Bride Of Frankenstein: 10 Movies & Retellings To Watch Before The Bride!
Originally meant for release in 2025, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is finally coming to cinemas in 2026. Exactly why the film was delayed is uncertain, though chances are that the studio wanted to give it some distance from the release of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
If anything, separating the two films by a few months will likely help the film. Audiences, critics and awards bodies alike loved Frankenstein and had everyone clamouring for more Gothic horror. Despite it switching up its time period to the ‘30s, The Bride! looks set to feed the hungry hordes, but this time will throw the bride of Frankenstein’s creature into the spotlight.
Although the creation of a mate for his creature is discussed in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, it never comes to fruition. Doctor Frankenstein has a change of heart and destroys the body prior to its reanimation. The idea stuck, though, and the bride character has popped up in a variety of films and television shows over the years. She has, however, almost always been a side character, such as in the Hotel Transylvania series. But in The Bride!, she will rightly take centre stage.
Considering that the original story was written by a woman, it feels only right that there be a film exploring the female variant. There have been films that have dealt with female Doctor Frankensteins, like The Lady Frankenstein and Birth/Rebirth, but fewer with a female creature. Here is a round-up of those rare examples – some directly lifted from the source material, and others that merely use the concept as a jumping-off point.
The character of the Bride first arrived on screen in the 1935 film, Bride of Frankenstein. The film took inspiration from Shelley’s novel and built an entire movie around the creation of a mate for Frankenstein’s creature. And, as with the creature himself, the Bride of Frankenstein’s name is misleading.
Frankenstein is the creature's creator, and the Bride is made to be the creature's companion rather than for the maniacal doctor with a penchant for reanimating corpses. The title of the film is further misleading as the Bride herself, played by Elsa Lanchester, features very little. Arriving during the climax, the Bride has a rather short stint on screen, but thanks to her iconic look, instantly solidified herself in popular culture.
Although not strictly an adaptation of Frankenstein, there is no denying that Poor Things shares a kinship with the source material. Instead, based on the book by Alasdair Grey, the story follows Bella Baxter, a young woman who is the result of some extreme experimentation. After a pregnant woman commits suicide, Doctor Godwin Baxter brings the body back with the mind of the fetus inside it. The result is a creation that looks like an adult female, but acts like a child. As Bella’s maturity quickly advances, she navigates the world around her with fresh eyes, instilling her own sense of curiosity into all those that she meets.
A fantastic spin on the Frankenstein framework, through Bella, themes of body autonomy, sexuality, and more are explored. Emma Stone is exceptional as Bella, and her hard work was rewarded with the Best Actress Academy Award.
Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker offers a comedy horror parody of Mary Shelley’s novel. Switching the time period and location to ‘90s New Jersey, Frankenhooker finds amateur scientist Jeffrey Franken become obsessed with saving his recently deceased fiancée, Elizabeth. To achieve this goal, he sets about collecting the body parts of local sex workers, using them to create the perfect body for Elizabeth. However, upon animation, his creation defaults to the factory setting of her new parts and hits the streets for work.
Camp and kitsch, Frankenhooker is a far cry from the Gothic story that inspired it, but plays perfectly to the Troma crowd.
Starring Sting, Clancy Brown, and Jennifer Beals, The Bride is one Frankenstein story that you might not have heard of. The story sees Sting’s Baron Charles Frankenstein successfully create a female creature, Eva. A perfect recreation, Eva is not marred by the scars that afflict his original creature, and as such, Frankenstein determines to take her for himself.
Part My Fair Lady, part Beauty and the Beast, The Bride is a wild interpretation of the story, though we have a feeling that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! will be wilder still.
The original trilogy of Child’s Play movies is genuinely unnerving. The escapades of serial killer Charles Lee Ray trapped inside the body of a Good Guy doll were chilling to watch unfold. Then, in 1998, director Ronny Yu overhauled the series, leaning into the post-modern humour of Scream, and injecting fresh life into the plastic-clad villain. The resulting film, Bride of Chucky, also introduced Charles’ girlfriend, Tiffany Valentine. After tracking down her man, Tiffany found herself transported into the body of a doll. Rather than panic, Tiffany embraced her new skin and joined Chucky for a killing spree.
Giving Chucky a bride and naming the film Bride of Chucky is a clear homage to Bride of Frankenstein, but thankfully, Tiffany gets a lot more to do. A now-staple component of the Chucky-verse, Tiffany is a modern variant on the Bride, whose sassy nature is adored by horror fans everywhere.
Until the release of del Toro’s Frankenstein, for many, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the definitive adaptation. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Victor Frankenstein, this version of the story expanded on Shelley’s concept of a bride. Rather than create the woman for his creature, Frankenstein does it for himself. During the story, his beloved Elizabeth dies. Consumed by grief and aware of his powers of resurrection, Victor brings Elizabeth back. As he does so, his creature arrives demanding a mate. The newly ‘birthed’ Elizabeth realises what has happened to her, and she flees.
What happens next is a horrific tragedy that gives this version of Frankenstein a lot of bite, reworking Shelley’s story into something filled with even more anguish.
Released ahead of its time, if Penny Dreadful to be made today, it would have everybody talking. Sadly, the TV series arrived in 2014 to little fanfare. The show had a passionate audience, though, and managed to get three seasons, during which characters from Gothic literature such as Mina Harker, Doctor Jekyll, and Dorian Grey lit up the screen. Also present was Harry Treadaway as a very sweaty Victor Frankenstein who, after making Rory Kinnear’s creature, was ordered to make him a mate.
Billie Piper’s street woman, Brónagh Croft, was used for the experiment, but the reborn Lily caught her maker’s attention. Lily was not content being one half of any pairing and sought to build an army to take on the tyrannical men who had made her human life miserable.
Released in 1985, Re-Animator was based on the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. This story from Lovecraft was, in turn, inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel. Given a modern update, Re-Animator followed med student Herbert West’s dangerous experiments in human reanimation. After the success of the film and its sequel, Bride of Re-Animator continued the story.
Following the death of his girlfriend in the first movie, Herbert became hellbent on bringing her back to life, clearly having learned nothing from his first dalliances with resurrecting the dead. His bride arrives during the final act and contributes to some of the movie's bloodier massacres.
In Weird Science, friends Gary and Wyatt are inspired by the 1931 film Frankenstein to create their dream woman. Rather than using body parts of the dead, the duo instead create her with pixels on their computer. They then hook electrodes up to a doll, and after infusing it with a ton of electricity, she comes to life, helping the boys go from bullied losers to high school hits.
Although a staple of the ‘80s, Weird Science doesn’t give Lisa the autonomy that she deserves, but she certainly gets more screen time than a lot of Bride conduits.
