[In the following excerpt, Florescu compares Whale's Frankenstein to his sequel Bride of Frankenstein.]

In 1931 Universal had scored a spectacular film triumph with Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Anxious to capitalize on their new-found star, the studio sought an equally impressive story to use as a follow-up. Director Robert Florey suggested Frankenstein and the studio assigned him to fashion a screenplay loosely based on Shelley's novel (but with a creature more horrible than she had described). In the finished script that Florey and Garrett Fort wrote, Lugosi was visualized as portraying "Henry" (rather than "Victor") Frankenstein. The only link to the novel was the premise of a man creating life from parts of dead bodies. Universal, however, felt that the public associated their new star with pure horror and wanted him to play the creation rather than the creator. Carl Laemmle, then head of Universal, persisted and Florey and Lugosi capitulated. Florey shot a two-reel test of the creation sequence on one of the still-standing Dracula sets. Jack P. Pierce, the head of Universal's make-up department, monster-wise, created a grotesque hairy make-up that Lugosi loathed putting on. In the meantime, director James Whale, new to the Universal fold, had read the script of Frankenstein and decided that HE had to direct it. Universal, coddling its new man, pulled Florey and Lugosi off Frankenstein and put them to work on The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Lugosi was not unhappy with the switch, but it turned out to be a mistake on his part. After Dracula his career was to turn to increasingly more trivial vehicles. Florey's script for Frankenstein was revised and a rather obscure actor by the name of Boris Karloff was brought in to portray "The Monster." (It is interesting to note that even though Karloff was scarcely known, on the opening credits of the film the role of the monster was listed simply as "The Monster … ?", although Karloff's name did appear in the repeat of the cast at film's end.)

Karloff 's performance makes Frankenstein a notable cinematic event, but the film itself is a rather creaky vehicle. Based on Peggy Webling's 1927 play, the revised screenplay credited to Garrett Fort and Francis Edwards Faragoh frequently unspools more like a photographed stage play (as was even more true in the screen version of Dracula) than an original film concept. The feeling of "stage" rather than "film" is set for the audience almost immediately when Edward Van Sloan, who played "Doctor Waldman" in the film, steps in front of the curtains of a stage and warns the audience that what they are about to see "may shock you … it might even horrify you!" Adding to the artificiality was an extremely un-restrained performance by Colin Clive as "Henry Frankenstein," posturing and gesticulating as though he were playing to a Saturday matinee theatre crowd.

As to the plot itself, the story began immediately with Frankenstein gathering up the mutilated body parts he would ultimately incorporate into his masterpiece. Anticipating that a creature with a normal brain (like Shelley's) would not be hideous enough to create screen mayhem, this script had Dwight Frye, as Clive's assistant "Fritz" (in a marvelous supporting role that often had unique touches of humor), steal an abnormal brain. This damaged brain accounted for the monster's lack of speech and predilection toward violence. The creation sequence was visually exciting, with electrical pyrotechnics setting a fine example for future film versions, and Karloff's first appearance as the monster was truly a shocker for the unsophisticated viewers of the day. We see a door slowly opening and the creature backs in. As he slowly turns, the camera cuts in to a full close-up of the now well-established famous make-up. The only missing ingredient was the sudden burst of music for emphasis. (One of the film's main flaws is a lack of background music). Also established in this first Universal feature was the scene most filmgoers always associate with horror films: the mob of villagers pursuing their monstrous quarry with flaming torches. It has been suggested that the idea for the monster's fiery death in the blazing windmill came about because Robert Florey lived in an apartment over a Van de Kamp Bakery in Los Angeles whose trademark was a small turning windmill. Of such trivialities are great endings made!

Whatever shortcomings may have been exhibited by James Whale in directing Frankenstein, and they must be considered minor, for he certainly possessed great cinematic skill, all was forgiven four years later when he gave the world the best of all the Frankenstein sagas, The Bride of Frankenstein (originally the working title was The Return of Frankenstein). Here was a case where all the elements of filmmaking meshed together to form a nearly perfect feature. The original screenplay was fashioned by William Hurlbut based upon his and John L. Balderston's adaptation from "events in the 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley." Actually, the only idea to come from the novel was the idea of creating a bride for the monster. Shelley's creature wanted the mate for companionship, and when he was denied, fearful consequences ensued. In Bride, Henry Frankenstein is forced to create the grisly mate when the sardonic Doctor Praetorius uses the monster to abduct his bride, Elizabeth. Bride was impressively photographed, utilizing huge macabre Gothic-like interior settings that tended to dwarf the human participants. Frank Waxman, one of Hollywood's most illustrious film composers, created a background score so dynamically different that Universal re-used his compositions countless times in the late thirties and forties to supply the accompaniment for a wide assortment of features and serials. Whereas in Frankenstein the camera tended to be stationary a great deal of the time, now Whale utilized its vast potential in huge panning and traveling shots. The viewer is literally caught up in the chase as Karloff moves swiftly through the stylized cemetery with the incensed villagers hotly in pursuit. The creation sequence becomes infinitely more expansive as we witness long overhead crane shots and pan along with the bride's cadaver as it is elevated skyward to receive its jolt of life-giving electricity.

The original Frankenstein ended on a happy note with Henry's father toasting the recovery of his son after having been thrown from the fiery windmill. So as to tie the new version together with the old and not confuse audiences, this ending was excised from all prints of the first film that were still in circulation at the time. The scriptwriters on Bride then came up with a fascinating gimmick to tie the two together. In a long establishing shot we find Elsa Lanchester, who also portrayed the "Bride," essaying the role of Mary Shelley, and telling her husband and Lord Byron that the story of the monster had not ended with the creature's fiery death at the windmill. Instead, the monster had fallen to an underground cistern and was still alive. The pivotal role in Bride, however, was not that of Karloff 's monster, but rather that of Dr. Praetorius, played by Ernest Thesiger. Whale, in his cunning, has given us the maddest of all mad scientists. Praetorius's sardonic soliloquies lend a style and flavor to the film that tends to elevate it from horror films in general and place it more in the macabre-fantasy vein.

If there is a serious flaw in this gem, it is in trying to humanize Karloff's characterization. In a scene in which the monster goes to a blind man's cottage and learns to grunt words and smoke a cigar, the creature is reduced to engaging in a kind of buffoonery that Karloff and most audiences found totally out-of-place within the framework of the entire piece. Whale's final touch of irony—that of having the reconstructed bride repell in horror upon gazing at her mate—was a superbly cunning slice of macabre comedy. It can seldom be said of sequels that they are superior to the original, but in the case of The Bride of Frankenstein that is exactly what has occurred.