House of Dracula (1945) Review

House of Dracula (1945) Review

 

For those of you keeping track, here’s where we are in the overall continuity of these Universal monster movies: this is the fourth film in the Wolf Man series, the fifth film in the Dracula series, the seventh film in the Frankenstein series, and the second film in the unofficial “House of…” duology which crossed over multiple monsters. With that clarification out of the way, some of our main players in House of Dracula include Lon Chaney Jr. returning as The Wolf Man (he’s been the most consistent actor in one of these monster roles so far), John Carradine returning as Dracula from the last movie, and Glenn Strange is back again as The Monster. This would end up being the last “serious” entry in the main line of Universal monster movies in the 1940’s.

Dracula flies up to a castle as a bat on strings, changes to his human appearance, looks creepily through a window at a woman sleeping, then walks down to the front door and let's himself in. I’m not a huge fan of this look for Dracula. It’s not that different from Bela Lugosi’s version, but the top hat is a bit much, and Carradine just isn’t as creepy as Lugosi, but he’s still good. The castle owner, Dr. Edelemann, doesn’t seem too worried that a stranger has let himself in to his home. Dracula asks for help (using a pseudonym again) and the doctor helps him no problem. He reveals himself as Count Dracula and the doc is way too casual about their interaction. This opening has lots of expository dialogue and is not a very scary way to start things off, plus there’s no explanation for how Dracula has returned. Dracula goes to sleep in his coffin in the basement and gets up the next night, again masquerading as Baron Latos, then the doc explains he might be able to cure his vampirism. He has two female assistants, and the one named Nina is a hunchback dressed like a nurse! Why do these hunchbacks always have to work as lab assistants?

Larry Talbot shows up to see if the doc can cure his lycanthropy. Didn’t he get killed with a silver bullet last time? I guess not. The doc is too busy giving Dracula some blood transfusions, so Larry gets himself thrown in jail to make sure the Wolf Man doesn't hurt anyone else. Doc pays him a visit that night and we get the usual werewolf explanation from Larry, which is starting to get boring to hear repeated with every new movie, but Chaney still sells it. He changes into the Wolf Man in the cell and goes berserk. The transformation, Chaney’s acting, and the music are all great, but none of the other characters react adequately, they all just watch as if it's normal to see.  The next day Larry meets the doc again at his castle and the doc goes into a long technical diatribe about how he can cure him, but it’ll take time, and he recommends locking himself up in prison again for the next night, but Larry isn’t having it. Larry is so fed up he runs out of the castle and leaps off a cliff into the sea! It’s one of the most memorable parts of the movie for me.

Dr. Edelemann goes down to investigate the ocean cavern at the base of the cliff and the Wolf Man attacks him, but just before the doc is killed the monster changes back into Larry, and we get to see another neat reverse transformation. Guess who else is down here? The Frankenstein Monster! The skeleton of Dr. Neimann is on top of it, and I like that bit of continuity with House of Frankenstein, but how did the monster end up here? It sunk into a bog and went down a muddy tunnel that just happened to come out in the cavern? It’s the biggest coincidence in any of these movies so far, and I find it quite funny, but for anyone who hasn't seen the previous movie it actually wouldn't seem like that big of a deal. The doc takes the indestructible monster back to his lab but is hesitant to do anything to it. Maybe this scientist isn’t quite as dumb as he seems.  

Dracula returns to the castle and tries to turn the woman he looked at through the window at the beginning into a vampire. She is the doc’s other assistant Miliza (sans hunchback). Edelemann interrupts Drac and inadvertently saves her. He comes to realize he should not have tried to help The Count, and tries to kill him with one last blood transfusion. Drac is on to him, though; he puts the doc and hunchback Nina to sleep with his hypnotic stare and reverses the transfusion, and then he goes bat mode and tries to take Miliza away. Doc and Nina wake up and save her with a cross, repelling The Count back into his coffin. Doc opens the coffin lid when the sun comes up, turning Dracula back into a skeleton without much fanfare.

Dracula may be bones again, but his evil lives on in the veins of Dr. Edelemann. It’s a cool effect when he discovers he’s turning into a vampire and his reflection disappears in the mirror. The doc becomes a more interesting character as he starts turning evil, but he still can't hold a candle to Boris Karloff’s evil Dr. Neimann from the last movie. Edelemann attempts to cure Larry, but Larry is skeptical of being cured, and we get another great scene of Chaney delivering morose dialogue. Angry townsfolk pursue the increasingly evil doc back to his castle after he murders someone, and the police chief interrogates him and Larry, wrongly suspecting it was the Wolf Man who did it, but they come to realize it was the doc and the citizens decide to storm the castle and kill him. Cue the angry mob! 

Larry discovers he actually is cured, and it's a satisfying revelation as he basks in the moonlight for the first time in a long time without turning into a lycanthrope, but the joy is short lived. The final reel of the movie is the big ending to wrap everything up: evil doc resurrects The Monster and kills Nina, Larry shoots the doc dead, and the angry mob shows up. Larry turns them away because The Monster is running amok in the castle, which quickly becomes engulfed in flames. Larry and Miliza escape while The Monster is buried under rubble as the fire destroys the lab. This wrap-up is even quicker paced than House of Frankenstein’s ending, but not as satisfying.  

House of Dracula is a better Dracula story than House of Frankenstein, despite a comparably lame demise for the fanged monster that happens long before the ending, but it’s not quite as good of a Wolf Man story. The characters are a bit better balanced this time, but the overall plot is less interesting and there are fewer great moments with Lon Chaney Jr. which results in less development of his character, and the Frankenstein monster is relegated to merely a background character. In some ways it's better and more cohesive than the previous crossover film, but overall I don’t enjoy it quite as much. They were running out of ideas for what to do with these monsters/characters, and while there are still good moments to be had with them, it's just not as consistently entertaining.