The title of Bill Condon’s Oscar-winning 1998 movie, Gods and Monsters, about the death of director James Whale, is obviously taken from The Bride, but there are a myriad other references on film, from the excellent Young Frankenstein (1974), to Bride of Chucky (1999) and Van Helsing (2004).  The Bride’s electric-shock hairstyle has also been spoofed on numerous occasions.

This was the last of James Whale’s significant films for Universal.  His career would never again reach the same heights, and his life would end in suicide in 1957.  Halliwell cites Bride as the most representative of Whale’s pictures, in the Filmgoer’s Companion, and gives him the following dedication:

‘For contriving to make four classics of the macabre before his enthusiasm ran out.’

Year: 1935