Dir James Whale / USA 1931 – 71 mins / USA 1935 –  75 mins

Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester

This double screening rediscovers two classics which helped define the horror genre in the ’30s, and is screened in collaboration with the Manchester Gothic Festival. In the first film, a scientist (Colin Clive) digs up corpses to reanimate them with electricity and inadvertently creates a ‘monster’ (Boris Karloff). In a rare occasion when the sequel is better than the original (Bride of Frankenstein is hailed as Whale’s masterpiece), the same scientist sets about making a mate for his earlier creation.

This screening will be introduced by the DM17 film series co-curator Christopher Frayling, to coincide with the publication (on 31 October) of his definitive book Frankenstein – The First 200 Years which heralds the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.