James Whale
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Although he did a handful of other intelligent films, he is remembered for the witty, leisurely horror classics Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (Claude Rainss 1933 starring début) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
For that matter, there was no housekeeper named Hannah (Oscar-nominated Lynne Redgrave, who was robbed that year by the Academy), but both probably are loose fits for Whale’s last lover and character actress Una O’Connor, who had remained Whale’s friend since The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Whale (1889-1957) directed some 21 films, but is best remembered for seven made between 1931 and 1939: "Frankenstein," "The Old Dark House," "The Invisible Man," " Bride of Frankenstein ," "Show Boat," "The Great Garrick" and " The Man in the Iron Mask."
Adapted from the book "Father of Frankenstein" by Christopher Bram, the new movie Gods and Monsters tells the story of film director James Whale, who completed 21 movies in Hollywood but will forever be remembered for only four: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
He lifts scenes from these and Whale's other movies (which also include "The Invisible Man" and the 1936 version of "Show Boat") for dream sequences and he draws a parallel between Frankenstein's monster and a hunky, uncultured yard man named Clay (Brendan Fraser), with whom Whale forms an uneasy, esoteric bond.
"Gods and Monsters" is very loosely based on the last days of 1930s film director James Whale (played, in the best performance of his screen career, by Ian McKellen), an un-closeted homosexual who was responsible for directing such memorably off-kilter films as "Frankenstein," "The Bride of Frankenstein," "Show Boat," and "The Invisible Man."
The Invisible Man (2020)
Directed by Leigh Whannell
influenced by The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Frankenstein (1931)
Plot Themes
Touches of Sleeping With the Enemy (1991) and Hollow Man (2000) aside, Whannell’s rebirth of The Invisible Man feels like a fresh take blending the most minimal of threads from H.G. Wells‘ novel with more urgent themes from today.
With a few cheeky nods to James Whale’s 1933 Universal horror classic, The Invisible Man is a remake that pays homage to its predecessor while blazing its own wildly original path.
Though there’s no specifically sexual violence, The Invisible Man has a lot of spiritual kinship with rape-and-revenge movies like I Spit on Your Grave.
Though more than eighty years have passed since Claude Rains donned the dark sunglasses, smoking jacket, and yards of ACE bandages in 1933’s The Invisible Man , the character still holds a firm place in the pantheon of Universal’s classic movie monsters.
The Mummy – the bloody awful 2017 one with Tom Cruise – was the first in the series, with The Bride of Frankenstein slated to follow a year or two later.
Universal’s original 1933 “The Invisible Man” with Claude Rains in the title role was directed by James Whale (“The Bride of Frankenstein”) and adapted by R.C. Sherriff (“Journey’s End”).
In that respect, the story harkens back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a novel that — pay attention, Trivial Pursuit players — sports the often dropped subtitle The Modern Prometheus.
A worthy companion piece to “Under the Skin” and “Her” in its examination of what constitutes human and feminine identity — and whether those two concepts need always overlap — Garland’s long-anticipated directorial debut synthesizes a dizzy range of the writer’s philosophical preoccupations into a sleek, spare chamber piece: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” redreamed as a 21st-century battle of the sexes.
The movie draws inspiration from likeminded films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but at its core, it’s basically a modern day retelling of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” with a twist, with Nathan as the creator and Vikander as his monster.
Free Enterprise (1998)
Directed by Robert Meyer Burnett
influenced by The Invisible Man (1933)
Characters
They compare him to Claude Rains in ''The Invisible Man.''
All that the references add up to is demonstrating that both the writer and the idealised viewer have seen, or heard of, a great many horror picture stretching back into the 1930s and James Whale's Frankenstein .
The first time came in the 1930's after the early success of Universal's monster movies, Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and James Whale's Frankenstein (1931).
The list of movies mentioned or satirized is amazingly long, and features everything from the 1931 Universal classic, Frankenstein, to Tom Cruise's All the Right Moves ("if you pause [the video] at the right place, you can see his penis").
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George A. Romero
influenced by Frankenstein (1931)
Visuals
NotLD is also a history of American nightmares: The opening graveyard scene recalls Frankenstein (1930) and the Universal tradition.
Yes, it's Psycho, but it's also the Theatre of the Absurd, acid castration, El Santo wrestling flicks, Whale's The Invisible Man, a chubby burlesque queen doffing off her schoolgirl plaids to "Besame Mucho," and a gigantic python slithering out of the hero's pants as he eyes a potential flame.
Bootleg discs and special screenings aside (the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art booked "Santa Sangre" in October, on a double bill with Whale's 1933 "The Invisible Man," a movie that "Sangre" embraces), "Santa Sangre" has been hard to see in America since its theatrical release, when it was edited for an R rating.
From the ever-present Greek chorus of clowns and circus musicians to Fenix's oddly poetic obsession with James Whale's The Invisible Man, Santa Sangre is at once disturbingly perverse yet strangely logical within its fucked-up framework; more than a handful of visceral images are likely to burn themselves into your memory banks for good.
Santa Sangre is as familiarly esoteric as Jodorowsky’s other efforts, but it possesses very pronounced influences, including Psycho , Freaks (Tod Browning is Jodorowsky’s cinematic father), The Who’s Tommy, The Invisible Man, and even Fellini’s partiality to the circus.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Directed by Mel Brooks
influenced by Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Plot Characters
I will confess to experiencing flashbacks to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters, Lucky McKee’s May, and other riffs on the story while I was watching this…
The story has been moulded into numerous adaptations, parodies and spoofs, including Young Frankenstein (1974), Blackenstein (1973), Frankenhooker (1990), Frankenweenie (2012), and, most recently, Lisa Frankenstein (2024).
The story of the man who would be God and his creation has appeared in numerous cinematic guises, from the flatheaded, bolt-necked monster of 1930s as played by Boris Karloff to Peter Boyle’s all-singing-all-dancing creature in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein…
Since then, successors have included Bride of Frankenstein (1935), satires like Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974) and British actor/director Kenneth Branagh’s artsy Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994).
…the films that came after it (Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and even comedies like Young Frankenstein) cemented the story’s mythic stature…
Along the way, del Toro does something one would think to be impossible — he reclaims the famous blind man sequence from the realm of the comedic, specifically from Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”
Writer-director Bill Condon won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay with his previous film, Gods and Monsters, a biopic of Frankenstein director James Whale.
The writer-director of Gods and Monsters, a fantastical account of the latter days of Frankenstein director James Whale, plays it fairly straight in biographing famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.
Kinsey makes no apologies for its subject's often infuriating behavior -- in that manner, it has much in common with writer-director Bill Condon's previous feature Gods and Monsters, which presented Frankenstein director James Whale as tragically flawed yet allowed us a look at those personal demons that all too often defined his very being.
Six years ago writer/director Bill Condon fashioned a highly speculative account of the waning days of iconographic filmmaker James Whale, the man who made "Frankenstein."
It's subject was the late James Whale, who directed the original Frankenstein and it's first sequel in the 1930s, and went on to win an Academy Award for his work on Show Boat.
It's subject was the late James Whale, who directed the original Frankenstein and it's first sequel in the 1930s, and went on to win an Academy Award for his work on Show Boat.
Bava chose to adapt the short story Vij by one of his favorite Russian authors, Nikolai Gogol, into an homage to the early Universal horror films (Dracula [1931], Frankenstein [1931] and Bride of Frankenstein [1935]) he had long admired.
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by The Invisible Man (1933), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Visuals Themes Plot
Together, in a campy sci-fi lab procedure more or less faithful to the portrayal of electrocution-based reanimation in James Whale’s 1935 Bride of Frankenstein…
Her hair is made wavy by the electricity, a nod to the iconic hair design choices made in the 1935 film "Bride of Frankenstein," which itself was inspired by an ancient bust of Nefertiti.
Gyllenhaal’s take on Shelley’s iconic creature is far more intriguing than Guillermo del Toro 2025’s Academy Award nominated Frankenstein.
…with a scarf covering his lower face (a la Claude Rains in THE INVISIBLE MAN)…
…an irreverent new twist on the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein…
Borrowing a little from James Whale’s 1935 Frankenstein sequel Bride Of Frankenstein – in that, Elsa Lanchester played both Shelley and the Bride, as Buckley does – Gyllenhaal has created a meta feminist monster movie that tips its hat to Hollywood’s golden age.
In musing over the relationship between a creator and his creation, as well as flirting with the eternal nature versus nurture argument, echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its many screen adaptations can be glimpsed.
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Directed by Louis Leterrier
influenced by Frankenstein (1931)
Themes Characters
A scene or two recalls King Kong; others invoke the wounded innocence of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Stan Lee , the Hulk's co-creator, has said that he came up with the character by crossbreeding Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Hulk (2003)
Directed by Ang Lee
influenced by Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Themes Characters
Mostly, “The Hulk” reminds you of other, better movies you wish you were watching: David Cronenberg’s moving “The Fly,” “Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff (the actor who makes CGI seem forever a paltry thing), and John Guillermin’s lovely remake of “King Kong.”
Monstrously large, the comic-book Hulk was a descendant of the creature played by Boris Karloff in James Whale's "Frankenstein," newly pumped up for the atomic age.
It resembles The Bride of Frankenstein far more than it does Daredevil.
This is evidenced at bulk in the film: RoboCop removes his helmet and observes himself, for the first time, in a broken piece of a mirror; Frankensteins monster first sees his horrible visage in the calm water of a pool (this occurs in the 1931 version).
Using the classic Frankenstein (1931) premise as a backbone and mixing in elements as disparate as Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis (1926), Judge Dredd comics and the media-saturated sensationalism of the Reagan eighties, RoboCop is a techno-satire that deserves to stand alongside such anti-establishment science fiction classics as Doctor Strangelove (1964) and Escape From New York (1981).
This breakthrough lands Clive and Elsa presumably writer-director Vincenzo Natali is deliberately referencing Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive, co-stars of The Bride of Frankenstein on the cover of Wired magazine and earns them the gratitude of some nefarious pharmaceutical corporation with plans to harvest Fred and Ginger's "proteins."
Movie geeks will recognize that these hipsters (who dress like club bunnies rather than lab rats) are named after Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester, the mad scientist and his creation in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Clive and Elsa are, of course, a reference to Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester, who played Dr. Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein in the 1935 masterpiece "The Bride Of Frankenstein," and that obvious joke is also a statement of mission: Natali knows exactly what story he's teling, and he wants to bring Mary Shelly's original concepts into the age where genetic miracles have become almost commonplace.
Adrien Brody - sorry, Oscar winner Adrien Brody - and Sarah Polley are punky biogeneticists Clive and Elsa (apparently named for Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester , who played the mad scientist and his creation in 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein").
In “The Substance,” Fargeat also references David Cronenberg’s fondness for body horror in movies like “The Brood,” where a mad scientist experiments on a pregnant woman with dire results, Stuart Gordon’s “Re-Animator,” which also features a neon green goo that resembles The Substance, James Whale’s “The Invisible Man,” which follows a medical marvel gone awry, and Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” in the way it uses copious amounts of blood and destruction to illustrate a girl’s pain.
The movie is a high-gloss remake of The Invisible Man that earns all its points with amazing special effects — and they are incredible.
Like many of its predecessors, Bloodshot tries to flip the concept introduced in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Initially, the scene has echoes of Boris Karloff’s “Frankenstein” before it heads off in a terrifying direction all its own.