Directed by James Whale. Written by William Hurlbut (screnplay and adaptation) and John L. Balderston (adaptation), based on characters from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.

Dr. Pretorious

• Tell him that Dr. Pretorious is here on a secret matter of grave importance and must see him alone, tonight.

• Booted, my dear Baron, is the word for knowing too much.

• Do you like gin? It is my only weakness...

• [toasting with Henry] To a new World of Gods and Monsters. Ha, ha. The creation of life is enthralling, distinctly enthralling, is it not?

• My experiments did not turn out quite like yours Henry. But Science, like love, has her little surprises - as you shall see.

• There is a pleasing variety about my exhibits. My first experiment was so lovely that we made her a Queen. Charming, don't you think? Then of course, we had to have a King. Now, he's so madly in love with her that we have to seal him in...My next production looked so disapprovingly at the other two that they made him an Archbishop...the next one is the very Devil - very bizarre, this little chap. There's a certain resemblance to me, don't you think? Or do I flatter myself? I took a great deal of pains with him. Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn't be much more amusing if we were all devils, and no nonsense about angels and being good.

• [in a mausoleum] I should wait here for a bit. I rather like this place.

Minnie

• I'm glad to see the Monster roasted to death before my very eyes.

• Mind me he don't get loose again. He might do some damage and hurt somebody.

• I'd hate to find him under my bed at night. He's a nightmare in the daylight, he is.

Hermit

• Who is it? You're welcome, my friend, whoever you are.

• Come in, my poor friend. No one will hurt you here. If you're in trouble, perhaps I can help you. But you need not tell me about it if you don't want to. What's the matter? You're hurt, my poor friend. Come. Sit down.

• Perhaps you're afflicted too. I cannot see and you cannot speak. Is that it?

• I have prayed many times for God to send me a friend. It's very lonely here. And it's been a long time since any human being came into this hut. I shall look after you and you will comfort me. Now you must lie down and go to sleep. Yes, yes. Now you must sleep. Our Father I thank thee that in thy great mercy, thou hast taken pity on my great loneliness and now out of the silence of the night has brought two of thy lonely children together, and sent me a friend to be a light to mine eyes and a comfort in time of trouble. Amen.

• Before you came, I was all alone. It is bad to be alone.

The Monster

• Fire - No good.

• Alone: bad. Friend: good!

• [to his bride] Friend? Friend?

• '[after the Bride recoils and shrieks] She hate me. Like others.

Other

• Hunter: Get out the bloodhounds. Raise all the men you can, lock the women indoors, and wait for me.

Dialogue

Lord Byron: The crudest, savage exhibition of Nature at her worst without, and we three, we elegant three within. I should like to think that an irate Jehovah was pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the unbowed head of George Gordon Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner. But I cannot flatter myself to that extent. Possibly those thunders are for dear Shelley - heaven's applause for England's greatest poet.

Shelley: What of my Mary?

Lord Byron: She is an angel.

Mary: You think so?

Lord Byron: Do you hear? Come, Mary. Come and watch the storm.

Mary: You know how lightning alarms me. Shelley darling, will you please light these candles for me?

Shelley: [laughing] Mary, darling.

Lord Byron: Astonishing creature.

Mary: I, Lord Byron?

Lord Byron: Frightened of thunder, fearful of the dark. And yet you have written a tale that sent my blood into icy creeps.

[Mary laughs]

Lord Byron: Look at her Shelley. Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a Monster created from cadavers out of rifled graves? Isn't it astonishing?

Mary: I don't know why you should think so. What do you expect? Such an audience needs something stronger than a pretty little love story. So why shouldn't I write of monsters?

Lord Byron: No wonder Murray's refused to publish the book. He says his reading public would be too shocked.

Mary: It will be published, I think.

Shelley: Then, darling, you will have much to answer for.

Mary: The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson. The punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.

Lord Byron: Well, whatever your purpose may have been, my dear, I take great relish in savoring each separate horror. I roll them over on my tongue.

Mary: Don't, Lord Byron. Don't remind me of it tonight.

Lord Byron: What a setting in that churchyard to begin with. The sobbing women, the first plod of earth on the coffin. That was a pretty chill. Frankenstein and the dwarf stealing the body out of its new-made grave, cutting the hanged man down from the gallows where he swung creaking in the wind. The cunning of Frankenstein in his mountain laboratory, picking dead men apart and building up a human Monster, so fearful - so horrible that only a half-crazed brain could have devised. And then the murder! The little child drowned. Henry Frankenstein himself thrown from the top of the burning mill by the very Monster he had created. And it was these fragile white fingers that penned the nightmare.

Shelley: I do think it a shame, Mary, to end your story quite so suddenly.

Mary: That wasn't the end at all. Would you like to hear what happened after that? I feel like telling it. It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.

Lord Byron: I'm all ears. While heaven blasts the night without, open up your pits of hell.

Mary: Well then, imagine yourselves standing by the wreckage of the mill. The fire is dying down. Soon, the bare skeleton of the building will be dissolved. The gaunt rafters against the sky.

Hans: I want to see with my own eyes...If I can see his blackened bones, I can sleep at night.

Hans' wife: Oh Hans, he must be dead. And dead or alive, nothing can bring our little Maria back to us.

Minnie: It's alive! The Monster! It's alive!

Servant: You're an old fool. We don't believe in ghosts.

Minnie: Nobody will believe me. What? I'll wash my hands of it. Let them all be murdered in the beds.

Henry: Forget? If only I could forget but it's never out of my mind. I've been cursed for delving into the mysteries of Life. Perhaps death is sacred and I profaned it. For what a wonderful vision it was. I dreamed of being the first to give to the world the secret that God is so jealous of - the formula for life. Think of the power to create a man - and I did it. I did it! I created a man, and who knows, in time, I could have trained him to do my will. I could have bred a race. I might even have found the secret of eternal life.

Elizabeth: Henry, don't say those things. Don't think them! It's blasphemous and wicked. We are not meant to know those things.

Henry: It may be that I'm intended to know the secret of life. It may be part of the Divine Plan.

Elizabeth: No, no! It's the Devil that prompts you. It's death, not life, that is in it all and at the end of it all...Listen Henry, while you've been lying here, tossing in your delirium, I couldn't sleep. And when you rave of your insane desire to create living men from the dust of the dead, a strange apparition has seemed to appear in the room. It comes, a figure like Death, and each time it comes more clearly - nearer. It seems to be reaching out for you, as if it would take you away from me. There it is. Look! There!

Henry: I see nothing, Elizabeth. Where? There's nothing there.

Elizabeth: There! There! It's coming for you! Nearer! Henry! Henry! Henry! Henry! Henry!

Pretorius: We must work together.

Henry: Never! This is outrageous. I'm through with it. I'll have no more of this hell-spawn! As soon as I'm well, I'm to be married and I'm going away.

Pretorius: I must beg you to reconsider. You know, do you not, that it is you, really, who are responsible for all those murders? There are penalties to pay for killing people. And with your creature still at large in the countryside...

Henry: Are you threatening me?

Pretorius: I had ventured a hope that you and I together, no longer as master and pupil but as fellow scientists, might probe the mysteries of life and death.

Henry: Never! No further!

Pretorius: And reach a goal undreamed of by scientists...You and I have gone too far to stop, nor can it be stopped so easily. I also continue with my experiments. That is why I am here tonight. You must see my creation!

Henry: Have you also succeeded, bringing life to the dead?

Pretorius: If you, Herr Baron, will do me the honor of visiting my humble abode, I think you will be interested in what I have to show you. After twenty years of secret scientific research and countless failures, I also have created life as we say: 'In God's own image.'

Henry: I must know. When can I see it?

Pretorius: I thought you might change your mind. Why not tonight?

Pretorius: My little Ballerina is charming but such a bore! She won't dance to anything but Mendelsohnn's Spring Song and it gets so monotonous. My next is very conventional, I'm afraid. But you can never tell how these things will turn out. It was an experiment with seaweed. Normal size has been my difficulty. You did achieve size. I need to work that out with you.

Henry: But this isn't science! It's more like black magic.

Pretorius: You think I'm mad. Perhaps I am. But listen Henry Frankenstein. While you were digging in your graves, piecing together dead tissues, I, my dear pupil, went for my material to the source of life. I grew my creatures like cultures; grew them, as Nature does - from seed. But still, you did achieve results that I have missed. Now think what a world-astounding collaboration we should be, you and I - together.

Henry: No! No, no, no.

Pretorius: Leave the charnel house and follow the lead of Nature - or of God if you like your Bible stories. Male and Female created He them. Be fruitful and multiply. Create a race, a man-made race upon the face of the earth. Why not?

Henry: I daren't. I daren't even think of such a thing.

Pretorius: Our mad dream is only half realized. Alone, you have created a man. Now together, we will create his mate.

Henry: You mean...?

Pretorius: Yes. A woman. That should be really interesting.

Hunter: Look, it's the Monster!

Hermit: What are you doing? This is my friend!

Hunter: Friend?! This is the fiend that's been murdering half the countryside. Good heavens, man, can't you see?...He isn't human. Frankenstein made him out of dead bodies.

Karl: I can smell the ghosts already.

Ludwig: I never could stand graves.

Karl: If there's much more like this, what do you say, pal? We give ourselves up and let 'em hang us.

Ludwig: That goes for me too.

Karl: This is no life for murderers!

Pretorious: [toasting to a skull] I give you the Monster. [The Monster enters] Oh, I thought I was alone. Good evening.

Monster: Smoke? Friend.

Pretorius: Yes, I hope so. Have a cigar. They are my only weakness.

Monster: Drink. Good. You make man like me?

Pretorius: No. Woman. Friend for you.

Monster: Woman - Friend - Yes - I want Friend, like me.

Pretorius: I think you can be very useful. And you will add a little force to the argument if necessary. Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is and who you are?

Monster: Yes, I know. Made me from dead. I love dead. Hate living.

Pretorius: You're wise in your generation. We must have a long talk, and then I have an important call to make.

Monster: Woman - Friend - Wife.

Pretorius: All the necessary preparations are made. My part in the experiment is complete. I have created by my method a perfect human brain, already living but dormant. Everything is now ready for you and me to begin our supreme collaboration.

Henry: No, no. Don't tell me of it. I don't want to hear. I've changed my mind. I won't do it!

Pretorius: I expected this. [opens the door, revealing The Monster]

Henry: No, not that.

Pretorius: Oh he's quite harmless, except when crossed.

Monster: Frank - en - stein.

Pretorius: Yes, there have been developments since he came to me.

Monster: Sit down.

Henry: What do you want?

Monster: You know.

Henry: This is your work?

Pretorius: Yes.

Henry: I'll have no hand in such a monstrous thing.

Monster: Yes, must.

Henry: Get him out! I won't even discuss it until he's gone.

Pretorius: [To Monster] Go now. [The Monster growls] Go!

Monster: Must do it!

Henry: Never! Nothing can make me go on with it.

Pretorious: I charge you as you value your mistress' life to do nothing and say nothing of this episode. I assure you that the Baronness will be safely returned if you will leave everything to me. Nothing, that is, except what he demands.

Henry: I admit I'm beaten. But if you can bring her back, I'll do anything that you want.

Pretorius: It is interesting to think, Henry, that once upon a time, we should have been burnt at the stake as wizards for this experiment.

Henry: Doctor, I think the heart is beating! Look, it's beating, but the rhythm of the beat is uneven.

Pretorius: Increase the saline solution. Is there any life yet?

Henry: No. Not life itself yet...This action only responds when the current is applied.

Pretorius: You must be patient. The human heart is more complex than any other part of the body. Look, the beat is increasing.

Henry: Yes! ...It stopped.

Pretorius: Shall I increase the current?

Henry: This heart is useless. I must have another, and it must be sound and young.

Karl: It was a very fresh one.

Henry: Where did you get it?

Karl: I gave the gendarme fifty crowns.

Henry: What gendarme?

Karl: It was a ...police case.

Pretorius: Yes, very sad. Although we can't bother about that now.

The Monster: Work!

Henry: Where's Elizabeth? Have you brought her?

The Monster: He wait. I wait.

Henry: I'm exhausted. I must get sleep.

The Monster: Work. Finish. Then sleep.

Henry: I can't work like this. He must go away. Send him away.

Pretorius: I'll settle him for a little while.

Henry: [to The Monster] Look out! The lever!

Pretorius: Get away from that lever. You'll blow us all to atoms.

...

Elizabeth: Henry! Open the door! Henry!

Henry: Get back! Get back!

Elizabeth: I won't, unless you come!

Henry: [Henry opens the door and hugs Elizabeth] I can't leave them, I can't.

Monster: Yes, go! You live! Go! [To Pretorius] You stay! We belong dead!

Taglines

• Warning! The Monster demands a Mate!

• WHO will be The Bride of Frakenstein? WHO will dare ?

• A Mate... For The Monster!

• Created in a weird scientist's laboratory... from the skeletons of two women and the heart of a living girl!

Cast

• Boris Karloff - The Monster
• Colin Clive - Dr. Henry Frankenstein
• Valerie Hobson - Elizabeth Frankenstein
• Ernest Thesiger - Dr. Pretorius
• Elsa Lanchester - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley/The Monster's Mate
• Gavin Gordon - Lord Byron
• Douglas Walton - Percy Shelley
• Una O'Connor - Minnie
• E.E. Clive - Burgomaster
• Lucien Prival- Albert (the butler)
• O.P. Heggie - Hermit
• Dwight Frye - Karl
• Reginald Barlow - Hans
• Mary Gordon - Hans' wife
• Anne Darling - Shepherdess