Review: House of Frankenstein (1944)

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man did more than well enough at the box office for Universal to say, "Hey, if they liked two monsters in the same movie, they'll LOVE even more!" And so the studio went ahead with House of Frankenstein, which not only brings back the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and the Frankenstein Monster (played this time around by Glenn Strange), but throws in Dracula (John Carradine), a mad doctor (Boris Karloff, returning to the series for the first time since Son of Frankenstein) and a hunchbacked assistant (J. Carroll Naish). What, they couldn't find a way to work the Mummy in?

While the concept of having most of the Universal monsters in one movie must have seemed thrilling, the results certainly aren't. Cramming all those characters into a movie that runs just over an hour guarantees that nobody is going to get enough screen time to be interesting, much less scary.

Most of the disjointed plot revolves around mad Dr. Neimann (Karloff), who's in prison for sticking a human brain in a dog's head (practical experiment there, Doc). He and his fellow inmate, Daniel the hunchback (Naish) escape from prison and meet up with a traveling show run by Professor Lampini (George Zucco), who promptly knocked off by the escaped felons. Neimann assumes Lampini's identity so that he can return to his old village and get his revenge on those who sent him to prison. And as luck would have it, Lampini's traveling show just happens to include the skeleton of Dracula, stake and all! Neimann yanks out the chunk of wood and threatens to shove it back in if Drac doesn't agree to help.

This brings on the best part of the movie, in which Carradine shows himself to be an elegant, dapper, persuasive Dracula. He even wears a mustache, like the character did in Bram Stoker's novel. He doesn't get much screen time, though, before getting fried by the light of day.

Neimann and Daniel eventually run across the frozen bodies of the Wolf Man and The Monster and, not being able to leave well enough alone, thaw both of them out. Larry Talbot isn't too thrilled with this concept--he was kind of hoping to stay dead. By this time in the series, Talbot had stopped being sympathetic and just seemed like a damn whiner. Somebody kill him already! And what do you know? Somebody does: the Gypsy girl (Elena Verdugo) he's fallen in love with shoots Larry with a silver bullet. Yea! But he kills her in the process. Boo...And Daniel winds up getting whacked, too.

And what about The Monster, you ask? I asked the same thing: how the hell can a movie called House of Frankenstein keep the freakin' Monster on the table until the last reel? But this movie does exactly that, leaving poor Frankie horizontal and weak until the very end, when he gets up and drags Neimann into quicksand, presumably killing them both.

But we know better, don't we? So did Universal, which did the whole thing over again soon after in House of Dracula.