Part of Filmic 2016

Very few films are dreams, configuring and reconfiguring themselves in your mind on waking. These films, I think, you make yourself, afterwards, somewhere in the shadows in the back of your head. The Bride of Frankenstein is one of those dream-films. – Neil Gaiman

There’s nothing like a bit of classic horror on a Sunday morning to make you feel alive… Alive! Ever since the horror movie genre was at its peak during the pre-WWII era, James Whale’s The Bride Of Frankenstein still remains the cream of the crop and one of the most popular horror movies of all time. Its iconic score - written by Franz Waxman, the legendary German-American composer of such scores as Sunset Boulevard and Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Rear Window - would become a yardstick for the genre and played a huge role in the film’s enduring appeal. Enjoy again the legendary Boris Karloff (reprising his role as cinema’s most famous monster) as he longs for a mate of his own, and the overly ambitious Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) who seeks to create him his ill-fated bride (Elsa Lanchester).

Incredibly imaginative and extraordinarily atmospheric (especially for the climactic ‘Creation of the Bride’ sequence), Waxman's score provided a sophistication that was totally out of the ordinary. Creepy and explosive, this brilliantly evocative work of electronic experimentation is also extraordinarily seductive. 80 years on, it remains an orchestral tour-de-force unequalled in the genre.

Part of Filmic 2016.

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