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 This is a "classic horror thriller of revenge and madness." Boris Karloff is
Gustav Niemann who breaks out of prison, takes over a "traveling chamber of
horrors," revives Count Dracula, and uses the vampire to kill some of his
enemies. Following that he goes to the ruins of Frankenstein's lab and finds
the Monster and the Wolf Man frozen in an "underground cavern." He revives
them in an effort to get revenge on a couple of villagers "who testified
against his macabre experiments with corpses." They give away the ending to
this film and call it an "exciting thriller." 1944, 71 minutes, VHS
In this second to last Frankenstein movie, Universal goes out whole hog,
throwing the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and Count Dracula into one
titanic adventure. Just for good measure you also get a mad scientist and his
hunchback assistant. The result is probably a lot better than it had any right
to be, mainly because of the able scenery-chewing done by Boris Karloff as
Gustav Niemann, an escaped prisoner/mad scientist who is bent on recreating
the Frankenstein boys' most infamous experiment. If you are wondering how
all these monsters are able to share screen time, the simple answer is that
they don't. In fact, the movie is more like two mini-movies. The first movie
details the escape of Dr. Niemann and his use of Count Dracula in making his
escape from a bunch of angry villagers. The second movie is about what happens
when Niemann comes home to Vasaria where the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf
Man still lie frozen in the ruins of the old castle from the end of the last
movie. I came into this one with fairly low expectations chiefly because the
series had been sinking faster than Bela Lugosi's career. I also was a little
wary when I saw that John Carradine was in it. Now, that's not a knock on
Carradine, after all, you don't star in 500 movies, without having some
ability, but I've noticed that when Johnny starts cropping up in these
Universal horror sequels (i.e. the Mummy series), it's usually time to strap on the life jackets.  They lay the atmosphere on in typical fashion, a thunder storm raging outside a
prison, housing the evil Dr. Niemann and his hunchback buddy, Daniel. Niemann
spends his time in jail shaking down guards for chalk and writing all kinds of
crazy formulas, that I probably knew back in high school algebra, but have long
since forgotten from never having been used in real life (thanks for lying to
me about that, teach!), all over his prison walls. He dreams of doing
Frankenstein's experiments in creating life, but he dreams of doing it right.
However, that possibility seems slight, since his lawyer hasn't gotten his bond
reduced yet and they're not likely to allow him to resurrect corpses in the
jail. Luckily, there's a pretty dramatic and exciting scene where a bolt of
lighting hits the prison and causes some ceilings or walls or floors to
collapse or something, which results in Niemann and Danny escaping into the
rainy night. Out in the woods, they run into the great Lampini (played by
George Zucco of Mummy sequels fame). Lampini is pretty much a one man traveling house of horrors,
as he carts around various scary souvenirs from hick town to hick town. The
centerpiece of his collection is the skeleton of Count Dracula (mint in box!)
and it comes equipped with a stake through his heart. Niemann has Danny kill
Lampini and Lampini's driver and Niemann assumes the identity of Lampini and
heads off to some town where some burgermeister lives that needs some revenge
dished out to him. Niemann goes undercover as a carnival barker, hawking his
house of horrors in an effort to find this burgerking guy and like all good
burgermeisters, he allows this ditzy American woman and her new husband to drag
him and Lionel Atwill (Glad to see you could make it Lionel!) along to this hot
new show. After the show, Niemann pulls the stake out of Dracula and Dracula
comes to life. In a classic moment, Karloff tells Dracula he better do what
he's told or the stake gets shoved straight back up his arse. Carradine, who
makes a very classy Dracula, unlike other Draculas that shall remain nameless
(No point in bashing Bela by name, since he couldn't get hired for either
Dracula or the Frankenstein Monster role in this film.), agrees and goes out to
kill some people for Niemann. This all ends very badly for the Count when he
ends up involved in a horse and buggy chase through the countryside when the
fuzz realize what he's up to. Niemann sees all this and takes off in his
haunted
house mobile and fears that Dracula is going to lead the Man to him and foil
his muddled plan to redo the Frankenstein experiment. The chase through the
darkened woods is pretty good and Niemann shows Dracula that no good deed goes
unpunished when he has the hunchback dump Dracula's coffin out the back of the
wagon, causing Dracula to wreck his buggy and go flying down an embankment.
The sun comes up and the Count turns back into a pumpkin or something, thus
ending his brief stay in this movie. Niemann merrily rides off into the
countryside. Next stop: the village of Frankenstein.  Sometimes when you watch these movies, you have to wonder if Universal's person
in charge of continuity had been drafted to fight in WWII, because as each
sequel rolls around, the details of the previous ones are screwed up,
forgotten, and changed for no
apparent reason. See, Niemann is going to Frankenstein to check out the ruins
of Ludwig's sanitarium which was destroyed in The Ghost of Frankenstein and which was the scene of the epic championship match between the Wolf Man and
the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Of course the only problem with all of this is that Ludwig lived in Vasaria
and it was his brother Wolf and his father Henry that had their misadventures
in the village that bore their family name. Once in Frankenstein, they run into
some gypsies (Gotta get those Wolf Man mythos in there!) and the hunchback
saves a gypsy hussy whose skills involve a nineteenth century version of pole
dancing, from a whipping administered by the nineteenth century version of her
pimp. Danny is sweet on her and she seems to be warm to him until she gets a
gander at the big hump on his back. It's pretty effective when Danny realizes
that she's just as shallow as you or I would be if a hunchback ever hit on us.
Danny asks Niemann if he can fix his body so that he could be hunky instead of
hunchy. Sure, sure, Niemann says, now let's go find those monsters! Niemann
hopes that the monsters might lead him to Frankenstein's notes. Doesn't
anybody do any of their own work anymore? All these movies involve people
trying to copy Henry's homework. The Wolf Man and the Monster get dethawed and
before the Monster's ill-fitting sportcoat can dry, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney as
always) begins whining about his terrible fate. Because of the movie's brief
running time and all the other monsters with screen time, Larry's whining has to
be fast and furious and every scene he has dialogue in contains either a
complaint, a demand, or a plea all accompanied by his hangdog face. The gypsy
hussy is immediately attracted to him, since women find pouty cry-babies who
turn into homicidal animals at night irresistible. This drives Danny nuts and
gives the movie a layer that has been missing from the series - the love
triangle!  So, Niemann, Danny, the Monster, the Wolf Man, and the gypsy woman, formed the
strangest team since the Harlem Globetrotters got themselves stranded on
Gilligan's Island and headed off to Vasaria of all places. It turns out that
that is Dr. Niemann's old stomping grounds. Why they recycle the names of the
villages makes about as much sense as multiple monsters traveling peaceably in a
covered wagon in the hopes of brain transplants, but Karloff brings a maniacal
energy to things and you don't mind going along for the ride to see what he'll
do next (he's already double-crossed the biggest name in vampires, busted out
of prison, ordered the deaths of several people and promised several more all
sorts of surgeries). They get to Niemann's old secret lab which has been
boarded
up in his absence and they set about getting things spruced up in the lab so
that all the things Niemann has planned can come to pass. If you like brain
transplants, than this is your movie. You may remember the brain transplant
angle from The Ghost of Frankenstein which resulted in the unfortunate circumstance of Bela Lugosi's voice being
dubbed over the Monster's voice. Well, they're recycling that plot point, but
turning it up several notches. There's still a couple of people that Niemann
needs to lay the smack down upon. Apparently he pissed off people all over
Europe and they were all more than happy to send his evil butt up the river.
He kidnaps a couple of them and he plans to put one of their brains into the
Wolf Man so that he will know what it's like to be a perpetual whiner. Then
he's going to transplant the Monster's brain into the other dude for reasons
that escape me. Somewhere along the line, the hunchback was under the
impression that his brain was going to be transplanted into Larry Talbot, but
that's not going to happen and he gets mad and whips the Monster for some
reason. I also think that Niemann was going to throw in a boob job for the
gypsy girl so that she could get more bookings for her dancing routine. With all these brains and monsters milling around the secret lab on the night
of a full moon, while an angered hunchback skulks in the shadows, the good
doctor was bound to run into problems. Where do we start? Well, the hunchback
chokes out Niemann. Larry Talbot turns into the Wolf Man and goes after the
gypsy (Come on, he's just telling you he likes you when he sniffs your gypsy
crotch!). He attacks her and she blows him away with a silver bullet. They're
both dead and now Larry Talbot can finally rest in peace since he was killed by
someone that loved him. Never again would Larry suffer the horrible fate of
turning into the Wolf Man. Well, until next year's House Of Dracula, that is. The Monster is torqued off that the hunchback just punked Niemann,
so he picks up his twisted body and gives him the old heave ho (with an able
assist from some fairly visible wires) out the skylight and into a quickly
assembled mob of angry villagers. The Monster picks up Niemann and pursued by
the mob, goes into the local swamp where they drown in some quicksand that must
have been left over from one of those last Mummy films. This one was actually as fun as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was
supposed to be. Boris's last run in the series highlights things, his
performance a breathe of fresh air (Finally, a mad scientist who is nuts to
begin with, not some nubber who is only persuaded to go mad when the plot
demands it!). J. Carrol Naish is also very good as the much put upon hunchback
and you actually feel some sympathy for a character for the first time in
about four movies. Chaney and Glenn Strange as the Monster phone it in as you
might expect, both creatures reduced to one note performances, eliciting yawns
from the viewer as well as wishes that Carradine's Dracula might have been
around a little longer. Niemann's complicated revenge scheme will make your
head hurt if you try to sort it out and the fact that most of the characters
from the first part of the movie, simply disappear once the Dracula angle is
finished give the movie, perhaps the oddest structure you'll see in one of
these monster flicks, show that it was no small feat to wring anything remotely
entertaining from a series that at this time was in its sixth chapter. The
fact of the matter was that this is probably the best of the last half of the
series and it should be credited with that. Take a deep breath, because we've
only got one more to go now.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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