Review: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

With Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Universal began to consolidate their various horror franchises into one big one, much to the detriment of the movies themselves. (They also dispensed with the notion that the word "Frankenstein" in the movie's title referred to anyone but The Monster himself.) Why spend the money to make individual sequels to "he Wolf Man and Ghost of Frankenstein when you can just make one movie and kill two monsters with one stone?

But with this decision to consolidate, Universal faced a unique problem: Lon Chaney Jr. had played both monsters in the previous films. The studio apparently considered playing with split-screen effects and trick photography, but they finally came to the decision to bring in another actor to play the Frankenstein Monster. Their choice wound up being Bela Lugosi, who was really a natural choice: after all, The Monster had spoken with his voice at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein. The choice was also ironic: Lugosi had been the studio's first choice to play the role in the original "Frankenstein," but he had passed on it because it wasn't a speaking part.

The Monster would talk THIS time, though...at least until the audiences at the preview screenings laughed so hard at Lugosi's voice coming out of the Monster's mouth that all scenes of Lugosi speaking were cut. This leaves odd continuity gaps in the movie: The Monster inexplicably loses the ability to speak again, and he stumbles around as if blind because he was so at the end of "Ghost," but all dialogue explaining this circumstance has been excised, so his movements become thoroughly inexplicable.

Various critics have hammered Lugosi's performance, but unfairly so. He's a good deal more lively than Chaney was as the Monster in the previous movie, and a Boston fern would have been more energetic than stunt player Glenn Strange was in his three "performances" as the Monster in Universal's later, lesser monster mashes. The only real problem with Bela's performance, in fact, isn't a problem of acting talent as much as it's a problem of height: Chaney looks to be just as tall as Lugosi in their scenes together, thus reducing the ability of Bela to seem more threatening.

The plot, such as it is, involves two grave robbers breaking into the Talbot family crypt, where the light of the conveniently full moon revives everybody's favorite werewolf, Larry Talbot (Chaney). (Wait...hasn't he been dead for a few years? And wasn't he beaten to death with a silver-tipped cane? Logic and continuity were never the strong points of the Universal horror films, but they go way out the window here.) Larry gets up, stalks out and winds up in a hospital where a dedicated doctor (Patric Knowles) thinks he's nuts. (It's rather comforting to know that I'm not the only one with a gift for stating the obvious.)

With the next full moon, Larry gets all hairy again and escapes, roaming Europe in search of somebody, anybody, who can put a permanent end to his curse. He meets up with the old Gypsy woman from The Wolf Man (Maria Ouspenskaya), but then he gets chased by (you guessed it) Angry Villagers and falls down a hole and into a frozen cavern. When he wakes up in the morning, he checks out his surroundings and finds a body frozen in the ice. Who is he? Hint: his head is flat and bolted on at the neck.

Knowles follows Chaney, who tries to get Ilona Massey (as Ludwig Frankenstein's daughter) to tell him where her father's notes are. Knowles becomes fascinated (more like obsessed) with the idea of seeing the Monster at full strength (uh oh) and the whole mess ends with the title bout, which takes as the nearby dam is dynamited by yet another Angry Villager, sending water rushing into the laboratory as the two monsters duke it out. The castle crumbles. The monsters are washed away. The end.

Not to worry--both Frankie and Furry come back for more in House of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man heralds the true decline of the Universal Monsters. It's less expensive, less carefully crafted, less logical and less exciting than most of the previous movies, with Chaney's impassioned, tortured performance as Larry Talbot and Lugosi's respectable turn as The Monster keeping the whole thing from falling flat. Things would only get worse in the next two movies--much worse, indeed.

(NOTE: Series regular's Lionel Atwill and Dwight Frye were both on hand again, Atwill as the Burgermeister and Frye as an Angry Villager--again. Sadly, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was Frye's last fling: he died of a heart attack shortly after Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was completed.)