YMMV / Bride of Frankenstein

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Monster's decision to blow up the lab and kill not only himself and Pretorius, but the Bride as well, could be interpreted as a Mercy Kill of the Bride given the Monster's statement "we belong dead." On the other hand, it could also be seen as the Monster throwing a deadly temper tantrum and killing his Bride for the "crime" of not loving him the moment she saw him and Dr. Pretorius for failing to give him the loving wife he promised.
• Ass Pull: Why is there a lever to destroy the laboratory? There is not even any Foreshadowing about its existence before the end of the film.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene where Dr. Pretorius shows Dr. Frankenstein a bunch of small humans he's created and placed in jars which has no analogue in the original novel and has no relevance to the film's plot, except maybe establishing that Pretorius both understands Frankenstein's desire to make life and has useful information to offer to the experiment. They're never referred to again. It's just there to show off fancy special effects technology that's so dated it's charmingly quaint.
• Broken Base: After the first film was played straight, the decision to make the second film not only campy, but have the Monster speak (over the objections of Karloff himself) has led to some tension between fans.
• Creepy Awesome: Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) is a Camp Gay Mad Scientist who grows tiny people in jars, does not so much tinker in God's domain as wage open war against him, dreams of creating a race of monsters and interrupts his grave robbing to hold cozy picnics with Frankenstein's monster in the crypt. To put it another way, this is a Mad Scientist who scares Dr. Frankenstein.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite only having a short appearance at the end of the movie and not appearing in any of the further sequels, the Bride has become one of the most famous Universal monsters.
• Even Better Sequel: While Universal's first Frankenstein is well-regarded, this sequel is considered even better by many.
• Ho Yay: The blind man and the Monster have their moments.
• I Am Not Shazam: Lord Byron himself actually calls the monster Frankenstein in the prologue, and Pretorius is quick to dub the new female monster "The Bride of Frankenstein". Although perhaps he was using the word "of" in the same manner as in "Monster of Frankenstein" (This may also be an artifact left over from the original plan to have Elizabeth's heart implanted into the Bride, which would have made the name literal.)
• Mandela Effect: The Bride's iconic hairstyle is subject to two cases of mass mismemory. For one, most assume based on the contrast of the black-and-white footage that the Bride's hair is black, which was widely embraced by pop culture to the point that Universal themselves made it official. However, the hair in advertisements of the time was initially depicted as red, something referenced by the redhead Magenta's costume with the hairstyle in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Another thing people misremember is the striking white streaks in her hair. Most assume, with good reason, that they're symmetrically placed at her temples, but the wig Elsa Lanchester wore had subtly asymmetrical streaks— on her right, just above her eyebrow; on her left, just below it. This is a detail almost no visual adaptation of the Bride, licensed or otherwise, notices or replicates since nobody assumes the streaks would be anything but symmetrical. Some later merchandise, like a collector doll from Monster High and action figures from NECA catch this detail.
• Memetic Mutation: As a jokey title for speculative sequels, "Bride of (blank)" was the "(blank) 2: Electric Boogaloo" of its era.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Monster reaches this early in the film when he first strangles an elderly couple in their home for absolutely no reason and then brutally murders a young girl. We don't actually get to KNOW these people, so we can forgive the Monster for these fiendish acts. Let's also keep in mind that he has the brain of a criminal.
    • In the original script, Dwight Frye's character Karl is the one who kills the old couple (who turn out to be his uncle and aunt) and then lets the Monster take the blame.
  • As for Dr. Pretorius, he crosses it when he manipulates the monster into his services and has Elizabeth held for ransom in exchange for Dr. Frankenstein's assistance in his experiment.
• Narm: The blind man plays Ave Maria on a violin when the Monster first meets him. However, the movements of the bow don't match the music being played at all.
• One-Scene Wonder: The eponymous Bride appears onscreen for all of about three minutes, but definitely makes an impression. Especially notable in that the character never appeared again throughout the Universal monster franchise. Those few minutes of screentime are literally all that exists of her while the likes of the original monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man got multiple major roles across several films, yet she's still among the biggest icons of the whole thing.
  • We also get a One-Line Wonder— John Carradine is a hunter who confronts the Monster at the blind hermit's cabin. And by God does he work that line for all it's worth!
  (to the Hermit) "Friend? This is the fiend that's been murdering half the countryside! Good heavens man, can't you see?"
• The Scrappy: Minnie, the annoying, loud-mouthed housekeeper. Her other Universal Horror role in The Invisible Man (1933) gets similar hate.
• Signature Scene: The Bride's creation and her first movements when walking around.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Bride. She looks normal, except for her hair and a few scars, but the way Elsa Lanchester portrays her – the wide-eyed yet expressionless face, the stiff arms, the sharp, jerky motions of her head, the hiss – she actually makes the Bride seem less human than Karloff's Monster.
• Values Dissonance: The hermit teaches the Monster to smoke, saying it is "good". This film was made before the harmful effects of smoking were known.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The sequence with the homonculi holds up well almost 90 years later.
• Ugly Cute: The Monster, even more so than he was the first film. He's oddly cute when he's happy and smiling while interacting with the blind hermit. And then there are the scenes where he cries, which will make you go "Awww" for a different reason. It helps that unlike the last film, Boris Karloff had to keep his dental bridges in so he could speak coherently.
• The Woobie:
  • The poor old hermit, who is so happy to finally have a friend, only to be separated from him almost immediately and having his home burned down shortly after.
  • The elderly couple at the beginning, who previously lost their daughter to the Monster and end up losing their lives here because of the man's thirst for closure. Although he ends up being proven right when he tries to make sure that the Monster is really dead, he ends up going by himself and puts himself in a precarious position for the Monster to drown him like he did with his daughter. And then his wife ends up helping the Monster get out of the sewer (thinking it's her husband), only to be violently flung down when she recognizes him and screams.