When The Bride! comes to the North East she should find the place very familiar. She has, after all, been here many times before.
The film is the latest instalment in the Frankenstein franchise, and together with its all-important exclamation mark, it’s due to arrive on 6 March. It was written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who already has Academy Award nominations as both an actor and a screenwriter.
Starring in The Bride! isJesse Buckley, fresh from her own acclaimed performance in the Shakespeare drama Hamnet. In keeping with what Gyllenhaal has called the ‘punk rock aesthetic’ of the film, she has been given a shock of platinum blonde hair, while Frankenstein’s Monster, played by Christian Bale, has metal staples around his head.
The set up for the new film is straightforward – the Monster has become lonely, he asks another maverick doctor to make him a wife, a murdered woman is therefore brought back from the dead, and he and she proceed to wreak havoc in 1930s Chicago.
Towering bouffant
The Bride! draws partly upon the original black-and-white film Frankenstein, which was itself based on Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel of the same name. But it draws mainly on that film’s sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, which came out in 1935 and starred British actress Elsa Lanchester in the title role. Her image, with its towering bouffant illuminated by jagged flashes of lightning, has become one of the most celebrated in motion picture history.
The Bride of Frankenstein boasted Boris Karloff, reprising his role as the Monster. But it also featured a versatile character actor named Gunnis Davis, who had been born in Sunderland. And the reviews for it were excellent. “A first-rate horror film,” was the verdict of the New York Times, while in Britain, the Daily Herald called it “wonderful” and the Daily Express warned, “You’ll have to hold your hat on!”
People in the North East will have known what to expect long before the first Bride arrived. Newspapers had been reporting the on-set antics for months. Karloff was said to have lost “only” eleven pounds in weight during production. And a novelisation of the film could be bought for sixpence at Woolworth’s on Northumberland Street in Newcastle and Fawcett Street in Sunderland.
Flashing green eyes
There was vigorous promotion right across the country. The costumes Karloff and Lanchester had worn were displayed in a shop window in London. Excited posters and newspaper advertisements – “A Man Monster! A Lady Monster! A Monster Thriller!” – appeared wherever the film was being shown. And one intrepid cinema put an 18-foot-high head of the Monster with flashing green eyes in its foyer.
Having been passed by the censors, Bride of Frankenstein was even given a London premiere in the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Kent. That didn’t hold good everywhere, of course, and the movie was banned as blasphemous on Jersey and Guernsey, and banned in Birmingham, Blackburn, Preston and Leicester as well. Yet it would be shown across the North East without anyone there so much as batting an eyelid.
It was first shown in the region in the autumn of 1935, in cinemas that were part of the Gaumont-British chain. The Queen’s in Newcastle was perhaps the leading one of those, and the Monster and his Bride turned up there in mid-October. In Sunderland, meanwhile, they could be seen at the Havelock, another G-B cinema, which had a large tower that was lit up at night.
Gooseflesh
Other G-B halls where the film was shown included the Picture House in Hartlepool, the Scala in South Shields, and Prince’s theatre in North Shields, where the first thousand men through the door were rewarded with a free sample of Brylcreem.
The chain was careful when it came to newspaper advertisements. “In the opinion of the management The Bride of Frankenstein is unsuitable for children,” they said, “and parents are advised not to bring their children to see it.” But otherwise, sensation was once again the order of the day. “The Monster demands a mate!” the Havelock itself teased. “Who will dare?” The film was pronounced “a gooseflesh production” at the Grand Theatre in Byker, while the Picture House in Bensham called it “the Super Shocker of the 20th Century” (but nevertheless chose to support it with nothing more terrifying than a Popeye cartoon).
This all helped to ensure that demand never dried up, and the film was still doing the rounds in the North East after the Second World War. It was shown in Blyth, at the Theatre Royal, which had been built for Stan Laurel’s father. It could be seen at the Miner’s Theatre in Ashington and the Apollo in Birtley, a converted bus garage. It was pronounced “eerie, thrilling and fantastic” at the Gaiety in North Shields. And in Seaham Harbour it appeared not only at the Empire, but also at the Theatre Royal.
Can you take it?
Often, the movie was shown with Dracula’s Daughter, another shocker of a similar vintage. That was the case at the Howard Hall in North Shields and the Tyne Picture Theatre in Wallsend. “We dare you to see both of them together,” the management of the Grainger cinema in Newcastle exclaimed. “Can you take it?”
The Bride of Frankenstein was still showing in the city in March 1957, more than two decades after it first came out. And it could be seen in Hartlepool, at the Essoldo cinema, in the first week in May. That was also when the first ever ‘Hammer Horror’ – appropriately enough The Curse of Frankenstein – received its premiere.
The publicity the Hammer films attracted gave the Bride a fresh lease of life. But while her new fans in the North East will have been happy to see her still playing there, the truth of the matter is that she had never really gone away.
David’s new book – Stack: From Moth to Viceroy – tells the story of an inter-war aviator who broke records galore but ended up in court more often than he would have liked. It is available from Stack | Troubador Publishing
