When Henry Frankenstein flipped the switch and harnessed the power of lightning to conduct his infamous experiment in the 1931 horror classic, he didn't just bring his monster to life, he also set up one of the first major movie sequels. Bride of Frankenstein, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this week, continued the story of Frankenstein — and once the sequel was alive, it was hard to stop, just like the Creature.
Bride of Frankenstein, originally released on April 20, 1935, was not the first movie sequel. The Fall of a Nation, a now-lost follow-up to D. W. Griffith's influential and infamous silent film The Birth of a Nation, hit theaters almost two decades earlier, in 1916. There were some sequels in the '20s, too, like 1925's Don Q Son of Zorro, Douglas Fairbanks' second stab at the swashbuckler, five years after The Mark of Zorro. Bride of Frankenstein isn't even the first horror sequel, as the 1915 German film The Golem, which just so happens to be about a hulking figure that's brought to life, ended up being the first of a trilogy. But Bride of Frankenstein is undeniably the earliest sequel that is still relevant today, and for good reason: It's a horror masterpiece.
