Tag Archives: the bride of frankenstein

Oct 4 2024

Universal Monsters: Ultimate Bride of Frankenstein by NECA

October is here and the air is rife with spookiness and pumpkin spice! Last year I crammed all my horror related content into the week leading up to The Big Day, but this year I’m going to pepper it about the month, trying to do at least one spooky review each week and then toss some more in as we approach the finish line. I’d like to get through my entire horror backlog and come out of Halloween with a clean slate, but we’ll see how it goes. Back in August, I jumped the gun and checked out NECA’s Ultimate Frankenstein and Chair from The Bride of Frankenstein, but without having looked at The Bride herself because I hadn’t purchased her yet. But, I finally picked her up and so I’m going to kick off this year’s horror show with NECA’s Ultimate Bride!

I’ve had a few opportunities to comment on how weird and wonderful The Bride of Frankenstein is as a film. I touched on it a little in the recent review and a bit more back when I checked out Jada’s figure. I dig it a lot and usually include it in my October rotation rewatch along with some of the other Universal Monster films. You have to hand it to Elsa Lanchester for becoming one of the most iconic classic horror icons while having such a tiny amount of screen time. The packaging here is right in line with past Ultimate Universal Monster releases with a front flap depicting the movie poster, and opening to reveal a window showing the figure inside. Everything is collector friendly, and I have been keeping the boxes for these monsters, because they look really great all lined up and I dig the vintage poster art. You get a few different display options with The Bride, so let’s just start with how she comes out of the box.

The Bride features a white, flowing softgoods gown made of a very soft material allowing it to fall pretty naturally around the figure. It’s sleeveless and has a neck opening that laces up in the back, but comes with the laces untied. It’s a cool mix of hospital gown and wedding dress with a bit of a train trailing behind it. Mine is a little bit rumpled out of the box, but I’m sure that would steam right out. Displayed like this, you aren’t seeing a lot of detail, but the exposed arms are completely covered by sculpted bandages.

The stock head has a neutral expression and I’d say the likeness is decent, but maybe not quite up to NECA’s usual magic. Technically everything looks amazing, especially the work on the slightly parted lips and flash of teeth. But, I don’t think the eyes are quite there, or maybe it’s just a very specific expression they were going for that I’m missing. The eyes are a little too round and she could have used more lashes on upper lids. The iconic coif, on the other hand, is pretty spot on and they did include the scar running around the edge of the jawline, which is something that Jada missed on their figure. I don’t want to come down too hard on it, because it isn’t a case of poor effort or quality, but just not capturing the likeness as much as I would have expected.

There’s a second head that depicts her screaming and I’d say this is marginally better. Again, I think the eyes are too round, but that’s less notable with this expression. The work on the open mouth is really impressive with the glossy tongue and top row of teeth. I’ll also note here that the head swaps are done at the base of the neck, where the exposed skin meets the bandages. Why’d they do that?

Well, they did it to allow for the fully bandaged neck and head, and that’s pretty clever. This head has a piece that fits over the eyes so that the whole head is covered, or you can remove it and expose her eyes. The cover piece does not hold on as well as I’d like, but I really don’t ever plan on displaying it on the figure. Heck, I will probably never use this head either. Nonetheless, there’s some nice texturing on the bandages that make them look like gauze in some parts. You also get some silver painted staples holding the wrap together.

And yes, there is a fully bandaged sculpted body under that gown. The detail here is extremely sharp with crisscrossing lines representing her full body wrap. You also get a couple of coiled pieces of wrap to put dangle off her hands. It’s similar to what NECA did with their Imhotep figure. Articulation consists of a lot of rotating hinges, as is pretty standard with this line, and you get a ball joint under the chest and in the neck. There isn’t a huge range of motion in some of those joints, but I guess she doesn’t need to be an acrobat. She does come with two sets of hands: One pair with the fingers tight together and one pair with them splayed a bit further apart. As for accessories… that’s it. We’ve already seen everything she comes with!

The Bride is a fairly simple figure, and yet the fact that you do have several display options for her gives her a bit more mileage. And she looks outstanding when displayed with The Bride version of The Monster. But I’ll admit that this isn’t the slam dunk over the Jada figure that I thought it would be. Some things are done better, while others feel lacking. The paint on the portraits here are better, but I think Jada did a better job capturing her eyes. Jada’s figure also had a light brown wash over the bandages and had overall better articulation. You also got a few extra pieces with Jada’s figure, like the pylons from the lab. With all that said, NECA’s still edges out as my favorite of the two, but not nearly as much as I would have anticipated. Still, a great effort and I’m happy to add her to my Universal Monsters collection. I’ll be interested to see if NECA releases an accessory set for her that includes the table and lab accoutrements.

Oct 8 2021

Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein by Jada

Welcome back to the Toy Crypt and my fourth installment of FFZ’s Halloween Horror Month! Today I’m wrapping up my look at Jada’s assortment of 6-inch Universal Monsters figures. So far, we’ve checked out Dracula, The Gillman, and Frankenstein’s Monster, and now it’s finally time for a lady monster… Here comes The Bride!

The Bride of Frankenstein is such a delightfully weird film. It can turn on a dime from innocents being murdered to Una O’Connor’s wacky antics as Minnie. It casually drops Dr. Pretorius’ ability to grow miniature humans in jars, which seems a lot more advanced than his desire to recreate a single full-grown human by stitching bodies together. Besides the fact that I never know whether that whole scene is supposed to invoke shock and horror or is it being played for laughs. And, of course, the film relegates the instantly iconic Elsa Lanchester’s role as the titular Bride to about five minutes of screen time. Absolutely criminal! I do enjoy watching this film, but it’s without a doubt the strangest among these four classic monster flicks.

And yet The Bride is indeed so damn iconic, and I’m pleased to say that Jada did a fine job bringing her to this collection. And with soft goods no less! Yes, The Bride comes donning a long white dress, which is expertly tailored and looks great on the figure. There’s plenty of room for her to move her legs, and it’s sleeveless so as not to impede her arms either. When worn, you can see her bandaged arms and feet, and really nothing else, so let’s take it off and see what’s going on under there!

The dress secures in the back with a velcro strip, so taking it off is pretty easy. With the dress gone, The Bride is bandaged from neck to toe. It’s cool to see that Jada didn’t cheap out on what’s underneath. Every inch of her bandaged bod includes the sculpted detail of the wrappings, all realistically textured and even given a paint wash to bring out all those details. Sans dress, you can also get a better idea of what’s going on with the articulation. Yup, it’s mostly more of the same, although Jada did take a page out of Hasbro’s book by nixing the double-hinged elbows for their lady figure and replacing them with rotating hinges. As a result, The Bride has a lot less range of motion in the elbows than the others.

The standard portrait is pretty damn good. At least, I think the likeness is a lot closer to the mark to Lanchester than Frankenstein was to Karloff. However, I think I recall The Bride having visible scars and stitching running up in front of and behind her ears, which isn’t present here. There is a seam that sort of works as a stand in, but it’s an odd detail to omit. The eyes appear to be halftone printed and the lips and eyebrows are pretty sharp. Of course, the iconic hair is recreated quite well too. All in all, very nice.

The alternate portrait is her screaming at the sight of her Groom to Be, and while I think this one loses something in the likeness, I don’t think it’s all that bad. The open mouth looks good, but the teeth really needed some added detail. I’m not sure I’ll end up displaying this head on the figure a lot.

In terms of accessories, The Bride comes with an extra pair of hands, which look to be copying one of the more common production stills, which has her posing with her left arm straight across her chest and her right arm drawing up to her left shoulder. Unfortunately, because of those elbows, she really can’t recreate that pose so well. She also includes the pylons that were on either side of her when she emerged from the operating table. These are pretty simple and have a chain and a strand of wrapping attached to the top of each.

I think The Bride may be my second favorite figure in this assortment, right behind The Gillman. The soft goods dress is a big hit, and I love that Jada still gave her a full body sculpt underneath. The only other figure I’ve ever owned of The Bride was the retro-style 3 3/4-inch ReAction figure, and this is certainly a huge step up and a nice way to round out this Quartet of Classic Horror.

Considering all I knew Jada for was their lines of mediocre painted miniatures, I think they did a damn fine job on this run of 6-inch figures. They don’t feel like an early effort, but rather like they came out of the gate swinging. I haven’t heard a huge amount of buzz around these, and I’m hoping that they do well from word of mouth, because I would very much like to see a second wave with The Mummy and The Wolfman, and whoever else they want to scare up!