Bride of Frankenstein

Whale did not want to make a sequel and agreed only if he could do what he liked with it, which is why this is the strangest film Universal released in the decade and the only one anybody still argues about.

Ernest Thesiger's Doctor Pretorius arrives with a box of miniature people and a bottle of gin and is the first camp villain in horror. Karloff's monster learns to speak, which Karloff objected to and which turns out to be the emotional centre of the film. Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelley in the prologue and the Bride, who is on screen for under four minutes and became the most recognisable silhouette in the genre.

It is funnier than its reputation, and considerably sadder.