Happy Halloween! Betcha didn't know that the 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein was a treasure trove of alchemical Tarot references, did ya? Click here to read (and watch) more...
Back when I used to interview people about their favorite horror movies for AMC, I routinely discovered huge holes in my movie knowledge. For example, it wasn't until I spoke with Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi that I realized I'd never actually seen Bride of Frankenstein. As a kid I'd read the picture book about it until I felt like I'd seen it, but they never seemed to show it on TV so at some point I just grew up and forgot about it.
Even though it kept popping up on people's recommendation lists, I was still slow to catch up. Because I recently read the original novel that the films are (sort of) based on, and I actually didn't like it very much. And then I watched the 1931 movie, and except for the opening scene in the graveyard I was totally underwhelmed. But I was determined to work my way up to Bride, and I'm so glad I did, because this, friends, is my kind of movie.
For starters, it opens with a completely fanciful imagining of Mary Shelley and Lord Byron as they sit around a warm fire discussing the events of "her tale". There are flashbacks to the original film, which, judging by all the electronic laboratory equipment obviously takes place decades after its source material was written. Quite an imagination you've got there, Mary! Since these events have practically nothing in common with what she actually wrote, the entire prologue now seems like brilliant self-parody.
And then the next character you meet is this woman:
Somehow, a movie full of reanimated monsters and mad scientists winds up being stolen by little old Minnie the housekeeper (Una O'Connor). Every time the movie shows any danger of slowing down, she runs in like a demented rodeo clown to pep things up again.
Anyhow, it's not long before we encounter Dr. Pretorius and his valise of homunculi. It's a really jarring moment (bad pun), because heretofore the driving themes of Frankenstein had all related to SCIENCE!, and there is nothing at all scientific about a six-inch man in a jar dressed like the pope. A fact which, to his credit, Dr. Frankenstein is still enough of a real doctor to note. When the jars come out, you immediately realize that you are not watching the sort of horror movie that you thought you were. This is bald-faced occultism. It's dark-sided!
It's also really interesting from an alchemical perspective. The movie seems intent on reminding us of the blurry line between science and magic, and while the word "alchemy" is never uttered, clearly the scriptwriters did their homework. Some alchemists were indeed concerned with creating or artificially inducing life; it was hoped that the homunculus (or "little human") that they created could be depended on for protection, or to serve as an avatar in their alchemical experiments.
The Bride of Frankenstein filmmakers get extra kudos from me for molding their homunculi in the form of classical archetypes that align almost perfectly with familiar Major Arcana characters. Their presentation in labelled jars is not unlike the Tarot's figures confinement to their respective cards, and evokes the sort of "living" quality that these images take on in our minds.
Pretorius's first experiment was so lovely that he made her a queen, immediately recognizable as the Empress. But alright, that's a pretty facile association to make. You can't throw a neck-bolt in Europe without hitting some sort of queen.
Then of course, he had to have a king. So the Emperor joins the picture. He and the Empress demonstrate their pint-sized love/hate relationship. Pretorius has to be very careful with the king.
His next "production" looked so disapproving of the other two that they made him an archbishop, a.k.a the Hierophant. Do you see how Pretorius is basically projecting his own impressions upon these little creatures, casting them in familiar roles, conforming them to his vision? This is the kind of imaginative spirit that you employ in a Tarot reading.
The next one is "the very Devil." Still think I'm making all this up? He doesn't resemble the card -- he actually resembles Pretorius, his creator, an artistic choice which underscores the amount of thought that went into this strange little scene. Since Pretorius's sole agenda is tempting Frankenstein back into the laboratory to work on Monster 2.0, this is quite fitting.
I admit, at first the little ballet dancer had me stumped, until I remembered, why yes, there is a Trump card that stars a dancing woman. It's the 22nd and final card, the World. Pretorius refers to this creation as "charming, but such a bore." That's a pretty fair estimation of how the Devil would view the triumph of the World card, in which all earthly troubles are momentarily laid to rest and you gain a view of creation as God intended it to be. In the oldest decks, this card portrayed the return of God's kingdom, the new Jerusalem. The tiny dancer represents the anima mundi, the soul of the world, the fact that she'll only dance to Mendelssohn's "Spring Song", hints that she is patiently awaiting the end of the current Dark Age, confident in the coming resurrection.
Pretorius says woefully little of his final exhibit, except that she is the result of an experiment with seaweed. By this point my brain was deep into Tarot mode, so the first thing I thought of was the Star. But while this card's classical imagery is quite watery, it was actually Robert M. Place's version of the card from his Alchemical Tarot that swam to mind, the double-tailed siren of antiquity that Starbucks adopted as its original logo. Am I stretching at this point? I dare you to think so.Especially because, at the very end, after Elsa Lanchester has rejected all of Karloff's open-mouth kisses, we are treated to this:
Like the other examples, this is a symbol that goes back so much further than the Tarot, but in this case it seems so heavily informed by the Tarot (especially considering the rest of the alchemical imagery) that I can't help assuming that it's a direct reference. The Tower card's meaning fits perfectly here -- the physical destruction of the building is immediately symbolic of the monster's own self-destruction, but it also represents Dr. Frankenstein's escape from Pretorius's evil influence. Just as in the Waite-Smith Tower card, one man and one woman escape, barely, to an uncertain fate.
