Ads and Oddities #8

 

Ad/Odds: Promising What The Bride of Frankenstein Won't Deliver

What did the title, Bride of Frankenstein, suggest to its public? Surely a marriage, and then consummation? Did 1935 viewership understand “Frankenstein” to be man or monster? We’d soon enough conflate the two, even Frankenstein’s son Wolf commented on this before detraining at cursed village of his birth. The monster needed a name and so took one … why not his creator’s? “That is my brother?” asked Wolf to Ygor as they gazed upon Karloff’s monster, to which Ygor replied yes, but his mother was the lightning, this mere logical conclusion from 1935 that yes, there would be a bride, and no, she’d not just be for Henry Frankenstein, as who’d care of vow taken by Colin Clive and Valerie Hobson? Latter pair would merely mate, be parents to Wolf and later Ludwig, no especial outcome in itself. What was wanted, intensely so, was pairing off for the monster, as in nuptials followed by nights of monstrous passion, captured hopefully on camera (again cue Jerry Colonna: I can dream, can’t I?). Patrons knew they’d not get this, to which Universal merchandising says perhaps not, but what is imagination but sweeter alternative to reality always a disappointment? At least there was salve of a billboard-sized twenty-four sheet (above), the Bride and her brute in splendid union, this for fevered brains to chew upon through seventy-five minutes of something less than what the poster promised.

Where dealing with monsters coupling, invention could go amok. Bride was not a little like previous year’s Tarzan and His Mate, which let proper Jane join uninhibitedly with savage that was Tarzan, their meeting and initial seduction settled a season before that, Tarzan and His Mate given to continued consummation over a feature’s length. It gave in short what audiences paid for and were there to see. Frustration for Bride of Frankenstein and those who’d expect payoff on its title was focus on the potential husband for almost all of length and his affianced at tail end only, a ceremony “blown to atoms” by her rebuff not only of him but their audience aroused by promise of this union. At least give the pair a night, if not a honeymoon. I wonder if complaints were aired upon patron exit, one of those manager-in-the-office-with-his-door-closed occasions. Word must have spread that here was a non-starter, or wet fuse of a finisher. By the time Aurora issued its plastic model Bride in the sixties, we were too aware that she/he were not and never were united, so what matter if what we built was the Bride alone on creator Henry’s table, with no one else in attendance. Unlike other of Aurora monsters, the Bride was not an “action” figure, prone and unattended besides. If I’m recalling right, the Bride was priced fifty cents higher than models also offered, and perhaps for that reason, plus popularity presumed less than the others, she is today a most collectible, especially with cellophane wrapped as if still on sixties store shelves.

Bride’s twenty-four sheet seems to me avant garde, ahead-of-its-time, visionary, a thing I’d more expect of modern artist rethink of these characters and their application to pop culture. This Bride in a lowcut wedding gown looks ready to fling her bouquet to a lucky maid of honor (Minnie perhaps?). Colors suggest an electric melding of soul and bodies … note her hair. Such unique depiction reminds me more of European posters to invariably best us at selling, only regret not being told who the painter here was. A Bride who exults in her submission is one we could wish upon the feature itself. Artists often expressed desire pent up also in viewers, both camps knowing their fantasy would not be fulfilled by movies then under ruling thumb of Code and convention. Other ad and poster depictions were as bold … I’m satisfied these interpreters saw barest synopsis of story they’d illustrate, otherwise how did one come up with the Monster crawling on knees to propose to what looks a ferocious future Bride? Were artists guided by memories of tumultuous courtships they had earlier engaged?

Announcements of product, often in advance even of production, loosed every sort of imagining as to what The Bride of Frankenstein would say and show. Almost never would fulfillment satisfy the fantasy. Sort of reminds me of comic books and pulp covers given to sci-fi themes where confines were no more than an active mind could conceive. It was a given that advertising exaggerated, but advance art for Bride proposed narratives wholly unlike intent, let alone execution, to be eventually seen in theatres. The Bride of Frankenstein being baroque by conception loosed all of bats in a belfry that was exploitation and its cork-out anticipation of what marriage for monsters might add up to. These artists weren’t given scripts to abide by. All they knew was that Frankenstein was coming back and this time his creation would do his own procreating. Possibilities emerged endless from basis like this. How could final result however artistic be anything other than anti-climax? Had I in 1935 been lured by that twenty-four sheet, let alone trade ads viewed over previous year’s run-up to release, could the feature be anything other than a letdown?