Movie Review: The Purge (2013)

Came back from watching The Purge Saturday afternoon (meant to have this up much sooner, but of course I suck), and I'm still a little pissed off because it turned out to be yet another movie that left me confused and not knowing what to think about it. I hate having to keep saying that a movie was not what I was expecting it to be... but The Purge was not what I was expecting it to be. It does good things and it does bad things. It does unexpected things and it does terribly predictable things. So do I like the movie or not?

The Purge takes place in the not-too-distant future (2022) where the whole world is full of shiny happy people because there's no unemployment and crime is way down. For one night every year though, the government sanctions a night of "purging" for all citizens, wherein any crime is legal for 12 hours and no emergency services are available. The film follows one affluent family on this dangerous night.

So The Purge is a bit of a hybrid - we'll call it home-invasion-horror-thriller-social-commentary. And I can tell that it's trying really hard to be all of these things at one time. At actually accomplishing being all of these things to the audience, the movie is a bit of a letdown. There are a lot of interesting questions raised, just not explored in the way I wanted them to be. I also need to point out somewhere (why not here?) about how happy I was to see Lena Headey in a starring role, as I have never seen Game of Thrones. Love this woman. Ethan Hawke is alright, but his character feels like every other character he's ever played so I was a little less impressed.

I wasn't all that happy with the masked killers. Nothing original about them. They wear their creepy masks and white dresses, and stand in front of the security camera and do creepy things to taunt the family - but these were all things that would have been a lot creepier if I didn't feel like I had seen all of this before. Insert the name of another home invasion movie here (do I have to say it, really?). The leader of the group? He's the dudes from Funny Games, straight up. Hated him, not only because he wasn't scary but also because he wasn't original, like the whole first half of this movie. It gets a little better toward the end when the story gets twisted around a little but not enough to give me a really satisfying conclusion.

Now let's talk about the concept of the Purge itself. When I first heard this concept for the movie, I was picturing total chaos, like people just hacking everybody up with axes or something. But then you have to really stop to think about how many people would actually participate in the Purge, if the main punishment-free crime we're talking about being exploited is murder. I'd venture to say that a good majority of the population would not be able to bring themselves to do it, and would be more worried about everyone else, like our little family in the movie. Everybody in the movie actually seems to be somewhat in favor of the Purge and I was surprised that Lena and Ethan (yup, forgot their movie names already) were trying to convince their children that this was actually a good thing. Either that or everyone is too afraid to speak out against the Purge. The argument is that it lets people get out all the aggression and rage that is built up inside them. I'm calling bullshit on that right now, but I'd probably need backup from psychiatrists or something so I'll let it slide.

Also on the concept of the Purge, the movie never takes the Purge past the initial idea. So okay... you can totally murder someone and get away with it. You can "purge" your world of all the people you don't like. Again, cool idea but they never went anywhere with it. The situation presented in the film really did nothing to help them explore that concept fully - it played out like just another home invasion movie. That subgenre, in turn, is played out exactly the way you would expect it to in a horror-thriller. The victims walk slowly down dark hallways. The killers pop up (un)expectedly. And there are more Deus ex Machinas than I could count, which got really freaking annoying after a while.

And I seriously have to mention this: How is the "no emergency services available" thing ANY different from ANY other horror movie out there? When do the cops and ambulances always show up in horror movies? At the end. So this had no effect on me or the story at all.

This is as good a time as any for me to rant about houses in movies. I fucking hate it when filmmakers try to show us a "typical American family" and then show us this family - who is supposed to be just like us - living in a 3-story house with a two-car garage and where the youngest child has a bedroom bigger than any living room I've ever had. Can somebody PLEASE make a movie where the main characters live in a cute little ranch-style house or something? A lot of the problems in The Purge could have been avoided if the family didn't live in such a huge house - everybody kept getting lost from one another in their own house. Would never have been a problem in my childhood home.

Was this really a review or did I just rant for a long time? Sorry, but this is all stuff that I've been thinking about since watching the movie and I had to put it down somewhere. I can't fully recommend The Purge because it was completely missing that "wow" factor that I have been desperately seeking in a movie lately, but it's also not a completely horrible movie. Others seem to have been more impressed with it than I was, so I guess it's up to you!

Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw (2013)

Maybe I need to call this post "In Defense of Texas Chainsaw" because despite relative box office success, it seems like this sequel is well, not everyone's favorite, to put it mildly. But I'm an honest gal so I have to say that I quite enjoyed this latest Leatherface installment. It's not the same movie you know and it's not the same story you know. It's not as gory or graphic as the remake (no seriously, it's not). If there is one thing I can say about Texas Chainsaw, it is that it definitely does its own thing and chooses to stand out from rather than blend in with the other two recent TCM releases both style-wise and story-wise. And that's not a bad thing.

One thing that took a little mental readjustment was, after the film started, figuring out where this story was going to fit into the TCM franchise. TCM 2003 was obviously a remake of the original. TCM: The Beginning from 2006 was a prequel to the remake, yes? Well, TC 2013 goes off completely somewhere else and is actually a sequel to the original 1974 film. Insert confused face here. Granted, I knew all this before watching the movie but it was still quite jarring, and the little men inside my brain had to stop me from bringing out the files on all the other movies while I watching TC. Here, then, is the story we are dealing with:

Following Sally's escape from Leatherface, the men of Newt, Texas send a mob to the Sawyer house and burn it to the ground. Everyone is assumed dead except for the youngest Sawyer, a baby girl secretly taken away by one of the men to be raised as his and his wife's own. Years later the girl grows up and inherits a house from an unknown grandmother and when she and her friends travel there to make it official, they once again unleash Leatherface on the town.

I always love a good nod to the fans or to horror history in movies, so I couldn't help feeling geekily excited when they showed scenes from the original TCM during the opening credits. It also helped with the aforementioned confusion over the timeline, and brought the movie back down to a more sort of realistic level that the original had - there is violence, for sure, but to me it seemed to be quite downgraded, with not a lot of fanfare or flashy set pieces or effects work just for the sake of it. Does this in turn mean that TC loses a lot of the franchise's known intensity and ferociousness? Yes, it does. But again, I liked this change of pace and tone for this movie. Call me crazy. I accept it. At least they attempted to come up with a semi-decent story this time.

Going back to the timeline, though - am I the only one who didn't understand the switch from flashback to present day worked? There is no specific year given for when the present time is actually happening but it seems to be in our present year (based mostly on the lawyer's car). So if the original was from 1974... and the little baby from then is now in her early 20s... she didn't really age that much in 40 years. Interesting.

The new Leatherface, now named Jed Sawyer, is still basically the same character - little kid in a big boy's body and the big boy likes to play with chainsaws. But another point where TC makes a detour from the usual fare seen in these movies is that Leatherface is not the only threat. Once Heather discovers what happened to her real family (the police officers conveniently left the whole case file in the room for her to look at), she suddenly gets a murderous case of family loyalty. The mob from the beginning wants to finish what they started and she sides with her long-lost cousin. This is a bit hinky, considering what Leatherface did to her friends but the only way I can justify it is that she realizes that she has no one else. It's also hinky considering what the audience knows about her real family but that is not really addressed so we're basically asked to just forget about it, and look at the mob men as the real bad guys instead of Leatherface. Sure, whatever you say.

By the way, Leatherface actually makes a very fine first appearance here. It's very subtle and only slightly creepy but nonetheless effective when Heather walks into the kitchen after finding Verna Carson's dug up body in a chair, and sees Leatherface just standing there. I found it similar to his subtle but exceedingly memorable entrance from the original and I dug it.

There are some nice chainsaw- and not-chainsaw-related kills although nothing particularly noteworthy until the end. As horror fans, we should all love to see the human body get mutilated beyond recognition. Let's just say that there is a gigantic meat grinder involved in the climax and you should at least look forward to that if nothing else from this movie. There's more impalings on meat hooks and random limb-chopping - obviously nothing all that memorable since I can't really remember much more. Maybe this is the reason they dropped the "massacre" from the title because there isn't much of a massacre at all. In that case, I accept the strange new title.

Despite some of the movie's obvious flaws, I still stand by my positive opinion of it. It had the guts (or as some would argue, the stupidity) to do things differently and shake things up. Granted, I'm looking into the future and - hopefully - not seeing any more TCM movies after this one but that's purely speculative. I really don't think Texas Chainsaw '13 was a bad turn for the series, Swiss cheese plot and all, because it was no doubt a fresh take on an old story, and I like being the kind of person who can still respect that. 

Movie Review: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

You know what? No. 

I can't do it. I can't even try to enjoy these RE movies anymore, or review them. They're not even trying. This was a pretty good 90-minute commercial, but as a movie, I am wholly unimpressed and in fact, I've already forgotten most of it and I just finished watching it about a half hour ago (as of this writing, that is). The scale has gotten so big on these movies that the little things are forgotten and the focus is completely on unrealistic fight sequences (that last sequence in the snow? Seriously, there needs to be a universal time limit on fight sequences like that) and making pretty CGI. The story - ha, what story? - is pulled from several different video games at once and I just don't know where the hell we are anymore. There is undoubtedly another RE in store for us, but I for one am over these movies.

Not the first one, though. The first one still kicks ass.

Movie Review: Mama (2013)

Seriously, does anybody know what "scary" means anymore? Or do I just believe in a different definition of the word? I loves me my little Guillermo Del Toro but some of the stuff he has been involved in lately have been real disappointments, Mama being one of them. I really wanted something truly creepy with this one, perhaps a la The Devil's Backbone, and many reviews promised me that my wish would come true. Sadly, Mama left me only bored and, again, disappointed with this ghost movie, when the mere mention of ghosts should have been enough to make me happy.

In Mama, two young girls who were abandoned at a remote cabin by their father after he shot their mother are found five years later by the girls' uncle. Almost feral, the girls are sent to live with their uncle Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel while continuing to be under the care of a psychiatrist. But the girls did not come back alone, as they are followed by a mysterious entity who took care of them in the woods - someone(thing) they simply call "Mama."

So maybe the main problem I had with Mama did not come from the movie itself but rather from me. Maybe I'm just a cold-hearted bitch but all the talk about how this movie was so emotionally heartbreaking and sad was completely lost on me. If it was supposed to be about the deep bond between mother and child, it was a failure at getting to me. And yes, I do have a mother. But she is not a scary ghost who lives in the walls so excuse me for not making any connection to my real life.

I totally got the parallel between the grieving, desperate mother (Mama) versus the reluctant mother (Annabel). But was I seriously supposed to sympathize with either of these characters? I felt a little bit for Annabel, whom we learn right away does not want to be a mother just yet - i.e. her relief over the negative pregnancy test - because I have no desire to be mother either. And if I were asked to suddenly take on not only two mostly grown children but also children with serious issues, I would not be so happy about it, like Annabel. I do think that it would have helped the story if she had warmed up to Lilly and Victoria a little bit sooner because she was terribly unlikable for a good chunk of the movie. She was kind of a bitch, really.

I never sympathized with Mama herself either because really, why should I? Not just because she was a big, freaky, body-contorting ghost that at least Victoria seemed more than a little terrified of, but also there was nothing in her story that made me care all that much about her. All I know was that she was a crazy woman who ran away from an asylum and then jumped off a cliff with her infant in her arms. Awesome mother right there, for sure. She was sad about losing her baby? She. Jumped. Off. A. Cliff. With her baby. She is not better than any other mother who loses her child to horrible circumstance - she was the cause of it. Sure, Mama served as Lilly and Victoria's protectors during those five long years in the cabin (and saved Victoria from being shot in the head) but this only made her more dangerous. She felt that the girls belonged to her, and therefore killed anyone who threatened her, and... well, she did that whole thing at the end which I (surprisingly) will not spoil. And you want me to get all emotional over this??? No. I'm sorry, but no. Please get rid of the floaty, murderous ghost.

Another problem I had with Mama was what I saw to be a real lack of exposition scenes. Most of the time it seemed like they were trying to get through some scenes or plot points as quick as possible so that they could get to the next scary scene. Luke falls down the stairs and is in a coma - two minutes, then boom, bring out Mama again to try to scare us. Annabel never visits Luke in the hospital again? Never sheds any tears or shows any worry at all that the man she loves is in a freaking coma? And while we're on the subject of things that were missing from the story, this might be a little nitpick, but where was the therapy and treatment for Lilly and Victoria after they went home? Lilly was still crawling around on all fours eating bugs. She obviously needed intense treatment and help from a professional but is sent to live with two people with no experience with children after only 87 days. Victoria is hypnotized and interviewed by Dr. Dreyfuss several times when his only concern is with Mama and not with helping these girls get back to normal life.  

Okay, now about the scary thing. Mama was not the least bit scary or creepy. One scene, one little scene only was good but the rest was simply cheap jump scares that never made me jump. Big CGI-Mama spent way too much time in front of the camera, showing us all the cool ghost-type things she could do. I hate to constantly play the old school card, but it is still true that what is not seen is often scarier than what is seen. Mama lost all her mystery too early on in the film so that every time she rushes the camera all fast or something, the scare was a flop. And giving us one scare after another doesn't work either. You need suspense-building scenes in between them, and Mama had no suspense to speak of. The one good scene I will mention is when Lilly is playing in her room and someone whom we're supposed to assume is Victoria starts playing blanket tug-of-war with her off camera. They show Annabel walking around the hall with a laundry basket, and then Victoria comes out of a room down the hall too - all while someone(thing) is pulling on Lilly's blanket. That was well played and a little creepy, even though they might have let it go on too long. Also, moths are not scary. Just sayin'.

Mama is not a movie that I hated or one that I thought was technically bad in any way - besides the CGI overuse - it is just another one that fell terribly short of my expectations. Perhaps other viewers in a different frame of mind than I am were able to enjoy and get invested in the story, but this girl who loves horror saw nothing that she loved in Mama.

Book Reviews: "Plague Town" and "Plague Nation" by Dana Fredsti

As if I weren't already in love with the zombie genre, along comes author Dana Fredsti with her Z-apocalypse book Plague Town and its sequel Plague Nation. Everything I have loved about zombies and the horror genre in general is in these two books - the pace goes at lightning speed; the action is exciting and balls-out gory; the story has depth and room to grow; and the main character Ashley Parker is an ass-kicking smart aleck. She's definitely the kind of woman I would want to be in a zombie apocalypse. Fans who read these books really are in for a treat, as I think they were written by a true fan of genre, and for true fans of the genre.

So the main story is something like this: Ashley Parker attends college in the small town of Redwood Grove, which has recently seen its citizens be plagued by a particularly nasty virus called Walker's flu. One night while out with her boyfriend, Ashley is attacked and bitten by zombies. After being hastily whisked away by scary military types, Ashley awakens in a secret lab under the college and finds out that she is one of few people that are immune to the zombie plague and is a "wild card." Wild cards enjoy such perks as rapid healing power, and increased senses and strength. Ashley and several other wild cards are given zombie-killing training and work with a paramilitary group to control the hordes of the walking dead, while professors and doctors work on finding a cure.

Author Dana Fredsti

But that's really just the beginning of the story. Just from the escalation of the titles from "Town" to "Nation," the search for the truth in this zombie apocalypse is not over and I think Fredsti has more surprises - and more zombie fun - in store for readers. And speaking of just who should be reading all this zombie awesomeness, I must say do not be fooled by the book cover like I was! Something about it to me screamed "annoying YA zombie book" when I first took the books out of the envelope but I was so wrong. These books are definitely more adult and actually seemed to be geared exactly for, well... me! What a stroke of luck.

The main character is, as aforementioned, 29-year-old Ashley Parker. She is an independent and strong-willed young woman, with a razor sharp wit and a take-no-shit attitude. I love that Fredsti chose to make Ashley a bit older than the usual college kids that show up in these stories. Ashley is already a divorcee who at almost 30 is going back to school because she doesn't really know what to do with her life. I don't think there is any shortage of people like that nowadays, so Ashley is somebody that many can relate to. It also doesn't really seem like she is going to have much of an arc as a character though because she has obviously discovered and accepted who she is already, and is not somebody that is all that changed by the zombie apocalypse. She just kind of adapted to it. Still, aside from her sometimes annoying cockiness and wanting to always be right, Ashley has a caring side to her which she shows in her relationships with several of the other characters. And of course, her kick-assedness in killing zombies with a katana sword is really cool.

Fredsti's zombies are your typical shambling, rotting flesh-eaters that are killed by damage to the brain, so there's really nothing new there. The interesting part of Fredsti's zombie story comes not from the zombies themselves but from the survivors. Along with the wild cards - who to me are just like Alices from Resident Evil - there is another way to be affected by the zombie bite in this world. Two characters in the novels are sort of halfway between zombie and human, and the scene where this is revealed with the character of Jake is a most disturbing and disgusting one. Very, very creepy, and I'm now really interested to read the next book in the series to see just what Fredsti does with these mutants and what it does to the story.

I say that these books were written by a horror fan, for horror fans, and the evidence of this rampant in both books is the constant pop culture references. And honestly, there were times when I completely loved that aspect of the writing, and there were times when it was a little annoying. I love it when books or movies mention other real media because it brings the story to our world, and not just the self-imposed shell created by the author or filmmaker. This is how real people think, and how they talk to each other - they mention movies and throw out notable quotes to each other.

Did I mention that the author was in Army of Darkness?!
Jeals!

In Plague Town and Plague Nation, though, something like this happens a few times in almost every chapter. Again, I liked it to a point because I (sadly) got most of the references and because they were references that my mind would probably make in the situation as well - but I can see how it might just be too much for some readers. References to Buffy, Evil Dead, Twilight, the SyFy Channel, of course The Walking Dead, and other random movies and TV shows are the kind of things that fans can relate to and enjoy but not to the point where you feel like the author is beating you over the head with it, or possibly just trying to show off her own knowledge. I don't like it when something like that is thrown into a particular scene in a book sometimes because it makes the reader's mind (or at least mine) go to the referenced movie instead of staying in the story of the book, where it should be.

All that being said though, I really can't say that I didn't smile ear to ear when Fredsti threw in a little story about two lovers who met at a horror convention while dressed like characters from Firefly, or mentions the movie Outbreak near the beginning of Plague Town. Making movie-inspired connections like that is just how I think and Fredsti was somehow able to tap into that. Again, I'm pretty sure she wrote this book just for me. Thank you, Dana!

I don't know if Plague Town/Nation will be hardcore enough for some zombie or horror fans, but to me it was almost perfect. There's plenty of gruesomely gore-geous descriptions of zombie attacks; there's tons of humor (when exactly did zombies get to be so funny, anyway); there's a good story and mystery that still has to be resolved; and there's plenty of different kinds of characters that anyone could relate to or at least like (my vote for best character so far is the guy with the ultimate "nerd house" that the team runs into). Zombie fans, rejoice! There is obviously still plenty of talent out there to bring new and spunky life to our favorite brain-eaters, and Dana Fredsti is one of them!

Movie Review: Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

So I don't know how these movies that everyone tells me I'm supposed to hate keep creeping onto my good side. No, there's nothing particularly special about Chernobyl Diaries and it did in fact show up on more than one "Worst of 2012" lists, but it's not really all that bad. It's watchable, though not without its problems. Once the story goes deep into the shit, as it were, the filmmakers start to rely on too many cliches and foreseeable plot turns (especially the ending). However, I couldn't help but like that it does manage to give viewers a basic plot premise and location not often seen in movies like this.

Chris, his girlfriend Natalie, and friend Amanda arrive in the Ukraine to visit Chris's brother Paul on the way to Moscow. Paul convinces the group to instead go on an "extreme tourism" excursion to Pripyat, an city abandoned 25 years ago after the Chernobyl disaster. Led by Uri and joined by newlyweds Michael and Zoe, they head to Pripyat thinking they will be the only ones there. Soon their vehicle is tampered and they are trapped in the town, soon finding out that they are definitely not alone.

When I first saw TV spots for Chernobyl Diaries, I think I and everybody else was expecting it to be a found footage movie. But it's not. But it is, sort of. During the opening credits, there is personal video footage of the group at several famous locations while they tour Europe. Then the camera switches to the standard third person narrative, but somehow they do it in a way that totally makes it feel and sometimes look like found footage. It was something to do with the camera angles and positioning. Another thing I thought this movie was going to be about was ghosts. Yup, I thought the thing roaming around Pripyat was like, ghosts of the victims of the exploding reactor or something. Well, it's not about that and I still don't know for sure whether that would have better or worse for the movie based on how it actually turned out at the end. 

Despite being the all-too-familiar cast of young hotties, I liked all the actors and their performances. I thought at first that the guy playing Paul was going to be the good-looking douchebag but he turned out to be alright. I was happy to see that there were no other cliches - no whiny girl, thank goodness. Michael's voice sounded familiar to me but his look was so different that it took me a while to place him as Nathan Phillips, who starred in Wolf Creek. He's cute and likable, as is everybody else - nothing really all that standout, but passable, even if there is no character development for any of them.

One scene I totally have to give the movie points for is the bear scare. Seriously, call it undeniably stupid that they suddenly had a full grown bear come running down the hallway of an apartment building, but I don't think you can deny that it was wholly unexpected! That turns out to be the only scare in the movie, though. They had a chance at another good one but they sort of ruined it. After finding randomly finding Natalie again, the group comes upon a little girl just standing there. They try to get her attention and the audience is expecting a scare to come from her but they make the mistake of showing a creature in shadow down the stairs where Natalie is crouched. So now we know that the scare is going to happen there and the suspense is totally ruined. Bad move.

When I saw the deformed, half-dead fish by the lake, I was a little disappointed that that was as far as they were going to go. And, okay, well that really is as far as they went because the radiation-mutant things aren't seen all that much. They move too quick are never seen fully on camera to get a good enough appreciation of what happened to these people and what is possibly in store for our main characters. From what little I did see though the effects were not anything special and could have actually been a bit more extreme, if only just for cheap shock value. This movie could have could have done with more of that to give it that extra bump in excitement.

I would still like to give Chernobyl Diaries points for ingenuity in the plot idea, but the rest of the movie is... meh. That's really the best way to describe it - meh. I don't think it's completely horrible like others say because I found it to be at least watchable and interesting, with some decent characters... even though neither the plot or the characters has any real depth. The ending is beyond predictable, and it really disappointed me that they went the old science-experiment-gone-wrong type of way instead of finding a new or different explanation. Anyway, you're not really missing all that much with this movie. 

Catching Up On The Classics: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

A few years after Frankenstein's monstrous abomination graced American movie screens, director James Whale brought him back to find a mate. Though more comedic than its predecessor, Bride of Frankenstein (which to me, should really be something like "Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, but whatever) is still a beautiful film and was able to become just as iconic and popular as the original Frankenstein. My personal taste leads me more toward the original, though, just in case you were curious.

The opening credits start things off interesting for our movie. Boris Karloff of course headlines the piece, with only his last name on the first screenshot in all capitals - "KARLOFF." There is a short introduction scene at the beginning of the movie with Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy, with Elsa Lanchester playing Shelley. Happily, Lanchester's character is actually credited with her full name - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - whereas in the previous film it was said that the author of the original work was "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley." Bleh. The Monster's Mate is unbilled, and appears only as a question mark. 

Okay so, I like the movie, but it does bother me a little bit. The first few scenes are promising, despite the fact that they feature way too much of the most annoying woman in the world - whoever the hell that is that plays Minnie. She's really pretty wretched. Anyway, Bride starts right where Frankenstein left off at the burning mill where it was believed that both Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster perished. Turns out they didn't. Most amazing to me about this scene is something that nobody ever seems to talk about with this movie. The parents of the murdered girl Maria from the first movie are at the mill, with the father Hans being killed by the Monster by drowning (same as his daughter), and the mother being thrown into the wreckage, hitting one of those water wheel things. 

Why does no one else see how horrible this is?! The Monster didn't know what he was doing when he killed Maria, but had learned all about killing by the time he got to her parents, and now this whole little family has been systematically wiped out and nobody cares. This act reflects the seriousness and horror of the original Frankenstein, but this tone is quickly dropped for something more campy, especially as the Monster explores his world a little bit more. After escaping capture and being injured in the woods, the Monster is drawn to the hut of a blind man after hearing him play the violin. The Monster is welcomed inside and treated like a real guest, which seems to both confuse and excite him. The blind man does not fear the Monster right away, obviously because he cannot see him, and this seems to teach the Monster something about trust and friendship. 

The Monster is actually able to speak and communicate in this movie, although it's a little unclear about just how he learned so fast! No matter though. Supposedly he learned it from both Pretorious and the blind man, though his scenes with the latter are far more entertaining. Never has a murderous monster looked so adorable while saying the word "Bread!" or enjoying a delightful smoke. I almost wrote right here that the comedy was a bad idea because it made the Monster more lovable and made us forget how dangerous he is. But in the middle of the sentence, I suddenly realized that it is not the Monster we are supposed to think is evil in this story - duh. Pretorious, and what he represents as the arrogant scientist, is who and what we should fear. Mary Shelley's moral lesson about those that try to act as God stands true in Bride of Frankenstein - you may be able to accomplish the task of bringing life to a bunch of dead parts, but you will not be able to make those parts truly human, and therefore it will not be accepted by other humans.

Reprising his role as Dr. Henry Frankenstein, Colin Clive takes more of a back seat here, sadly. The Monster's lonely journey and Dr. Pretorious's quest to make a female monster are in the forefront. Clive is still beautiful in his role, reverting once again to his messy haired, crazed rambling that I loved so much when he starts to work on bringing the Bride to life. Pretorious, who has some pretty awesome hair that rivals the Bride's, is just as if not more crazy than Frankenstein in his determination to complete his wicked experiment. One thing I completely don't understand is the little people Pretorious has in the jars. Apparently they are called "homunculi," so at least now I know that. I only have to mention this because creating several human beings that are only two inches tall seems to be a much bigger feat to me than bringing the dead back to life. Frankenstein says that this is more like black magic, though, and not really science, so it obviously doesn't interest or impress him as much. I shall move on.

Elsa Lanchester's brief but highly memorable performance as the Bride is actually probably only about 10% because of her performance and 90% because of her looks. That hair... OMG, that hair. Whoever came up with the design for the Bride's hair is a damn genius because once you get that hair on Lanchester's head, have her turn her head just the right way, and get Whale to perfectly frame the shot like he does, you have pure cinematic gold. The way she twitches her head, the unnatural way she holds her arm out straight - Lanchester is equally as brilliant as Karloff in her portrayal of a monster made out of spare parts by doing the simplest things.

Sequels don't always suck, my friends. The Godfather II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... The Bride of Frankenstein. All the best stars were brought back (including Dwight Frye - still love him), the director was brought back, and they were able to create a sequel that gives the original a run for its money, as some people seem to prefer the sequel more. My fondness for the original Frankenstein will never change, but now the Bride has crept her way into my heart, I believe.