Yeah, yeah...it's a Classic. But...

...I still like the original way more. I get that technically Bride is a major accomplishment. The sets are even more awesome than in the original. The makeup was equally creative. The music was iconic and ground-breaking. Acting, for the most part, was top notch.

But the film can be described with one phrase: Over the Top.

The humor, as mentioned elsewhere, was a bit too much. Little people in the bottles? Silly. Minnie's hysterics? Pull it back some, please.

The minimal bits of humor in the original that were confined to Fritz. A hunchback with a foot-long cane? Funny. Rushing up and down the stone stairs in the tower but stopping to adjust his sock? That's a moment I look for with each watching.

To me, the best bit of humor in Bride was the line "give me your hand, Hans!" The film didn't need much of the rest.

Also over the top were the crudely inserted closeup shots of the monster crying. Karloff fully conveyed the monster's emotion without those closeups and fake tears.

Another flaw (IMHO); the monster in Bride kills several innocent people which would seem to make it a bit harder to sympathize with him, although once again, Karloff's brilliant performance pulls it off. Sure, the first murder was Maria's father who'd fallen into the remains of the tower and maybe the monster could have felt threatened, since he'd just been attacked by the mob. (But Whale should have conveyed that.) But throwing the woman into the pit also? Killing the young girl in the woods? Throwing Karl off the tower for no real good reason? All of these are not in keeping with the overall portrayal of the monster as a sympathetic soul. Karloff should have won an award for achieving sympathy for the monster. (That the entire Frankenstein series continues to be so lovingly remembered by many, especially me, is due entirely to Karloff's portrayals in these first two films. Even the monster's limited appearances in the later films are colored by the feelings we first felt from Karloff's brilliant mime performances.)

And then there's Colin Clive. I was able to accept, and more or less enjoy his over-the-top performance in the original. But his whining seemed to be ratcheted up quite a bit in Bride. Enough already.

So, while I understand that Bride is a great sequel, I think the original is the better film.