Why does the Bride hiss and shriek? She just woke up and there’s a bunch of weird guys mooning at her. No wonder she’s in a bad mood. Maybe she would have come to love her intended Groom eventually but the dude was definitely rushing things.

I watched the first Universal Frankensteins for the first time early this year. I’ve been looking at images of the Monster and his Bride since I was a kid but except for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I hadn’t actually watched the movies. The common wisdom is that Bride of Frankenstein is a better film than Frankenstein and that’s probably true. It’s certainly a more interesting film. Frankenstein is a pretty straight forward story and has few surprises to it – man creates monster, monster escapes, people get killed and a torch bearing mob hunts the monster down. Bride of Frankenstein adds another mad doctor, has the monster begin to speak and gives us a second monster in the Bride.

And, honestly, still pictures of the Bride, don’t do her justice. Elsa Lancaster gives a wonderfully twitchy performance. I think the most unfortunate things about the Universal series is that the Bride only appears this once and, after this film, the Monster returns to being a mute, mostly zombie-ish creature. Ah well, her single appearance means we’re left wanting more rather than wanting her to go away.

By now you may have noticed that I have a fondness for monsters. I’ll usually take a badly acted, low budget monster movie over a star filled, Oscar nominated drama. I’ve read far more pulp horror than “fine” literature. And, I must admit, I have a greater fondness for some monsters than others. I have greater love for fishmen than vampires, more enthusiasm for apemen than zombies and giant monsters will grab my attention over more average sized specimens.

In the last few years I’ve developed a minor obsession for Frankenstein’s monster. So when I found A Patchwork of Flesh, an open blog gallery of Frankenstein Monster artist trading cards, I just had to contribute. I did four portraits and sent them in four separate envelopes. Coop, the blog organizer, is in England so I expected some of the portraits to arrive on different days. But no. They all arrived on the same day and he posted them all in one gallery.

Coop is asking people to vote for their five favorite images so, if you’ve got a few minutes, take a look and speak up for five good ones.

I like to draw things out so I’ll be posting the portraits over the next four days rather than all at once. Today’s image isn’t based on any particular version of the creature. Most modern depictions present him as composed of badly sewn together body parts so I went with that idea here. I’ll use the other portraits to provide links to other Frankenstein related spots of interest on the net.