This could be the greatest sequel ever made. Funnier, more outrageous, and just as goth as the 1931 hit, this is a black comedy about mad scientists playing god, about the monstrous craving for a mate, about the ultimate male-order bride, and her indelible response to being married off to a mouldier man.
Initially chastened, Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is reluctant to replay his disastrous experiment, but (a bit like director James Whale) his enthusiasm is rekindled by the idea of creating a woman — along with his even more deranged new partner, Dr. Pretorious (Ernest Thesiger), a scientist who has grown his own tiny test tube royal family from seed. Although Elsa Lanchester doesn’t get a lot of minutes on screen, her performance is genuinely unforgettable.
The best of the Frankenstein movies–a sly, subversive work that smuggled shocking material past the censors by disguising it in the trappings of horror. Some movies age; others ripen. Seen today, Whale’s masterpiece is more surprising than when it was made because today’s audiences are more alert to its buried hints of homosexuality, necrophilia and sacrilege. But you don’t have to deconstruct it to enjoy it; it’s satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.
Roger Ebert
James Whale
Elsa Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Una O’Connor
USA
1935
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Carl Laemmle Jr.
Screenwriter
William Hurlbut
Cinematography
John J. Mescall
Editor
Ted J. Kent
Original Music
Franz Waxman
Art Director
Charles D. Hall
Also Playing
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Little Amelie or the Character of Rain
Baby Amelie believes herself to be a god. Her parents (Belgian diplomats in 60s Japan) can barely cope -- but find the perfect nanny to restore order in this delightful animated feature.
