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 The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, angry villagers, and a hunchback
assistant all team up for "one of the greatest feasts for monster-lovers ever
created!" The Wolf Man and Dracula both show up at Dr. Edelman's lab asking
him to cure them of their murderous ways. Dracula is really doing this to get
close to the doctor's "luscious nurse" whom he wants to make "one of his brides
of darkness." The body of the Monster is discovered and Edelman is determined
to bring it back to life. The villagers get mad and become determined to stop
"the lunacy that threatens the safety of their families and their town." They
say this is a "frighteningly amusing horror classic." 1945, 67 minutes, VHS
Universal fires up its most popular monsters once more in this, the last of the
"serious" horror movies featuring the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and
Dracula. The results are about what you would expect: serviceable monster
hijinks that don't make any sense, but isn't terribly difficult to sit through.
In this episode, there isn't really any thing that the viewer would call
"inspired" and you can't help but cringe at the way characters appear and
disappear with little regard for good pacing. Once again Dracula is dispatched
way before the movie ends, in fairly bland fashion. The Wolf Man totally
disappears from the action for the middle part of the movie and the
Frankenstein Monster is animated for all of about three minutes in the closing
part of the film. John Carradine dons the cape and top hat another time for
his sophisticated gentlemanly take on the good Count and he turns in another
solid performance, in spite of ridiculous plot. Dracula shows up at this
doctor's office/castle and tells him that he needs his help. At first he
pretends to be someone other than Dracula and actually uses that silly Baron
Latos name he came up with in the previous year's House Of Frankenstein. I was
impressed that they could keep that bit of continuity, yet completely fail to
explain how Dracula was revived, how the Monster and the Wolf Man survived and
how they all managed to turn up at the same doctor's office together (How'd you
like to be in that waiting room?). Being the man of science that he is, Dr.
Edelman is skeptical of Latos's claims that he's a vampire, at least until
Latos takes him down into the basement and shows him the Dracula brand coffin
he somehow snuck into the house. Suddenly, Edelman is a believer and gets to
work on culturing some molds in an effort to fix Dracula's blood. It involves
introducing a parasite into the blood to fight off some other parasites and
some other cutting edge stuff that made you wonder if Dracula's Blue Cross
would cover it.  One thing I was never clear on was what exactly Dracula was up to (it certainly
wasn't a cut and dried as the back of the box made it sound). I mean,
somehow he got resurrected and the first thing he does is to go find this
doctor and want to be cured? Or was he only there pretending to want that so
that he could hit on the nurse that wasn't a hunchback? If so, he has all
these mind control powers and stuff and should be easily able to put her under
his spell without the need to play sick all of a sudden. It just seems to be an
unnecessarily complicated plan for a monster with his powers. Now, around this
time, who should come into the doctor's office, but none other than a very
cranky Larry Talbot. Lon Chaney has once again slicked his back and screwed up
his face in that expression of pathetic whining that we've grown to love over
the course of the previous seventeen films the Wolf Man has appeared in. The
years of being thought dead, have apparently been good to Larry, because he
shows in a suit that made him look like a gangster and had also grown some kind
of Clark Gable mustache that were so popular on monsters back in the forties.
Larry is demanding to see the doctor, because he has seen the brochures
claiming that Dr. Edelman's speciality is curing monsters who have been in
about three sequels too many. I'm prone to agree with Larry. I think we've
all grown sick and tired of his cry-baby, I want to die act. He needs to be
taken to the Visaria (for some reason they changed this town's name in between The Ghost of Frankenstein and this movie) pound and put down (if not adopted within five days of
course). The doctor is busy out playing golf or bilking Meidcare or something
so he can't see Larry right then and there. Larry gets huffy and runs out. We
later see that he has turned himself into the authorities and has been locked
up before the moon gets full and he gets enough hair on his back to put me to
shame. Oh and if you are wondering who is playing the inspector in charge of
everything, then you haven't paid attention to the last four movies. Coming in
with his record setting fifth straight Frankenstein sequel is veteran second
banana Lionel Atwill! Just for the record, the name of the inspector he plays
this time around is Holtz, not that it matters in the slightest.  This is the kind of lazy monster movie that just keeps an angry mob of
townspeople permanently assembled, ready to take up torches and pitchforks to
whatever castle lies on the outskirts of town whenever they hear that something
strange might have occurred or someone could have maybe been killed or
something. The Wolf Man is in the pokey, protected by Holtz and the
townspeople are outside milling around, I assume because it's late and all the
pubs have closed. Dr. Edelman shows up to check this guy out at the request of
the police and even though he has just run smack dab into Dracula in his
basement, he refuses to believe that Larry Talbot is a werewolf. Even when the
moon is full, and Larry changes before his eyes, he still tries to diagnose it
as a hyperactive gland or something more akin to gout than to being a straight
up legendary monster. After Larry gets over his wolf stuff (the cell manages
to hold him) he goes to see the doctor and Edelman blathers all about the
medical
reasons behind it, and comes up with the idea to put some mold on his head to
shrink his cranial cavity or something vaguely disgusting and downright
pointless. Larry doesn't like how long this is going to take and runs away
from home, jumping off a cliff into the ocean. The doc goes and rescues him in
a cave and there they also find the Frankenstein Monster, sleeping off the
quicksand shake he drank at the end of the last movie. Since Glenn Strange was
cheaper than Boris Karloff, Dr. Niemann is mere bones and thus will be not be
joining us for this movie (that's okay because we've already got Dr. Edelman
filling the "mad scientist" position on our team). Also on the team, is a
hunchbacked nurse, who is one of those hunchbacks that's a bit of a martyr,
since she declines all this kick ass mold so that Larry Talbot can be cured
(and that dude is such an ingrate!). Meanwhile, Dracula has been cozying up to
the sex-ay nurse doing all kinds of headgames with her that involve forcing her
to play songs on the piano that reminded of something that Schroeder from
Peanuts might play in a vain attempt to lure that girl, Linus or Sally or
whatever her name was. Just keep that Peppermint Patty away from Dracula's
nurse if you know what I mean! Now if all of this sounds like more soap opera
than monster movie, you'd be right. The first forty minutes of the movie I was
wondering if this was an episode of General Hospital, but with blood
experiments, angry mobs, and Lionel Atwill.  As soon as the Frankenstein Monster is lugged back to the secret lab, Edelman
immediately sets out revive the dang thing. Surprisingly enough, everyone else
that's hanging out in the lab that day thinks that maybe the doctor should put
this in his "Not Such A Good Idea Folder" next to "Holding breath for new Guns
'N
Roses album" and "Purchase Kansas City Chiefs season tickets." The
sweet-tempered hunchback convinces the doctor not to do it and we are struck
with the realization that hunchback nurses are meddling fools that are always
trying to talk mad doctors out doing crazy crap that will invariably lead to a
monster rampage, mad scientists getting chucked out of cliff-side labs, and the
burning of said lab by those faithful first responders of this genre, the angry
mob. For the first time in memory, common sense prevails and Edelman actually
doesn't throw the switch. Recognizing that since the mad doctor is such a
puss and that he'll have to turn things up a notch, Dracula pulls the old
switcheroonie
on Edelman, dumping all his yucky blood into Edelman when Edelman was supposed
to giving his goody two shoes blood to the vampire count. This probably could
be considered a bit a backfire since as soon as Dracula hits the stanky pillow
in his coffin, Edelman hauls the coffin into the sun, cracks it open, and
Dracula melts away, stunned that he has fouled out before the end of the game
for the second straight movie. I suppose that you could say that Dracula had
the last word on this Edelman traitor, because Drac's blood starts giving
Edelman the business and it ain't long before the doctor turns ashen, with dark
circles under his eyes, and this annoying lack of reflection in mirrors. The
blood also causes him to have some type of hallucinations about the Monster and
a bunch of other stuff, which allows the filmmakers to fill out the 67 minute
running time with some footage from Bride Of Frankenstein (well, if you're going to pad, pad it with the D cup of the Frankenstein
movies, I always say). I can't really blame them. With six other movies
behind them, they've already committed something like 457 minutes (over 7 and a
half hours!) of Frankenstein mayhem to celluloid and it's understandable if
they thought that maybe everything interesting and/or important had already
been filmed and that a brief "Miller Genuine Draft Moment" featuring great
scenes from yesteryear was in order. Once Edelman is done with his
Frankenstein version of Sportscenter's Plays of the Week, he hops onto the
carriage driven by one of the hired help and threatens him for awhile, before
ripping his throat out. Larry Talbot, recovering from his mold therapy watches
Edelman leave with the guy and sees him come back without him. He knows that
Edelman is off his rocker, but covers for him when the angry mob (ahh, right on
schedule, good, good) arrives demanding that somebody (like Larry) be either
arrested or torched for the heinous deed. Right before the mob shows up, Larry tests out this mold that's been pasted on
his head (thankfully hidden by a bandage) by stepping into the
moonlight. It works, Larry doesn't turn into the werewolf and all is finally
well! Um, except that Edelman has turned back into evil Edelman (see,
sometimes he's okay, and other times, he's kind of, uh, special) and now he has
decided that with three minutes left in the last Frankenstein movie, he really
owes it to big, green, and dumb to revive him once more so that he can stumble
around and allow the audience to shake its collective head at how much this
character has crapped out in the last 10 or so years. Larry shoots Edelman,
who drops dead (Guess he wasn't a real vampire, huh?), then he dumps some
chemicals over on the Monster which causes a fire and causes Universal to
insert the fiery ending scene from The Ghost of Frankenstein , since one monster trapped in a burning building is as good as another. It's
not really too painful to sit through this in spite of the fact it is obviously
insipid in structure and story. Nostalgia-wise, it's nice to see everyone one
last time and by golly if you don't actually get a little closure with Larry
Talbot finally being cured of his condition (the werewolf stuff, not his
constant whining). Carradine again is a standout and you're sorry to see his
storyline abruptly cut off. I guess they never did figure out how to work all
the monsters into the same story at the same time. The fact that the Monster
gets almost no screen time, and the Wolf Man makes two very brief appearances
attests to the fact that the whole team-up concept looks good on a movie
poster, but is impossible to carry off in a satisfying way. In fact the both
of these final House movies actually focused on the mad scientist in each film and used the
monsters as simply set decoration. That's okay, but all the action with the
monsters seems so forced from their unexplained resurrection in each movie, to
miraculously being all drawn to the same place (and in this movie even Dracula
managed to turn up at the same place as the rest of them), and then basically
playing out the same story (experiments to cure the Wolf Man, scientists that
wig out and revive the Monster, and hunchback assistants). It was almost like
there was a concerted effort to make this movie as much like the previous one
as possible. Worth watching for Carradine and to say that you saw Lon Chaney
with a mustache and cured of his hairy back.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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