Tuesday, October 30, 2012

October 2012 Edition #30: HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN





Director: Erle C. Kenton
Screenplay: Edward T. Lowe Jr.
Starring: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, J. Carroll Naish
Release Date: December 1st, 1944


Today I return to the Universal Studios’ stable of classic monsters, this time with their sequel to FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, the mad monster mash-up HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. With the addition of Dracula and a mad doctor to the mix, with this flick Universal hoped to up the ante (and the box office) and create a monstrous brawl for the ages.




The plot follows the mad Dr. Gustav Niemann (Karloff), who escapes from prison after an incredibly plot-convenient bolt of lightning blows a hole in his jail cell, and sets off into the night with his hunchback sidekick, Daniel (Naish), seeking revenge against the men who imprisoned him for fifteen years. Hitching a ride with Professor Lampini and his traveling roadshow horrors, which includes a casket containing the skeleton of Count Dracula (Carradine). After killing the professor, Niemann assumes the man’s identity and uses the roadshow as a front to go from town to town, taking out the officials who put him behind bars, with the assistance of Dracula, whom is resurrected upon the removal of the stake from his heart. But Dracula proves pretty useless and is almost immediately killed, leaving Niemann on the run again, at which point he finds himself in the village of Visaria, the setting of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Already obsessed with the works of the mad doctor, Niemann sneaks into the ruins of Castle Frankenstein and thaws out the bodies of Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and Larry Talbot (Chaney Jr.), aka  The Wolfman. Stringing him along with the promise of a cure, Niemann convinces Talbot to drive his chariot while he abducts his enemies and steals their brains for the purposes of an unholy brain transplant surgery that ultimately doesn’t make much sense, but hey, monster and what-not!




So this flick was kind of a mess, completely ignoring previous continuity in favor of bringing these three monsters together, which is cool and all, but at this point in their run this series of monster flicks was beginning to seem kinda desperate. Karloff is great as usual playing the insane Dr. Niemann, though there isn’t really all that much complexity to his character beyond the fact that he’s, y’know, evil and all. I thought it was interesting seeing him perform in a FRANKENSTEIN film in which not only was he not portraying the Monster, but actually had to act opposite his replacement for the role. And let’s face it, folks, Glenn Strange is no Boris Karloff, as his Monster is all idiotic grunting and shambling, with none of the subtle hints of tragic pathos that Karloff was able to inject into the slightest facial expression. That’s not really a big issue, however, since the Frankenstein Monster doesn’t even do anything until the last two minutes of the film, and those two minutes seem like a mere afterthought, as if the producers forgot he was in the movie and decided to have him kill something at the last minute in order to fulfill their obligation to the audience. The flick feels like two short films pasted together, as the first twenty minutes dealing with Karloff’s encounter with Count Dracula prove to be utterly pointless, and reduce the once powerful and hypnotic Count into a complete and utter bitch, who immediately agrees to do whatever Karloff asks of him, which is simply to kill one of the officers who convicted him. Dracula is played by John Carradine, who I’m sure would have made a fine Dracula in any other movie, but here he’s supposed to be playing the same character as Bela Lugosi. Last I checked, Lugosi’s Dracula had a Hungarian accent, no facial hair, and was a total suave badass. Carradine’s Dracula has an American accent, a mustache, and wears a totally un-badass top hat. Also, while he does kill the man he was supposed to, he totally fucks up in trying to seduce and kidnap his daughter, leading to a pathetic chase in a horse-drawn cart that ends with him immediately dying beneath the sun’s rays. His screen time amounts to maybe ten minutes, and the treatment he is given is an utter disgrace to the character.




The only monster who makes any kind of impact on the plot is Larry Talbot, who does his usual emo “I just wanna die” schtick, and Chaney is great in the role, as usual, but he doesn’t really get anything to do other than mope and fall in love with the gypsy chick who Daniel not-so-secretly adores. Shit, out of all the “monsters” in this flick, Daniel the hunchback is the only one who actually kills anybody onscreen. Well, sorta. I mean, you see him as he’s about to do it, as opposed to the Wolfman, who we are told killed some totally irrelevant person off-screen.




Anyways, all of these disparate elements come together over the course of an hour, and in the final ten minutes Karloff finally conducts his grand experiment, which basically consists of zapping the ever-loving shit out of the Monster with every electrically-powered Tesla coil and gee-golly bit of doo-hickery from the Universal lot that the filmmaker’s could cram onto a single set. Of course a band of angry, torch-wielding villagers makes an appearance, confronts the scientist and his creation, Karloff reaps what he has sown, and then the flick end so goddamned abruptly and perfectly that I couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Say what you will about these old-school horror flicks, but when the movie was over, it was fucking over and done, and would you please get the fuck out of the theater right now, because we don’t have time for credits!




HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN is not without it’s merits, chiefly (for me at least) that it features both Boris Karloff AND the goddamned Wolfman. And I could never hate a movie that features the Wolfman. So for the Wolfman alone I award the movie five points, plus an extra point for Karloff.

My Rating: 6/10



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