The movie starts off in a rather tongue in cheek manner, showing Mary Shelly, her husband and their buddy, who's name escapes me at the moment, sitting around in their parlor (it was the old days, that's what they called it back then) on a dark and stormy night, discussing Mary's marvelously spun monster tale, with Mary proclaiming that the story is far from over, calling for her mate and buddy to gather round for the Frankie show vol. 2. (I was paraphrasing, sheesh.) Now, that may have been a cheap tactic just to include the new movie in the official cannon, but an effective one, none the less. And then....the rest of the movie......
The start of the story is the usual Hollywood schtick, finding some way of making it seem as if the star of the movie DIDN'T die at the end of the previous installment, because god forbid you have to invent another character and place him/her in one of the 5 stories used in major Hollywood fare since the birth of moving pictures. This time it was the old 'the burning windmill was built on top of a small lake' trick, allowing the monster to narrowly escape being.....made dead
again. That, however, is my only gripe with the film, and it is a very minimalistic gripe, because if the monster had died, there would be no sequel, and that is just not a world I want to live in. The rest of the movie has everything most of us look for in a film, a good manhunt (monster hunt, whatever), suspense, a (closeted gay) hermit, a chick with crazy streaks going up the side of her beehive extraordinaire, and even miniature people in jars. In jars! 
The mini people were, to me, the highlight of the film. They were all named after some form of royalty (the king, the queen, and so forth) and dressed in the appropriate fashion of their name sake. The king however wasn't very kingly, as his entire drive in life seemed to be a never ending mission to escape the bondage of his jar and make whoopie with the uninterested queen. I didn't say it wasn't a noble purpose, however when you picture a king you hardly picture some horn dog slobbering all over himself in lust, unless you're watching a Mel Brooks movie that is. Apart from their much appreciated comedic antics, the way they were presented in the movie were some of the best special effects shots in the history of cinema, proving once and for all there ain't no school like the old school. The technique used had something to do with making 2 separate shots, lining the second up with the first and combining the results, leaving us with a seamless, utterly realistic looking shot of miniature folks sitting in jars on a table in front of a normal sized dude, why doesn't Hollywood go back to the OG style of special effects? Everybody knows they make for a much better finished product, and why they're stuck on this CGI garbage when it's not to the point it needs to be I'll never know.People seem to not remember the fact that the "Bride" was in fact terrified of the monster, instead focusing on the movie title and reinventing the story in their minds, thinking of it as a story of love existing even between monsters. While it's a nice sentiment, it's not so.
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| "You want me and him to do WHAT?" |
There were also a few homosexual undertones throughout the movie, but I'll let you check that out over on wikipedia, it's an interesting little read. Check it out here.
There's a reason The Bride Of Frankenstein is listed as one of the all time great classic horror movies, Universal really knew what they were doing back in the day. If you haven't given this movie a watch since you were a young child, like a lot of people, check it out, I'm sure it's on one of them video on demand services, or at your local video rental shops (hah! I made a funny), give it another watch, it's well worth your time.
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