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 It is described as "one of the great classic horror films of the 1940s." Bela
Lugosi is the Frankenstein monster and Lon Chaney, Jr. is the Wolf Man. The
Wolf Man has been brought back to life and seeks a cure for his problem so he
"enlists the aid of [a] mad scientist, who claims he will not only rid the Wolf
Man of his nocturnal metamorphosis but will also revive the frozen body of
Frankenstein's inhuman creation." "This is a chiller for fans of all
ages." 1943, 73 minutes, VHS
Universal must have realized after the dreadful The Ghost of Frankenstein, that their big green dope was probably too played out a concept to
successfully carry a picture on his own anymore. The solution was too take the
onus off of the Monster and have a different monster carry the load in this
movie. They turned to the Wolf Man who hadn't appeared in a movie since his
debut outing way back in 1941. So they had Lon Chaney get out of the Monster's
make up that he had donned for The Ghost of Frankenstein and put back in the fangs and hairy wig. As for the now vacant role of the
Monster, since Bela Lugosi's brain had already been implanted in the beast at
the end of the last movie, they decided to just go all the way and have him
play the Monster himself. This must have so sweet for Lugosi who turned down
the role in the original movie, only to see Boris Karloff do it and become a
bigger star than he. I mean, at long last he got to show the world what would
have happened if he wasn't too snooty to have done it in the first place.
After checking out his constipated lumbering around in this movie and
completely wooden performance, I think it's safe to say that if he had
originally did it, there wouldn't have been six sequels. The movie of course
makes little sense from a continuity stand point and contradictions with
previous films abound. We're not sure what time period this takes place in.
It's stated that these events take place about four years after the story
depicted in The Wolf Man. But I think that film was set in modern times. All
these Frankenstein movies are set before that, I assume at various points in the nineteenth
century. The rest of these problems can be addressed as they crop up.  First and foremost, you should realize that this is really a sequel to The Wolf
Man and as far as the Frankenstein Monster goes, he's merely a supporting
character. This means you get lots of scenes of Lon Chaney, Jr. reprising the
Larry Talbot gimmick, which involves a lot of sweaty hyper activity as he
alternately tries to convince everyone that he is a werewolf and bitches and
moans about how awful he has it and why won't somebody kill him? I should also
add
that at times, Lon resembles Shemp Howard. Since this is one of those
"classic" Universal horror movies, everything starts out with a grave-robbing
scene. Two guys bust into the Talbot crypt and get into Larry's coffin. They
are somewhat startled to see the fleshy corpse of Larry covered in wolfbane.
Did I mention that the night they decided to go tomb raiding was the night of a
full moon? One of the guys takes a ring form Larry, then Larry grabs the guy
and won't let go. The other dude escapes ("Uh, I'll go and get some help.
I'll be right back.") and leaves the hapless thief with Larry and you can
imagine how that turns out. Later, Talbot is found in the street sleeping off
his Wolf Man bender and he is transported to the hospital. It is there that we
are introduced to Dr. Mannering, a psychiatrist or something (later, he
inexplicably turns into a mad scientist) who checks out Talbot. Talbot tells
them who he is and where he's from, but when they check out that info, they are
told that Talbot died four years ago. Assuming that he is some type of
imposter as opposed to a resurrected Wolf Man (the most obvious answer), the
cops hang around and threaten to question Larry periodically about this and
that. Later at night, Larry sees the full moon (lots of full moons in Britain,
I guess) and gets a hankering to go take a bite out of someone. A cop (they
call them Bobbies for some reason - with their little whistles and pointy hats,
I'd call them Nancies) sees this hairy dude hopping around, jumping from street
corner to street corner and the next thing you now, Larry has taken a bite out
of
crime. Larry believes that he killed the cop (because he did), but no one
believes him and surprisingly enough no one believes that he is the Wolf Man
(nah, he's gotta be taller and in better shape). He tries to escape to go get
himself some help (That hospital has too many nosy cops and not enough sexy
nurses!), but they put him
in a straight jacket. Later that night he busts out and goes in search of
Maleva, the old gypsy whose son bit him and turned him into a werewolf.  After looking Maleva up on the internet, Larry locates her at a gypsy
encampment somewhere outside the town of Europe. He's like, "hey how've you
been, can you neuter the Wolf Man in me?" She's like, "Lon, you look a little
puffy, too many Kibbles and Bits? No, I can't do it, but there is this mad
scientist I hear good things about. Name of Frankenstein or something." So
there we have it. Larry Talbot is going to seek out Dr. Frankenstein to fix
his lycanthropy. Of course the question is which Frankenstein is this? Henry?
Dead. Wolf? Not dead that we know of, but Basil Rathbone isn't in this
picture so that makes the odds pretty slim, plus we haven't heard from him
since the third movie. Ludwig? Dead. There is one Frankenstein that is alive
and well and apparently in this movie. Elsa, Ludwig's daughter. Maybe she
went to medical school instead of lounging around her dad's sanitarium trying
to hook up with the local prosecutor. Well, the Wolf Man runs away from
Maleva, killing a girl since it's another full moon and he ends up falling
into the snowy ruins of the Frankenstein estate. This is supposedly the crazy
house that Ludwig ran in the last movie, but somehow it has turned from a
manor-type house into a big old castle built right below a dam. The first time
I saw that this castle was built right next to a model dam, I was immediately
blowing up my inner tube and slipping on my Speedos, because you and I know
that any dam in a monster movie (see also: most Godzilla movies), that thing is going to come crashing down, leveling everything in an
ending that leaves the door open for whatever monster was caught up in the
deluge to wash up on the shores of another sequel. I was hoping that Lon could
use Bela's inflated ego as a floatation device. The icy ruins beneath the
burned out castle are a nice piece of set design and give you something that
you hadn't seen before in this series (a welcome relief after all the dungeons,
secret labs, and Burgermeisters). The Wolf Man hops around a little checking
it out, but I guess the moon wears off on him, because then we see Lon taking a
nap in what looks like really, cold slushy water somewhere in the ruins. He
gets up and wipes the snow off a wall of ice and sees the Monster frozen in
there. He busts the monster out and he tells the Monster that he needs
Frankenstein's secret diary so that he can read the notes about the experiments
and find a way to finally be dead for good (Larry's always had a defeatist
attitude.). Right away, you can see that this movie ignores the Frankenstein
films that have gone before. When last seen, the Monster had Ygor's brain and
could speak, just like Ygor. He also was blind, because of a blood
incompatibility between Ygor and the Monster (don't ask). This Monster shows
none of the intelligence that was transplanted into it with Ygor's brain. He
can't talk, just points a lot and grunts and howls, but he can see just fine.
Apparently there were plans for the Monster to speak, and I guess a few of
those scenes were shot, but the idea of Bela's voice coming from the Monster
was too retarded for even this movie. Of course that ignores the fact that
climatic scenes of the previous film featured Lugosi's voiced dubbed onto
Lon Chaney's Monster to portray the idea that the Monster now had Ygor's brain.
Anyway, as you might expect, the whiney Larry Talbot and the dimwitted Monster
are unable to locate the doctor's diary.  Teaming up with a mental midget of a monster doesn't look like it's going to
get Larry Talbot anywhere so he cleans himself up, gets a new suit (How did he
afford that on a Wolf Man's salary?) and arranges with the mayor (Lionel Atwill
making his patented Frankenstein movie appearance) to meet Elsa Frankenstein, now called the Baroness since
everyone else has croaked. This is another bit of interesting revisionist
history. When we last laid eyes on her, Elsa was played by Evelyn Ankers,
wore gowns, dated a prosecutor and talked regular old English. This new Elsa
is played by Ilona Massey, wears furs and gaudy jewelry, speaks in a thick
accent, and there's nary a boyfriend in sight. You may recall that accent
being a little more appropriate when she played a German hussy in Invisible Agent. Talbot pretends like he wants to buy the Frankenstein estate from her so
that she will meet with him and give him the dead doctor's secret formulas.
She's a bit skeptical, but since there's this festival going on that night,
they hang out and we get to listen to an awful musical number that actually
drives Talbot insane! With the audience's heart-felt thanks, he tells this
singer that he is no A.J. from the BSBs and to shut his pie-hole. Finally, Dr.
Mannering shows up and tells Larry that he is whacko and a killer and Larry
goes "duh." At some point in all this the Monster appears for some reason to
do who knows what (I'll bet Bela was just hungry for screen time and showed up
on his own!). Larry hops on a wagon full of barrels, gets the Monster in
there and has the horses haul their monstrous arses out of there. The
townspeople immediately start organizing into an angry, uncontrollable mob
(they're still irked by the death of this kid that the Wolf Man caused as well
as being prejudiced against Frankensteins in general) and demand that the mayor
let them at the Baroness (I'm betting that was mostly the guys who were
demanding that!). The mayor says he'll talk to her and find out what the deal
is. She agrees to help and she and Dr. Mannering go up to the ruins to find
Larry and the Monster. There she locates the secret book, Mannering agrees to
some questionable experiment that will supposedly drain the life out of both
the Monster and the Wolf Man. I'm not sure how they conned the town into
waiting while all this scientific equipment is FedExed in, but they all wait
and watch as these mysterious lights start blinking over at the castle. Dr. Mannering gets everything powered up (the water from the dam is turning
some turbines) and he's got both the Monster and Larry Talbot strapped down. I
really don't recall why the Monster went along with all this, he seemed to have
an aversion to being killed in at least some of the sequels (but not in Bride Of Frankenstein). The script takes several liberties with common sense in this portion of the
film. For one thing, Mannering is doing the big experiment the evening of a
full moon. You would think, that knowing this, he would have set his alarm
clock about an hour earlier so that he could get drain the juice from Larry
before he turned into the Wolf Man. I guess he just didn't want to miss The
View. Now, the other problem arises when Mannering has all the cables
connected up (he reads the instructions to himself out loud: "negative to
negative, positive to positive"). He decides at the last instant that he can't
destroy the Monster and wants to see what that baby can do when fully charged,
so he
reverses everything, throwing a bunch of power into the Monster. This of
course makes absolutely no sense for the character to behave this way, except
that it provides a reason for the Monster to break free and tangle with the
Wolf Man. Here was a guy who was all about treating Talbot and worried about
him being a homicidal maniac and now he's energizing the Frankenstein Monster?
The Monster busts loose, Talbot turns into the Wolf Man, the roll around on the
floor together in one of those cruddy movie monster fights (though the Wolf Man
is much more spry than Lon Chaney's doughy body would indicate). One of the
villagers gets fed up waiting around for the mad scientist to destroy the
Monster ("Hello? I'm busy making him all better!"), picks up a wad of dynamite
from the 7-11 and blows up the dam sending cupfuls of water crashing into a
model of the castle, burying the two monsters inside, but allowing Elsa to
escape (for the second movie in a row!) as well as her mad scientist pal (so
much for punishing evil). Though not nearly the slagheap the previous film was,
it's obvious that this film strains credulity in most of its major story
points. Bela Lugosi further cements his and the Monster's reputations as
has-beens with this unmemorably generic performance. That could have been
anyone under that make-up stumbling around like he had a corn cob up his butt.
The Monster has been completely stripped of any of the depth that made him an
interesting character and he does little other than stand awkwardly around,
periodically swinging his arms menacingly like the dumbest of flesh eating
zombies that seemed to dominate undead movies of the seventies and eighties.
At least Larry Talbot still resembles the character he was in The Wolf Man, his
plight making the film a little more interesting than than the green paint-by
numbers affair of some of the other sequels. But do they further the Wolf Man
mythos or character any in this film? Not really, Larry's still crying in his
beer about what's happened to him and begs everyone else to do the work for
him. I don't really see Larry taking any affirmative steps on his own to kill
himself. I mean, if you want to die, then do it. Don't try to cajole everyone
else into doing it. If you don't want to die, but want to find a solution, get
off your butt and do that. I don't see why he thinks a guy who created a
monster, but failed to destroy it after four attempts is the answer. That
said, it was probably as good a reason as any to get these two monsters
together. I still think these monster team-up pictures are a lot better in
theory than in practice. Monster movies work when you are able to concentrate
on a single monster, its problems, its threats, and the way people deal with
it. When you add a couple of more monsters to the mix, it reduces screen time
for everyone, taxes your suspension of disbelief (All of Universal's monsters
existed in their own respective universes when they started, at least you could
believe
that Godzilla and all his pals were from the same reality, after all, they even
had their very own island!), and waters down the concept of every monster
involved. Is it fun to watch? I suppose there's a segment of the viewing
public that thinks so, but if you watch this and compare it to the quality of
the first, second, or even third movie, you can't help but be let down. After The Ghost of Frankenstein, this probably reinvigorated the series (for about two more movies), but only
due to curiosity, not because of any inventiveness or quality. This film sealed
this series fate. The only thing left to do was add more monsters and that's
exactly what they did. And like anything else, the novelty finally wore off
and these films were revealed to be merely soulless husks of their classic
forefathers.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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