Bride of Frankenstein

This is a witty and macabre sequel to 1931 Frankenstein by the British queer director James Whale. Based on a fragment from Mary Shelley’s novel in which the monster is asking for a friend, the film is pushing the boundaries of horror as a genre. The monster (Boris Karloff), created by Frankenstein the scientist, has survived the fire at the end of the earlier film. He is still a social outcast persecuted by vengeful villagers, his only and brief shelter is the remote hut of a blind man. Meanwhile, Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is going through a rough night permeated with homosexual metaphors. He is dragged out of his conjugal bed by an even madder scientist, Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who is trying to convince him to create a new world of gods and monsters.

In this early horror masterpiece, Whale’s queer sensibility manifests itself not just in the erasure of boundaries between genres (horror and comedy), but also in depictions of most of the characters as outsiders. And the obvious sympathy for Boris Karloff’s monster who comes off more humane than the blood-thirsty villagers chasing him – especially since the monster is too slow and clumsy to be a threat to anyone. You must stand still to be caught.