{"id":13239,"date":"2020-05-11T10:45:26","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T17:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=13239"},"modified":"2020-05-15T13:08:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T20:08:18","slug":"tales-from-the-box-office-how-the-bride-of-frankenstein-helped-marry-horror-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/tales-from-the-box-office-the-bride-of-frankenstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales From The Box Office: \u2018The Bride Of Frankenstein\u2019 Married Horror & Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a bit frightening to realize how long the horror genre has been looked down upon<\/a> by so-called prestige films, but these days, the box office success of a low-budget creature feature is more likely than not. This wasn\u2019t always the case for Hollywood, even in the heyday of the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s through the 1950s (though we can arguably include Herbert Brenon\u2019s <\/span>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde <\/span><\/i>from 1913).<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics at the time often turned their noses down at these monster movies, noting the raw potential of audacious films like Rupert Julian\u2019s <\/span>The Phantom of the Opera <\/span><\/i>(1925) and Wallace Worsley\u2019s <\/span>The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/span><\/i> (1923), but never quite recognizing them as the hallmarks they are today. But in 1931, this started to change with Tod Browning\u2019s <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>, which received high marks from critics and kickstarted Bela Lugosi\u2019s long career as the titular vampire<\/a>. Later that year, James Whale\u2019s <\/span>Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> garnered a significant profit at the box office, setting the stage for Whale to return with <\/span>The Invisible Man <\/span><\/i>(1933), which was another hit right after Karl Freund\u2019s <\/span>The Mummy <\/span><\/i>(1932).<\/span><\/p>\n

But the film that cemented the modern monster horror as a true north for the box office was arguably <\/span>The Bride of Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> in 1935, which now celebrates 85 years this past week. Also directed by James Whale, the sequel to <\/span>Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> was the biggest moneymaker for Universal\u2019s monster movies up until that point, and it proved these films could be tied together in a shared universe of sequels, remakes, and crossovers to huge success. In some ways, you could compare <\/span>The Bride of Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> to 2008\u2019s <\/span>Iron Man<\/span><\/i>, which is far from the most profitable superhero movie of all time, but it\u2019s certainly the precursor to a massive sandbox for multiple filmmakers to play in<\/a> at the pleasure of a global audience. Another fair comparison is <\/span>Spider-Man 2<\/span><\/i> (2004), because both films are considered to be among the best sequels of their time for a genre on the precipice of theatrical domination.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth mentioning that <\/span>The Bride of Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> was one of the first horror movies to receive lavish praise from critics without any derisive write-offs of it being \u201cjust a horror movie.\u201d Rather than qualifying their reviews with the \u201cit\u2019s good for its genre\u201d undermine, many critics rightfully legitimized the film\u2014and its contemporaries\u2014as a uniquely good picture in its own right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crunching The Numbers<\/span><\/h2>\n