Director: James Whale
Year: 1935
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Having survived the fire, the creature's quest for companionship drives him into the arms of another mad doctor who has plans on recreating another creature to be its mate and tries to get his creator on board to do it and give him his desires.
Review:
This here was quite an exceptional sequel with so much to really like here. Much like the original, there's quite a lot of work here involving how to interact with the concepts of life and death, which here is reversed into being more about life against the original which focused on death. The idea of not only moving on from the previous experiments for the life together and how he gets roped through his insecurities by the friend who gets to him through his experiments in the glass jars which is a great scene overall and their debates trying to get him onboard later on showcase that thread incredibly well. As well, the central scene in the hermit's cottage where we finally learn that the monster is able to show compassion and friendship is a crucial part of this thread as it shows a sense of humanity to the creature that never really showed it before where not only does the show of compassion to it give it a joy that wasn't there before which really highlights this factor.
While this here is quite fun enough as it is, the fact that there's such a plentiful amount of action here that gives this one such a fantastic pace as there's the absolutely spectacular opening that not only follows through on fixing the ending from the other film while generating the proper action to start this one nicely, the following chase through the woods gives this plenty of great shots showing the villagers forcing him through the area is really exciting as the halting chases are utterly enjoyable as he escapes several times leading to even more brawls and chasing, and the film's main centerpiece sequence with the encounter with the Bride at the finale.
There's so much to really love with the intensity of the creature coming back to life matching the original and its lifting off the table elicits the same eerie chills, and with it again playing into the life and death there's the absolutely crazy finale in the castle tower which is the explosive, frenzied spectacle of the whole place coming and burying everything inside which is rather fun. Alongside the fine monster makeup for both creatures, these here are what make this one hold up incredibly well. There's only one flaw here, which is that the Bride comes into play so late in the film and doesn't really do much that it seems almost like an afterthought as there's so little screen time that it doesn't have much to do beyond its appearance. This here is what really holds it back.
Overview: *****/5
An overall great follow-up to a classic, this is one of if not the biggest entries in the series and still holds quite impressively to this day. Give it a shot if you're a fan of this old-school style, the rest of the franchise, or Classic Horror overall while there's not much about it that would turn off many viewers.
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