Dr. Pretorius

Neil Gaiman On Bride Of Frankenstein | BFI

"The first Gothic that I fell in love 

with was Bride of Frankenstein --

I probably would have been about 12 stayed up for it and it was one of those late night Saturday Horror things, where they showed both you got Frankenstein 

and Bride of Frankenstein, 

and Frankenstein was a huge disappointment to me; 

What been expecting.... I don't 

know what I'd expected, 

but somehow what I 

wanted was was much more —

What I got -- Bride of Frankenstein 

on the other hand was delirious 

Um, it had this very very strange plot 

that I didn't understand as a boy, in which, 

you know a lab has burned down already; 

you have this mysterious Dr. Pretorius --

 

I was never quite sure what 

he was doing with 

little homunculus -- 

these tiny little people 

and he was making them and then, 

he's working with Frankenstein to build 

a bride for The Monster 

and then it turns up, and it's Elsa 

Lanchester and it's my favourite --

what is it, two, three minutes 

at most of film ever, is between 

Karloff and Elsa Lanchester 

coming to Life seeing bars 

Calif friend screaming, 

him hitting The 'We 

Belong DEAD!'-switch 

and and everything that's... 

I just think that's perfect um ---

I had no idea what it was about -- quite 

what had happened and I felt afterwards 

like I'd watched something faintly dreamlike.

The peculiar thing about brighter Frankenstein was it stayed one of my favorite films um I have seen it every few years um whenever whenever I could in whatever way I could and I even showed it to my daughter when she was about 11 or 12 and really into movies and watching her peculiar disappointment and it realizing that if I'd shown her at that age you know Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman nice big amiable film with proper villains and things she would have loved it instead it was this film that is all atmosphere and all strange slightly camp oddness and again this this a plot that is almost impossible to describe because it doesn't quite make sense enough to be describable it's like a dream on waking you accept it moment by moment as you go and then Bride of Frankenstein is done that we belong dead switch has been pulled and and it's all over and you go what what was that what was that one minute where there's there's the beautiful young Elsa Lanchester actually getting to act playing Mary Shelley sing oh yes there's more and the next you're into this strange hyperbolic hyper-real dream world and it's I think it's magic you