"The Bride of Frankenstein" has less in common with films like "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" than it does with those made by von Sternberg and Dietrich (a la "The Scarlet Empress") in relatively the same era. Both "Bride" and these use their genre along with an excessive amount of bizzare, campy aesthetics to strangely both mask and accentuate a series of profoundly artful, but socialy unacceptable ideas. Like Murnau with his horror masterpiece "Nosferatu" before him, it is often speculated that director Whale used "Bride" as a way of expressing his otherwise suppressed boudoir ambiguity. Through this the film gains a very uneasy atmosphere, which can certainly not be attributed to a scary monster. Someone (the name escapes) once said that the greatest enemy of art is the absence of limitations. "The Bride of Frankenstein" slyly proves this.
Review of Bride of Frankenstein
