As early as 1932, Universal Studios wanted to expand its Frankenstein franchise with a sequel. It took some time for a script to be approved, though, and originally James Whale said he would not direct, but in 1934 he changed his mind, and much of the original cast was reunited.

Although both Whale and Karloff preferred the first film, Bride is generally considered one of the few Hollywood sequels better than the original.   This was partly due to Whale himself.   This was his seventh film after the original Frankenstein , which had only been his third film, so technically he was much better at directing than he had been four years earlier.

In the intervening years, Whale was also influenced by the German Expressionism happening in European cinema, and traces of it can be seen in his filming here.   This gives the second film a very different “look” from the first film

As one reviewer put it: “The macabre, satirical film is generally considered one of the greatest horror films of all time - a spectacular, bizarre, high-camp, excessive, humorous, farcical and surrealistic film. ... The film reunited Colin Clive (as Dr. Frankenstein) with Boris Karloff as the Monster, but brought two new characters to the forefront: Ernest Thesiger as a necromancer who has miniaturised and imprisoned various human beings in glass jars, and Elsa Lanchester as the Monster's Bride.” (“Bride” Filmsite.org)

There are a number of other ways that the Monster becomes more sympathetic in this version, and that's one of the reasons why critics and fans like it better.

But being able to speak also changed the look of the Monster.   In order to speak properly, Karloff had to replace the partial bridge that he had removed during his work on the first film.   In this film, his face is much fuller.

But a warning for teachers: I've had students cry for the fate of the Monster after both films, but Bride usually produces more tears.

Colin Clive, as Henry Frankenstein, is supposed to be in feeble health in the sequel and is therefore less dynamic than before, yet his nervous tension is shattering and overtones of tragedy hover around him. It wasn't all make-believe.   Shortly before the shoot, Clive broke his leg in a riding accident, so most of his scenes are shot sitting down.   But also, Clive was suffering from acute alcoholism during the filming.   This disease led to his death at the age of 37, just two years after filming Bride .

Colin Clive, Elsa Lancaster, Boris Karloff and as The Monster meets his Bride. Source: IMDB.com. http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1302/3318_0030.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0026138

Ernest Thesiger played Professor Pretorius, and he delivered a knock-out performance.   He'd worked with Whale before, who brought Thesiger to the US in to play the acerbic, effeminate Horace Femm in his The Old Dark House (1932) .   Writers for years have claimed that Pretorius was gay.   Some critics have gone so far as to write that Henry and Pretorius are a gay couple, with the Monster and the Bride as their children.   Whether Whale envisioned him as such is debatable, and overall, I really don't think it matters much either way.   Thesiger's performance in the film is genius, and that's all that really counts. (This, of course, gets back to Whale's open homosexuality which is discussed on the Frankenstein page.)

Thesiger got most of the film's best lines, many of which he improvised:

"Sometimes I think it would be better if we were all devils, with no nonsense about angels and being good."

"Leave the charnel house and follow the lead of nature or God, if you like your Bible stories."

As the great experiment begins, he exults, "Once we should have been burnt as wizards for this experiment!"

Leading his entourage into the watchtower, he tells them to "Mind the steps a bit slimy, I expect. I think it's a charming house."

To the Monster's line "I love dead, hate living," he snaps back, "You're wise in your generation. We must have a long talk, and then I have an important call to make."

Although most of the original cast reprised their roles, there is one change.   The beautiful blonde fiance, Elizabeth, played by 21 year old American Mae Clarke in the original becomes the stunning brunette wife Elizabeth, played by 19 year old Northern Irishwoman Valerie Hobson.

There is never an official reason for the change, and it seems slightly odd considering that Mae Clarke (most famous for being hit in the face with a grapefruit by James Cagney in 1931's Public Enemy) was a rising star in the early 30s.   According film critic Leonard Maltin, “Bad luck and personal problems drove her out of the limelight” in the early 30s. (“Biography”)   Perhaps Whale or the studio wanted to distance themselves from Clarke.   But why not chose another blonde actress?

Between the first Frankenstein film and the second, Hollywood was getting cleaned up by the self-regulating Hays Code, at that time headed by Joseph Breen.   When Breen saw the first copy of the script, which he had to approve before shooting could begin, he called for a number of cuts.   He felt the film was sacriligious and too violent.

The original body count in the script was 21 people killed.   In the final version of the film, it is down to eleven. (Scott)

Then, when Breen saw the finished film, he had a few scenes cut for being too sexy.   In the opening scenes, especially, he felt there was far too much of Elsa Lanchester's breasts showing.

Though a scene where the Monster mistakes a statue of the crucified Christ for a suffering soulmate and tries to rescue him was cut, the captured Monster, raised aloft on a pole and pelted by rocks, obviously symbolizes crucifixion. Additionally, a crucifix in the hermit's cabin is heavily emphasized.

Instead of the scene of the Monster trying to help Jesus on the cross, the Monster angrily topples a statue of a bishop; and Pretorius impiously quotes Biblical phrases ("Male and female created He them. Be fruitful and multiply.").

One of the scenes that made the film stand out at the time and still has an impact today is Pretorius' seven miniature “people” in their glass jars: the king (a replica of England's Henry VIII), the queen (supposedly Anne Boleyn), the archbishop, the ballerina, the mermaid, and the devil (to whom Pretorius claims a worrying relationship).   These six are introduced by Pretorius, but the seventh figure, a baby, played by midget Billy Barty, is not mentioned.  

Students are often charmed by this scene, even though it makes them feel very uncomfortable about the Pretorius character.

To film this scene, careful measurements were made of camera elevations, distances and angles, as well as the sizes of the jars and other props. The actors were photographed separately in large-scale jars and matted into the small jars. The composites are flawless, including a scene in which the king escapes and Pretorius picks him up and imprisons him back in his jar. Considering the year, the special effects were wonderful.

Bride of Frankenstein memorably opens with Mary and Percy Shelley along with Lord Byron sitting out a thunderstorm in Lake Geneva.   I have found a transcript of the opening scene on-line at filmsite.org and I present it here.   What I find interesting is Byron's introduction of the three elegant people.   Folks were expecting a modern horror story (the 1931 version was set in contemporary times), not a costume drama.

“In the film's prologue, the camera pans toward a light shining in the window of Lord Byron's estate on a stormy dark night as thunder crackles. Inside the elegant drawing room of the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, in the early 1800s, three characters are lounging and talking together in an historical reconstruction: Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), poet Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton) and his 19-year-old bride Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester). The memorable scene recreates a discussion the trio may have had. Before a roaring fire, Mary expresses her unusual fear of thunder and the dark:

Mary defends her Frankenstein novel to her admirer, arguing that it was more than a story about a mad scientist and a monster. It was a philosophical consideration of a man who defied God's natural laws and sovereignty by daring to create life:

Mary: The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson. The punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.
Lord Byron: Well, whatever your purpose may have been, my dear, I take great relish in savoring each separate horror. I roll them over on my tongue.
Mary: Don't, Lord Byron. Don't remind me of it tonight.

The film dissolves and flashes back to moments from the first film, in order to summarize what happened, and includes a few additional shots created for the flashback. [In several respects, however, Bride of Frankenstein contradicts the ending of Frankenstein .] Bryon recalls:

What a setting in that churchyard to begin with. The sobbing women, the first plod of earth on the coffin. That was a pretty chill. Frankenstein and the dwarf stealing the body out of its new-made grave, cutting the hanged man down from the gallows where he swung creaking in the wind. The cunning of Frankenstein in his mountain laboratory, picking dead men apart and building up a human Monster, so fearful - so horrible that only a half-crazed brain could have devised. And then the murder! The little child drowned. Henry Frankenstein himself thrown from the top of the burning mill by the very Monster he had created. And it was these fragile white fingers that penned the nightmare.

Mary pricks herself while sewing, drawing blood and becoming squeamish at the sight. Percy questions why Mary ended her story prematurely: "I do think it a shame, Mary, to end your story quite so suddenly." Mary contends that she has told only part of her story, and then explains that Frankenstein's Monster (Boris Karloff) did not perish, but actually survived the fire that destroyed the blazing old windmill in the first film:

Mary: That wasn't the end at all. Would you like to hear what happened after that? I feel like telling it. It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.
Lord Byron: I'm all ears. While heaven blasts the night without, open up your pits of hell.

Mary weaves her new tale of horror, providing a lead-in to the visualization of the film's story. The camera pulls back from the trio and dissolves into the sequel: "Well then, imagine yourselves standing by the wreckage of the mill. The fire is dying down. Soon, the bare skeleton of the building will be dissolved. The gaunt rafters against the sky."

In a move that probably seemed good at the time, but which proved failure, em>The Bride of Frankenstein was remade in 1985.   The new film, The Bride , starred the musician/sometime actor Sting as Baron Charles Frankenstein, who creates a bride, “Eva,” (Jennifer Beals) for his monster, Viktor.   Most critics panned the film, but it does have a bit of a cult following, and it's still available on DVD and video today.   It might make an interesting “compare and contrast” project for an interested student.