HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) - UNVERSAL'S MONSTER MASH

DIRECTED by Erie. C. Kenton.

SCREENPLAY by Edward T. Lowe based on "The Devil's Blood" by Curt Siodmak.

STARRING  - Boris Karloff as Dr. Gustav Niemann,  Lon Chaney Jnr as Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man,  John Carradine as Count Dracula,  J. Carrol Naish as Daniel,  Glenn Strange as The Frankenstein Monster,  Anne Gwyne as Rita Hussman,  Pete Coe as Carl Hussman, Lionel Atwill as Inspector Arnz, George Zucco as Professor Bruno Lampini, Elena Verdugo as Ilonka.

PLOT - Dr. Niemann (a follower of the work of the late Henry Frankenstein) and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel, have spent the past few years in prison for conducting immoral experiments. 

One night during a thunderstorm, the prison is struck by lightning and Niemann and Daniel escape in the confusion. They encounter a travelling circus sideshow run by Professor Lampini and take refuge there. Later, the two murder Lampini and his assistant and take thier places, using the travelling sideshow to hide in plain sight and evade the long arm of the law. 

Niemann discovers that the sideshow has the coffin and skeleton of Count Dracula as one of it's exhibits. Niemann revives Dracula and bribes him into working for him. Niemann sends out Dracula to kill the man who convicted him. Dracula succeeds in his mission but Niemann double crosses the vampire and leaves him to die under the rays of the rising sun.

Niemann and Daniel's travels continue...

Eventually they find the bodies of Larry Talbot and the Frankenstein Monster frozen in ice and revive them both. Larry Talbot comes back to life still plagued by the curse of the Wolf Man but the Frankenstein Monster is weak and Niemann must find a way to revive the creature fully. On the way, the travellers also pick up a young gypsy girl, Ilonka and a cycle of love and jealousy develops between Ilonka, the love smitten Daniel and Larry Talbot. It is a situation that can only lead to further heartbreak and horror...

DIALOUGE  - Dr. Niemann  - "Kill my trusted old assistant ? Why, no. I'm going to repay you for betraying me; I'm going to give that brain of yours a new home in the skull of the Frankenstein monster".

PERFORMANCES  - This film is a mash up of characters from previous entries in the Universal Pictures cycle of horror films, basically its an early example of what would now be called a "shared universe" film. As a result many different actors appear in this movie, not all of them are treated equally though...

The main protaganist (you can't really call him a hero) is Boris Karloff as Dr. Niemann. Karloff is great in this role, Niemann is an utter bastard; he's willing to sell out and betray anyone he comes across in the name of carrying out his twisted experiments. No one is safe from his double crossing schemes, he's so cocky he even manages to successfully outwit and screw over Count Dracula himself. The Lord of the Undead - conned and betrayed by a mere human...

This plot twist does sadly undermine John Carradine's performance as Dracula however. Carradine was ALWAYS going to be in Bela Lugosi's formidable shadow whilst playing this role. He was always destined to be second best, but the way the character is written in this film and it's sequal House Of Dracula (1945), is so weak that Carradine has no choice but to slide even further down the pecking order of Dracula actors.

It's a shame because at first he appears to be pretty well cast (his physical appearance is very close to how Dracula is described in Bram Stoker's original novel). The problem is he's just so weak. Immediately after reviving the vampire Niemann threatens to stake him unless he cooperates. Surely Dracula could have just said "errr...No !" and hypnotised Niemann with his death stare and then either snapped his neck or drank his blood - Bela Lugosi wouldn't have taken this crap off him, neither would Christopher Lee.

Anyway, it's not long before this pussy incarnation of Dracula is melting away in the sunrise, he's only in the movie for about fifteen minutes and I can't help feeling that Carradine was MASSIVELY shortchanged. He deserved better.

Next we get Lon Chaney Jnr as Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man. Larry is his usual morose self, depressed and introverted due to his unfortunate habit of sprouting excessive bodily hair and murdering people every full moon. Chaney is as likeable as he is in the previous Wolf Man movies but the character doesn't really go in any different directions to what we've seen before. It's a case of if it ain't broke...

The brilliantly named Glenn Strange is The Frankenstein Monster, for most of the film the monster is de-powered and just lies on a slab looking zonked out. It's only in the last few minutes that he gets fully revived. Just long enough for him to have a mini rampage in which he kills Daniel and then gets himself and Niemann killed by wandering into quicksand. The End. Strange was another actor to get short changed by this movie's script.

Playing Niemann's assistant Daniel is J. Carrol Naish. Thankfully for Naish he gets a bit more to do than some of the other higher billed actors. Daniel is quite a sympathetic character (for a muderous hunchback at least). He falls hopelessly in love with the gypsy girl Ilonka (Elena Verdugo), she strings him along at first but then rejects him due to his deformity in favour of Larry who she develops a crush on. 

This shatters Daniel and he becomes bitter and enraged, the consequences of which lead to disaster for himself and everyone else. Both Naish and Verdugo play thier scenes together well, you feel sorry for Daniel and find yourself disliking Ilonka as a result, she comes across as being very shallow and a bit of a prick tease, if I'm being honest.

SFX  - As usual for a Universal monster movie we get the classic Jack Pierce makeup for both the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein Monster...

We get to see a full on Werewolf transformation too (which is something that isn't always guaranteed to happen in every Wolf Man appearance).

For Dracula's resurection we get a nice animated scene where his skeleton fades away to be replaced by his circulatory system before solidifying into full flesh and blood. Its primative by today's standards but must have looked great back in 1944...

We get a similar effect for when Dracula decomposes under sunlight a few minutes later, only this time the effect is concentrated onto a shot of Dracula's hand reverting to a skeletal form...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - It's the 1940's, so no sex here.

The violence is fairly limited as well. Probably the most extreme it gets is when the Frankenstein Monster throws Daniel out of a glass window to his death (he does get to do a pretty good blood curdling scream as he plummets towards his date with concrete).

Ilonka shoots Larry with a silver bullet whilst he's in Werewolf mode but not before getting savaged by the Wolf Man herself, the two die in each other's arms (Larry temporarily until the next movie; whilst Ilonka is dead for keeps).

Finally The Monster carries Niemann into a deadly quicksand swamp (Daniel has just broken Niemann's back, so presumably he's a paraplegic by this point). The two sink slowly into the swamp whilst the obligatory band of fire wielding yokels look on. I love how you can see Karloff take a deep breath before sticking his head underwater...

For some reason it's always struck me as amusing.

RATING  - House Of Frankenstein is a topsy-turvy mish mash of a film. It's script is uneven (you could honestly cut out the entire Dracula segment and it wouldn't make any difference to the story), characters and actors are underused and the promised meeting of the three main Universal monsters never actually takes place.

However, underneath it's all too obvious flaws, it still manages to be a fun little movie.  There's some good performances (especially Karloff) and the film trots along at a brisk pace. It never gets boring or outstays it's welcome. Its actually one of the Universal monster movies that I enjoy the most and many times have I watched it over some of the more worthy entries in the series. 

I'm going to give it 3 and a half monster mashes out of 5. It's a graveyard smash.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -