Review: Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

Ghost of Frankenstein is the middle child of Universal's Frankenstein series: not a huge production number like the previous three films in the series, but not a low-rent cheapie like the three to come. (I'm not even counting Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein in that group--it's in a category all by itself.) Ghost has a modest budget and doesn't have Karloff as the Monster anymore--the growling and strangling duties are handed off to Lon Chaney Jr. instead. But these limitations don't necessarily make it a bad movie. It's pretty good, if you can dial your expectations down a bit.

It turns out that The Monster, punted into a sulfur pit at the conclusion of Son of Frankenstein, didn't die after all (surprise!), but he's not really doing so hot. So his buddy Igor (played again by Bela Lugosi), who's still around even after having a gun emptied into him in the previous entry, helps him out of what's left of Castle Frankenstein just before the obligatory Angry Villagers (led by Dwight Frye, who played a crazed hunchback in the original Frankenstein and the crazed Renfield in Dracula) dynamite the joint.

Basil Rathbone's character, Wolfie Frankenstein, isn't around this time--Basil was off doing Sherlock Holmes movies--so this gruesome twosome take their act on the road in search of Wolfie's brother, Ludwig (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). Ludwig, as it turns out, runs a perfectly respectable sanitarium along with his chief assistant, a discredited scientist played by Lionel Atwill (never a good sign).

When Igor shows up with his tall, flat-topped friend, he doesn't ask for much: he only wants a new brain popped into the Monster's head. Ludwig thinks this is a really, really bad idea and would rather skip the whole thing. But when the Monster kills off another one of Ludwig's other assistants who, consequently, can donate a brain to the cause, the operation is on. Igor plays to Atwill's ego, though, and after the Monster accidentally breaks every bone in Igor's body by smashing him behind a door (don't you hate it when that happens?), Igor's brain winds up in the monster's head instead.

Ludwig checks on his patient in the recovery room, only to be horrified by the discovery that Lon Chaney Jr. is now speaking with Bela Lugosi's voice. Hell, who wouldn't be? This new, improved(?) Monster finds, however, that he can't see--Igor and the Monster don't have the same blood type (oops). The sanitarium subsequently burns to the ground, with the Monster getting the extra-crispy treatment yet again.

The acting in Ghost of Frankenstein is solid throughout, especially by Hardwicke. There are a couple of scenes in which The Monster is ready to smash in Ludwig's skull, but instead of cringing or begging for mercy or even twitching a bit, Hardwicke simply looks up as if fully prepared to accept the punishment for the sins the Frankenstein family had visited on generations of Angry Villagers (and upon The Monster himself, for that matter). Ralph Bellamy and Evelyn Ankers are on hand as the requisite love interests, and Lugosi turns his usual spirited effort as well.

The only major disappointment is Chaney's Monster, who lumbers about with little expression and zero personality (pre-brain transplant, of course). It's hard to blame Chaney, though: when a script requires nothing more of an actor than to walk really stiff and occasionally throttle an extra or two, there's not much room for artistic interpretation.

This was Chaney's only full-feature turn in The Monster's makeup, though--Lugosi took over the role for the next entry in the series, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (What? You really thought The Monster had burned to death? Dream on.)