is also a sequel, a follow-up to the original 1931 Frankenstein, which was as much a sensation as any of the theater productions that preceded it by well over a century. We used to love this story. Bride of Frankenstein is more fun than the 1931 original. Technology had visibly improved even across four years, and the idea of making a movie that is basically "I'd like some more of that please" in regard to another popular movie might have still seemed novel. Some like to call this the greatest sequel ever made, or one of them, and I'm not inclined to disagree.

The movie is remarkably short but remarkably packed full of unique scenes swirling around the Frankenstein mythos. The frame story depicts another storm-driven night, like the famous one in Geneva that produced Shelley's Frankenstein novel and John William Polidori's story "The Vampyre." Lord Bryon (Gavin Gordon) struts around and acts decadent, handing us the "previously on" recap while Percy simpers. Mary says she has more to tell them about "Henry" Frankenstein's miserable experiments. They gather close. Dissolve to the chaotic scenes of the end of the first movie, where the monster has presumably been destroyed with the burning windmill in which he was trapped and the villagers are relieved and happy again.

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

El espíritu de la colmena, Spain, 98 minutes
Director: Victor Erice
Writers: Angel Fernandez Santos, Victor Erice
Photography: Luis Cuadrado
Music: Luis de Pablo
Editor: Pablo G. del Amo
Cast: Ana Torrent, Isabel Telleria, Fernando Fernan Gomez, Teresa Gimpera, Juan Margallo, Jose Villasante

The Spirit of the Beehive announces itself almost right away as a fairy tale. "Once upon a time..." says an early title card illustrated by a child's crayon drawing. "Somewhere on the Castilian plain, around 1940," says the next. That puts us in Spain shortly after the Spanish Civil War, so already the extremes of the fairy tale spectrum have been laid out, from a drawing you can put on your refrigerator to the brutalities of midcentury war. In fact, The Spirit of the Beehive has much the feel of a desperate Depression-era novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice minus the sexual charge, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Grapes of Wrath, I Married a Dead Man, The Day of the Locust. But it's one that's told mostly from the point of view of a 7-year-old girl, at knee-high level, like a cartoon about cats and dogs. There is much about the world of grown-ups that is caught only in flashes, at random. Adults are confusing and hard to understand.

Early on, the small religious village, isolated in the country, welcomes the arrival of a new movie with much excitement and interest—the original 1931 Frankenstein, evidently nine years late. The theater is a makeshift venue with folding chairs and the feel of blankets covering windows, but the movie is well attended, including the 7-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) with her older sister Isabel (Isabel Telleria). Isabel is a typical jealous older sibling, devoting too much of her energy to belittling her younger sister. The Spirit of the Beehive actually enters the theater during the show and spends a few minutes letting us watch the scenes from Frankenstein where the monster meets the little girl by the water and discovers the joys of flowers. We also see some of the scenes after the little girl is found dead. Ana can't make sense of it. She asks Isabel the two questions by which The Spirit of the Beehive is essentially defined, or haunted: Why did the monster kill the girl? Why did the people kill the monster?

Frankenstein (1818)

The original novel by Mary Shelley (originally published anonymously) is subtitled The Modern Prometheus, a sign of its ambition and ponderousness both. The ambition was warranted, as it's nearly 200 years later and we have been talking about it pretty much continually since. As for the ponderousness, well, everyone has their limits with 19th-century language, and this is mostly on the far side of mine. It took me many years and many attempts to get through it, and it's not a very big book, little more than a hundred pages in most editions. I was finally inspired to it once and for all by a documentary on a DVD with the 1931 Frankenstein picture, where I learned that the story has been popular practically since first publication, with countless theatrical productions and a few different versions, starting in the 1820s. In other words, interest in the theme of humans presuming to themselves godlike (or Godlike) powers has been steady and growing since 1818, though I think it comes and goes some, and we may presently be in a period of lower interest. Maybe superhero movies are covering that gap? At any rate, Edison Studios (yes, that would be Thomas Alva) made the first film version in 1910. What I had always vaguely considered the film original, the 1931 Universal production directed by James Whale, with Boris Karloff as the monster, is actually the fourth film version. In turn, that 1931 film is based on a 1927 theatrical adaptation by Peggy Webling, which is something of a departure from other versions. In fact, the Shelley novel is very different from the 1931 movie, though many elements remain in both. The mad scientist Victor Frankenstein ("Henry" in the movie) figures out how to "animate" and grant life to dead substance, an original sin if I ever heard one. He is thus cursed to the end of his days, and this novel is here to tell us every blasted detail. The storytelling is made of frames within frames within frames, which have no apparent purpose except to clutter things up. The language is verbose and tangled, with long sentences unfurling endless clauses. (I realize I'm not one to talk, but still.) The plotting is too often improbable. You will need to be on good terms and open mind with the literary device of The Coincidence, as it appears often. I can't deny that Shelley's Frankenstein has the power to strike dark and chilling notes. It possesses a strong, even sickening, sense that life is a system of rotting away to further degradations, that pestilence, decay, and eternal damnation are just a preview of coming attractions. It's the dark side of Enlightenment values, colliding with the aftermath of political revolutions. Reading it shed a lot of useful light for me on the 1931 movie and its 1935 sequel, also a Universal production directed by Whale and starring Karloff, and perhaps the greatest movie sequel ever, Bride of Frankenstein. I'm glad I read the Shelley novel but I have to say for me it was work.

In case it's not at the library (I'm quite sure they'll have it).