Universal hoped to repeat the success of the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi Dracula (1931) with a version of Frankenstein. When the Laemmles offered the project to Whale, his imagination was fired by the material, and he took total control over both the screenplay and the production design. Taking advantage of the subject’s visual possibilities for the grotesque and the macabre, Whale emulated the look of German expressionist cinema – in striking contrast to the low-key naturalism of Waterloo Bridge, his previous film. The juxtaposition of Frankenstein’s impending marriage and the creation of the monster, who will disrupt that union, remains notably charged and open to the many contemporary queer readings of the film.

Frankenstein’s success guaranteed that Universal would produce a sequel. Wary of being seen exclusively as a director of horror films, Whale balked at the idea. To secure his cooperation, the studio granted him almost complete freedom, and Whale took advantage of the situation to create his most outlandishly perverse film. The resulting horror-comedy is widely considered his masterpiece and can be read as a darkly satiric assault on the institution of marriage. The film opens with a prologue featuring a ménage à trois between the Shelleys and Lord Byron before settling into the story of Henry Frankenstein returning to the laboratory to create a mate for his monster. The climactic meeting of the would-be spouses is simultaneously hilariously and heartbreakingly grotesque.