at Lake Geneva. “I’ve always thought
the film verges on a kind of precious
high camp, but the last 10 minutes sud-
denly shift to something approaching
epic tragedy,” Eyman tells LIFE. “It’s
much stronger than the ending of the
original. And when the bride hisses! It
makes my blood run cold.”
By 1936, the horror cycle that
Universal had single-handedly set in
motion was over—the result of “sat-
uration,” Eyman says. With so many
mediocre monster movies flooding the
market, it looked like Frankenstein’s
monster had finally died—at the box
office, at least.The same year that horror tanked,
Whale directed a very different kind
of film—the successful musical
Show Boat—but after the jobs dried
up in the 1940s he descended into
despondency and ill-health. In 1957,
the 67-year-old director was found
drowned in his Los Angeles swim-
ming pool. Though his death was ini-
tially ruled accidental, in 1987 Lewis
revealed that Whale had killed himself.
“The future is just old age and illness
and pain,” he had written in a suicide
note. “Goodbye and thank you for all
your love.”
In an odd bit of timing, just one
month before the director’s death, a
British film brought the monster’s
legend back to life again—in glorious,
bloody color. n“The last 10
minutes suddenly
shift to something
approaching epic
tragedy,” critic
Scott Eyman says
of Bride. “And when
the bride hisses!
It makes my blood
run cold.”THE MONSTER MEETS HIS
match in Bride of Frankenstein.
“An audience needs something
stronger than a pretty little
love story,” Lanchester (as
Mary Shelley) says in the film.
“So, why shouldn’t I write of
monsters?”
67ARC
HIV
IO
GB
B/
CO
NT
RAS
TO
/RE
DU
X