:10:02
truly a child bride.
:10:04
Whale would have liked Mae Clarke,
his original,
:10:07
but her frail health by 1935
made this impossible.
:10:10
D'Arcy Corrigan, who plays the morgue
attendant in Murders in the Rue Morgue,
:10:14
delivers the bad news to Valerie.
:10:16
He is flanked by the family of Whale's
longtime companion David Lewis.
:10:19
His mother, Fanny Levy,
is the chubby peasant,
:10:22
his father, Pon Levy,
the stout, bearded man.
:10:24
David's sister, Leah Bishan, is
the sweet-faced girl blinking back tears.
:10:29
Leah's daughter recalls Uncle Jimmy
helping the Levys survive the Depression
:10:33
with extra work in Bride,
One More River and The Road Back.
:10:39
How soon after Frankenstein
was a sequel planned?
:10:42
According to Robert Florey, that film's
disinvited director, almost immediately.
:10:47
Florey submitted an unsolicited
seven-page treatment,
:10:50
which was returned to him
without comment in February 1932.
:10:53
Frankenstein hit, a money machine,
and Carl Laemmle Junior wanted more.
:10:58
James Whale refused,
finding the entire premise repellent.
:11:02
Former newspaperman Tom Reed
wrote a sequel in June and July 1933,
:11:05
floating random chunks of the Shelley
novel into his own mindless stew.
:11:09
The now-educated monster demands
a mate, killing Elizabeth for body parts.
:11:14
Henry destroys himself and his creatures.
:11:16
The old baron, written as the grumpy
Frederick Kerr from the first film,
:11:20
monopolises the first half of the script
until the monster mercifully chokes him.
:11:24
Then bad comedy with villagers, the
bishop, a gay dance-instructor, take over.
:11:28
Henry steals the legs
of Frau von Hassenbagovitz
:11:31
from a pompous undertaker's
embalming room,
:11:34
he ambulance-chases a train wreck
to scavenge body parts,
:11:37
and steals the hydrocephalic head
of a suicided circus giantess
:11:41
to build the bride.
:11:42
A glimmer or two emerge from the dross
to be retained -
:11:45
the monster seeing his reflection
in a pool, his education in speech,
:11:49
the befriending of a blind man, the mate,
the destruction of the lab,
:11:53
and the thematic seed of religious piety.
:11:55
Josef Berne and Morton Coyne
prepared an independent treatment
:11:59
based on Reed's material
that was equally uneventful.