10 Classic Movies Directed by James Whale

Born on July 22, 1889, the English director James Whale stands with Tod Browning as one of the most important developers of the 1930s horror genre. Both directors worked to give the iconic Universal horrors their sense of style, but Whale set the bar particularly high with his combination of terror and sly, subversive comedy in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Whale directed 23 films over the course of his career, but the Universal horrors are the pictures for which he is best remembered today. In honor of Whale's birthday, here are ten classic movies where you can see the director's hand at work.

1) Journey's End (1930) - Whale's first directorial effort was an adaptation of a 1928 stage play about World War I. Its cast included two actors who would later be major players in the Universal horror unit: Colin Clive and David Manners.

2) Waterloo Bridge (1931) - This romantic drama about a prostitute and a soldier stars Mae Clarke and Douglass Montgomery, but it was also the third screen appearance of 23 year old Bette Davis. A 1940 adaptation of the Robert Sherwood play would prove more enduring with stars Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.

3) Frankenstein (1931) - Whale's first horror picture would shape the genre for decades to come, influencing countless later adaptations of Mary Shelley's Gothic novel. With Boris Karloff as the resurrected monster and Colin Clive as his mentally unbalanced creator, Whale crafted a stylish, wry, and genuinely terrifying masterpiece. Mae Clarke, Edward Van Sloan, and the deliriously mad Dwight Frye also contributed to Whale's success with their performances.

4) The Old Dark House (1932) - As the name implies, this film belongs to the "old dark house" genre of horror, with Whale emphasizing the absurdly comedic possibilities of the conventional plot. The collected cast makes this picture a delight for classic movie fans, with Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas, Ernest Thesiger, and Raymond Massey all in the mix, but the strangest pleasure is Elspeth Dudgeon cross-dressed to play the elderly Sir Roderick Femm.

5) The Invisible Man (1933) - Whale's next horror production took the darkly humorous aspect of the genre to a whole different level, with the increasingly mad Claude Rains gamboling invisibly and wreaking havoc all over the English countryside. The film was the first screen role for Rains, who remains unseen until the very last shot, but his voice proved the real draw. Gloria Stuart and Henry Travers star as the friends trying to save Rains from himself, but Una O'Connor also demonstrates her ample talent for scene-stealing and an ear-piercing pitch.

6) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - Whale's earlier efforts paved the way for this outstanding picture, which also mingles absurd comedy with its gripping horror. The film reunited Whale with Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Dwight Frye, and Una O'Connor, but its most iconic, if only briefly seen, performer is the young Elsa Lanchester as both Mary Shelley and the shock-haired Bride.

7) Show Boat (1936) - Whale is remembered primarily for his horror, but this 1936 musical drama proved that he could also tap into tender emotions. Generally considered the best film adaptation of the original stage play, Whale's Show Boat gave the world both spectacle and sentiment, with touches of the Whale humor still in evidence. The cast includes many top stars, from Irene Dunne and Allan Jones to Charles Winninger and Helen Morgan, but the film is known today primarily for Paul Robeson's performance as Joe and his powerful rendition of "Old Man River."

8) The Great Garrick (1937) - After The Bride of Frankenstein, Whale moved away from horror, making several dramas and war films. This picture took Whale into the territory of the romantic comedy, with a period setting and Brian Aherne as David Garrick, the great theater personality of the 18th century. Other notable members of the cast include Olivia de Havilland, Edward Everett Horton, Lionel Atwill, and Lana Turner.

9) The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) - Whale continued the period theme with this adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas adventure, with Louis Hayward starring in the double role of the twin royals. Swashbuckling regulars in the cast include Alan Hale and Montagu Love, but Joan Bennett, Warren William, Joseph Schildkraut, and Albert Dekker also make appearances.

10) They Dare Not Love (1941) - Sadly, by the beginning of the 1940s Whale's career was more or less over.  Show Boat had been his last truly memorable work. They Dare Not Love, a World War II drama starring George Brent, Martha Scott, and Paul Lukas, would be his last feature film.

In 1998, Whale's story became familiar to a new generation of moviegoers with the release of Gods and Monsters, adapted from Christopher Bram's novel, Father of Frankenstein. In the film, Ian McKellen plays the director at the very end of his life, while Brendan Fraser stars as the gardener who befriends him. You can also learn more about Whale by reading James Curtis' 2003 biography, James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters.

Classic Films in Focus: MAD LOVE (1935)

Also known as The Hands of Orlac, Mad Love (1935) offers an unusually literate and even lyrical take on the mad doctor motif, a staple of the classic horror genre. This MGM production from director Karl Freund features well-known horror stars like Peter Lorre and Colin Clive in the leading roles, and it retains its creepy charms thanks to their performances and a number of startling flourishes that modern viewers will still find unsettling more than 75 years after the film's original release. Mad Love is an especially good place to enjoy the peculiar talents of genre icon Peter Lorre, here cast as a strangely sympathetic monster whose worst actions stem from passionate but unrequited love.

Lorre plays the brilliant but unhinged surgeon Dr. Gogol, who spends his days curing lame children and his evenings obsessing over the beautiful actress, Yvonne (Frances Drake). When Yvonne's pianist husband, Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive), loses his hands in a train wreck, Gogol secretly replaces them with the hands of Rollo (Edward Brophy), a knife-throwing murderer recently sent to the guillotine. Stephen soon becomes disturbed by his hands' predilection for hurling sharp objects, while Gogol hatches a plan to drive Stephen mad in order to claim Yvonne for himself.

In addition to his bald head and unnerving expression, Dr. Gogol possesses a curiously poetic soul. He seizes upon a wax figure of Yvonne as his personal Galatea, hoping that his love for the original will make him another Pygmalion. Later, having decided with Oscar Wilde that "each man kills the thing he loves," Gogol tries to strangle Yvonne with her own hair while reciting "Porphyria's Lover," the Robert Browning poem about a similarly homicidal lover. The literary connections underline Gogol's dual identity as a man who might give life or take it away. We see these opposing sides of him in various scenes throughout the film, as he operates on crippled children but also compulsively attends executions. Because he has the capacity to do good and appreciate beauty, Gogol demands our sympathy even as we recoil from his madness. He evokes the same conflicted response in Yvonne, a dangerous reaction given its results.

Colin Clive might seem an odd choice for the romantic lead, for he is not at all handsome, but there's great poetic justice in having the former Dr. Frankenstein fitted with a dead man's hands. The dead man, Rollo, is himself a character from Tod Browning's 1932 film, Freaks, with Edward Brophy reprising the role. Frances Drake makes a lovely heroine, especially in her costume from the theater of horrors where she performs, although some of her transitions with the wax figure can be jarring.

Don't miss the scene in which Gogol impersonates a resurrected Rollo, definitely one of Lorre's scariest and most hysterical performance highlights. Karl Freund is best remembered today as the director of The Mummy (1932). For more of Peter Lorre's villains, see M (1931), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), and The Maltese Falcon (1941). Colin Clive plays Dr. Frankenstein in both the 1931 film and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but you'll also find him in Christopher Strong (1933) and Jane Eyre (1934).

Classic Films in Focus: THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)

The success of Universal's Frankenstein in 1931 quite naturally led to the studio's desire for a sequel, and in 1935 they gave the audience more of Boris Karloff's lumbering monster with The Bride of Frankenstein, which also brought back director James Whale and Colin Clive's resurrectionist doctor. Whale took the opportunity to exercise a particularly dark sense of humor, and today The Bride of Frankenstein is probably best appreciated as an example of wry, sardonic comedy, although it also has the honor of introducing Elsa Lanchester's iconic Bride to the pantheon of Hollywood horrors.

Having miraculously survived the events that ended the first film, Karloff's creature returns to terrorize the countryside, while his creator (Colin Clive) struggles with conflicted urges about continuing his work. Henry Frankenstein's worried bride, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson), begs him to give up his unnatural studies, but her arguments lose their force when Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), a fellow scientist with sinister designs, turns up to coerce Frankenstein into making a mate for the original monster.

The modern viewer can't help but realize that there are very few steps indeed between Whale's sequel and Mel Brooks' 1974 parody, Young Frankenstein, and in fact Brooks lifts whole scenes almost without alteration, particularly the segment involving the kindly blind man who befriends the monster. Una O'Connor's screeching maid is a prelude to Cloris Leachman's Frau Blücher, while the generally silly villagers and their burgomaster seem equally at home in either film.

Still, Whale introduces some uniquely crafted images. He puts his monster into tableaux of suffering that suggest his identity as a kind of Christ figure, tormented and abused by the pitiless mob. The monster, after all, is meant to represent humanity's redemption from death, and like Christ he is something both human and other at the same time. Whale also gives us the macabre glory of Lanchester's resurrected bride, and he has the genius to cast the same actress as both the monster and the ultimate maker of this myth, Mary Godwin Shelley. Lanchester only appears onscreen for a few minutes, as Shelley in the opening scenes and as the bride in the finale, but she makes a tremendous impression. Karloff's creature, however, gets the final lines. "We belong dead," he says, wiser at last than the man who made him and weary of a world in which he can find no acceptance, even from the mate who was created as his companion.

For more of Whale's wickedly humorous horror, see The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Look for Karloff in more talkative roles in The Mummy (1932), Bedlam (1946), and The Raven (1963). You'll find Elsa Lanchester in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Lassie Come Home (1946), and Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Some people might find Una O'Connor's old biddies irritating, but if you like her as much as I do you'll want to see her in The Invisible Man and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Ernest Thesiger also appears in The Ghoul (1933), They Drive by Night (1938), and The Man in the White Suit (1951).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

Let's be clear about one thing: Frankenstein is the man, not the monster. Although films like the 1931 Frankenstein have irreparably muddled the original story in the public imagination, Mary Shelley's novel, way back in 1818, was about human vanity, the perils of scientific progress, and spectacularly irresponsible paternity. Her protagonist was the over-reaching scientist, the man who thought he could be God, and that is why the novel bears his name. We forget much of this when we watch classic films based on the story because the monster becomes the whole show, and the movie monster is a far different creature from the one that Shelley imagined. Despite its gross infidelity to its source material, director James Whale's Frankenstein has become a high point in the history of horror, a watershed event on whose existence countless subsequent films depend. If you want to understand the visual and thematic vocabulary of classic horror, you have to start here.

The film's version of the story owes much of its material to Peggy Webling's 1927 dramatic adaptation. We get Henry Frankenstein, not Victor, and the scene is modern day. Henry (Colin Clive) wastes no time in getting his gruesome creation up and lumbering, although his friends try very hard to talk him out of it. Lovely Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) waits to marry him, even though Henry's best friend (John Boles), who, oddly enough, is named Victor, clearly would be glad to step in as the groom. Henry's mentor is Dr. Waldman, played with typical gravitas by Edward Van Sloan; the good doctor tries to talk Henry out of the experiment, but he seems reluctantly fascinated by the whole thing himself, so his entreaties have little effect. Eventually, Boris Karloff's monster takes over, and the rest of the picture belongs to him. The other characters are just the grist for his mill, so to speak (it's a bad joke, and you'll get it once you see the ending).

Given these deviations from its source material, what is it about Frankenstein that makes the movie so great? Whale's direction counts for a lot; he takes this whole enterprise seriously in terms of art, and the scenes he creates get referenced and remade in later films with justified reverence. Boris Karloff invests the monster with tragic grandeur; there is pathos in his expression, and a terrible innocence in the way that he flings little Maria to her death. How could he know better? Newly born yet rejected by his creator, the monster's crimes have more to do with a childlike ignorance of right and wrong than with the kind of brain that rests inside his huge, bolted head. Dwight Frye makes his own horror icon with cringing, sadistic Fritz, who will become the model for so many Igors after him. It might have helped if they had stuck with the original ending and killed off Henry; that climactic fall certainly looks fatal, and poetic justice demands punishment for such hubris.

Over time, these elements become the stuff of comedy and parody, but in 1931 it isn't funny yet. In fact, the movie opens with a warning, delivered with just a wry smirk by Edward Van Sloan, who lets the audience know what it's in for. Looking back at Frankenstein as we do, through the layers of sequels, spoofs, and revisions, such a warning hardly seems necessary. Karloff's craggy, scarred face is as familiar to us as an old friend, but what was it like to see him for the first time? There he is in the film, backing through the door, the actor's name left a blank in the opening credits, a mystery and a horror. When the heavy brow, the leaden eyes, and the poor, patchwork features are revealed at last, we are meant to shudder with a deep sense of dread. The dead thing lives, and man has usurped the very throne of God. In the age of plastic surgery, we ought to understand that horror more.

Karloff would return to the role of the monster in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939), while Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Glenn Strange would take the character on in later classic films. Here's a bit of mind-bending trivia along those lines: in Casino Royale (1967) and The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), the actor in the monster role would be David Prowse, better known for playing that other monstrous walking corpse, the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, Darth Vader. Don't think George Lucas saw the similarities? Watch Whale's Frankenstein, and then go watch the ending of Revenge of the Sith (2005).

For more from James Whale, see The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Karloff also stars in The Mummy (1932), The Black Cat (1934), and several Mr. Wong films, although I especially like him in Val Lewton’s Bedlam (1946). Edward Van Sloan is best remembered as Van Helsing in Dracula (1931), a role he reprised in Dracula’s Daughter (1936). Look for Colin Clive as Rochester in the 1934 adaptation of Jane Eyre and in movies like Christopher Strong (1933) and Mad Love (1935). Clive’s death in 1937 cut short his film career while he was still in his thirties.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.