Editorials
The Many Brides of Frankenstein: The Evolution of an Icon
Bride of Frankenstein celebrates its 85th anniversary this year and remains one of the greatest horror films of all time. It is the gleaming jewel of the Universal crown and gave us the ultimate female monster icon. Over the years, the Bride has become a regular staple of Frankenstein films and there are dozens of iterations. For the sake of relative brevity, I will focus primarily on three films that feature the Bride as its key element: Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and The Bride (1985), while touching on several others along the way.
The Bride first appeared over a hundred years before being embodied by Elsa Lanchester in Mary Shelley’s original novel, at least in concept. After recounting the lengthy story of his miserable life to his creator, the Monster demands, in rather poetic language, that the doctor create a female companion for him, reasoning that it will placate his murderous tendencies. “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” he asks. He promises to retreat to the hills and live a secluded life of peace with her and argues, “my vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal.” That is the heart of most Bride narratives: the outcast seeking companionship and acceptance from someone who is also by nature an outsider; but the variations on this simple theme are endless.
Though a prototypical version of the character can be found in the robotic female creation of the sinister Rotwang in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis (1927), the Bride’s first true appearance is in the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, and it has never been surpassed for sheer impact and influence. With a look inspired by ancient Egyptian aesthetics popular at the time, she is one of the most inspired and memorable images ever committed to film and stands among the greatest of make-up innovator Jack Pierce’s creations. Despite her popularity and the box office success of the film, the Bride would never appear in another Universal horror film, even as others were brought back time and again for numerous sequels and matchups. In fact, this most iconic version of the Bride has only ever reappeared in homage and tribute. Her Nefertiti-like hair with its white lightning streaks has been endlessly parodied in everything from Young Frankenstein (1974), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and Bride of Chucky (1998) to moments in The Carol Burnett Show, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and the Disney Channel tween sitcom Jessie.
Along with perpetuating the themes of the outsider, Bride of Frankenstein started several trends that would be explored in a myriad of forms in the coming years. Starting with this appearance, the Bride has regularly been equated with her creator: not Dr. Frankenstein, but novelist Mary Shelley. In this film, Elsa Lanchester plays both the female creation at the end of the film and a rather prim and proper version of the author in the prologue. Similar devices would often be used in the future, giving Bride movies a meta-narrative quality rarely found in traditional gothic horror. In this film, the Bride rejects the Monster out of fear. In later versions, there is usually a variation on this sequence that comes down to rejection or acceptance of her intended mate.
From the beginning, Bride films have explored different aspects of sexuality and a subversion of traditional roles. The very title of the film is meant to be ironic and subversive. In the context of the 1935 film as it relates to this title, “Frankenstein” could refer to either creator Henry Frankenstein or his creation. Conversely, “Bride” could refer to Henry’s fiancée Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson), the female creation, or even the partnership with Dr. Pretorius (so memorably played by Ernest Thesiger). Frankenstein stories are so often filled with social and scientific subtexts; when the Bride element is added, these themes are given even deeper dimension. Bride specifically tackles the religious establishment, class, sexual politics, and LGBTQ+ identity in a time when it was strictly taboo to address any of these subjects on film. Bride of Frankenstein was decades ahead of its time and remains as fresh and engaging as ever.
Susan Denberg in ‘Frankenstein Created Woman’ (1967)
When England’s Hammer Studios began making Frankenstein films in 1957 with Curse of Frankenstein, the focus was primarily on shock with only minimal explorations into themes like scientific responsibility inherent to the Frankenstein story. By the time the studio made their Bride film in 1967, however, they were much more open to exploring deeper issues. Frankenstein Created Woman (continuing the trend of subversive titles) is largely about the British class system. The first part of the film is a love story between outcasts: Hans (Robert Morris), the peasant son of an executed murderer, and Christina (Susan Denberg), the disfigured daughter of a middle-class innkeeper. When Hans is executed for a crime committed by wealthy young miscreants, Christina throws herself off a bridge only to be revived by Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) and his assistant Dr. Hertz (Thorley Walters). Unrecognizable and dazzlingly beautiful due to some reconstructive work by Dr. Hertz, Christina takes revenge upon the men who caused Hans’ death by acting as a siren, a black widow spider luring her prey to her web. By this description, the film sounds something like a cross between Romeo and Juliet and Kill Bill by way of the Frankenstein mythos, but in actuality, Frankenstein Created Woman is one of the most bizarre, fascinating, and innovative of all Hammer films and explores a number of fascinating ideas. It is without a doubt one of the studio’s best.
The Bride would continue to appear in a number of forms into the early 1970’s, particularly in those that at least claimed to remain true to the source novel. The Roger Corman produced Lady Frankenstein (1971), Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), and the television film Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) among others took their own unique spin on the Bride, but few films of the 70’s focused on the female creation. Also during this time and into the 80’s, gothic horror fell out of favor as more domestic horrors and slashers became the norm. Still the Bride showed up from time to time in various forms.
Jennifer Beals in ‘The Bride’ (1985)
In 1985, she once again received top billing in The Bride (1985), an uneven film that still has some wonderful elements. The film stars Police frontman and bassist Sting as Frankenstein and Jennifer Beals as the titular character, named Eva in the film. The movie begins with a reimagining of the final sequence of the 1935 film, but with a more open-ended outcome. Eva still rejects the Monster (played by Clancy Brown) and the tower and lab are destroyed, but Frankenstein, the Bride, and the Monster all escape. For much of the film, Eva and the Monster, named Viktor by his friend Rinaldo (David Rappaport), are shown receiving parallel education: Eva from Frankenstein in comfort and luxury and Viktor from the cruelty of the world. The Bride touches on several of the same themes from previous movies such as the outsider, class structures, and even a bit of meta-narrative, but it also plays with the idea of who is the real monster and who is truly human. While this film adhered to a more classical setting, other mid-eighties fare like John Hughes’ Weird Science (1985) and Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend (1986) gave us more contemporary Bride variations.
One of the most interesting years for Frankenstein myths is 1990, with four very different and unique twists on the Bride. Roger Corman’s final film as director, Frankenstein Unbound suffers from the constraints of its miniscule budget, but has some captivating ideas, mostly drawn from Science Fiction Grand Master Brian Aldiss’s novel of the same name, taking the meta-fiction ideas touched on in earlier iterations to a level rarely explored, and throwing in a bit of time travel to boot. Frankenhooker from schlockmeister Frank Henenlotter is the definition of exploitation film, but still manages to explore some social commentary for those willing to look for it. Brian Yuzna’s Bride of Re-Animator is the blood soaked and worthy sequel to Stuart Gordon’s original classic from 1985, featuring one of the most interesting and gory twists on the rejection sequence.
Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands is not often cited as a Bride film, but certainly shares some of its main ideas. It is a story of an artificial man, very much an outsider, and the woman who becomes an outcast because of her love for him. Like The Bride, it focuses on the ideas of what makes a person a monster and what makes a person truly human. It also introduces a more modern version of the Bride—a living, rather than reanimated, human being that very much fulfills the Bride role from previous iterations of the character. Tim Burton obviously has great affection for the Frankenstein story and the animated films he was involved with, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Corpse Bride (2005), and Frankenweenie (2012) all include unique twists on the Bride.
Helena Bonham Carter in ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ (1994)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) from director and star Kenneth Branagh has its own innovative take on the Bride. In this case, she is quite literally the wife of Dr. Frankenstein, Elizabeth, played by Helena Bonham Carter, revived after the Monster (Robert De Niro) kills her on their wedding night. In one of the most tragic versions of the rejection scenario, she not only rejects Frankenstein, who has revived her for himself, but the Monster, and ultimately herself, choosing to self-immolate rather than live the half-life she has been cursed to.
The new millennium has brought a multitude of variations on the Frankenstein legend with the characterization of both Monster and Bride continuing to evolve. Lucky McKee’s May (2002), Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing (2004), Paul McGuigan’s Victor Frankenstein (2015), Tyler MacIntryre’s Patchwork (2015), and Larry Fessenden’s Depraved (2019) are just a few of the weird, wild, and sometimes wonderful interpretations of the Frankenstein myth of the past twenty years. With the recent resurgence of interest in classic horror, thanks in part to the success of The Invisible Man (2020) and the promise of more reimaginings of Universal monsters from Blumhouse, the future looks good for Frankenstein and the Bride. More than 200 years after she wrote the novel and bid her “hideous progeny go forth and prosper,” Mary Shelley’s creation continues to do just that and be fertile ground for fresh and exciting interpretations in the hands of innovative storytellers.
As Dr. Pretorius in the original Bride of Frankenstein intoned, “a new world of gods and monsters” awaits us. I, for one, cannot wait to see what it holds.
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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