Title: Miltonic Loneliness and Monstrous Desire from Paradise Lost to Bride of Frankenstein
Abstract: "Warning! The Monster demands a Mate!" proclaims a publicity poster for director James Whale's 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, sequel to his 1931 block-buster Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as his obsessed creator (see figure 7.1).1 Hence, near the end of Bride of Frankenstein, the crazed Dr. Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) and "Henry" Frankenstein, who has been coerced into collaborating, complete their creation of a female mate in a spectacular eight-minute scene composed of some eighty shots, complete with Franz Waxman's triumphal music, elaborately sparking machinery, and a fantastically high laboratory set, in which the bride's mummy-like body is raised on a metal platform to be animated by lightning-generated electricity.2 The moment of new life is conveyed by an extreme close-up of the open eyes of the bride (Elsa Lanchester) looking through a slit in her bandages ("She's alive! Alive!"). And the bizarre birth is followed by an equally bizarre wedding ritual, in which the bride, now resplendent with Nefertiti-inspired hair and flowing white gown, is presented by Dr. Pretorius ("The bride of Frankenstein!") to the accompaniment of pealing wedding bells.
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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