House of Frankenstein (1944) Review

House of Frankenstein (1944) Review 

 

House of Frankenstein came out a year after Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which once again brought together both monsters, as well as threw Dracula in for good measure, though the title was misleading, because it really doesn’t have much to do with Frankenstein’s house. Both Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. get top billing in the opening credits, but Karloff isn’t back as The Monster, a role he played in the first three Frankenstein films. Chaney isn’t The Monster either (he played the role in The Ghost of Frankenstein), he’s back as The Wolf Man, and Karloff plays a new character: Dr. Neimann, the brother of Frankenstein's assistant. He wants to continue Frankenstein’s work, but he’s in prison next to his assistant, a hunchback named Daniel. Mad scientists having hunchbacked assistants was already becoming a horror trope.

Neimann and Daniel both escape the prison one stormy night and join up with a travelling sideshow of horrors, which includes in its collection the skeleton of Count Dracula! The sinister duo take over the horror exhibit by killing the original owners and pretending to run the show. Neimann takes on the showman role very convincingly, but that's only because Karloff is always a good actor. Karloff is the best, I could watch him in anything, and he revels in the sinister dialogue from beginning to end. He removes the stake from Dracula's skeleton and The Count reanimates, but then he threatens the newly awakened monster with the same stake and tells him to follow his commands. Dracula obeys without question. What happened to Dracula's hypnotic stare? Why couldn’t he just evade Neimann as soon as he reanimated? Maybe he’s just weak from having been a skeleton for so long.  

There is a young couple on their honeymoon with the woman’s grandfather tagging along and they get involved with Neimann/Daniel/Dracula, but their involvement feels kind of random. I think they were included just to add variety to the story so it wasn’t just another tale of a mad scientist. They have a glass of wine with Dracula (who uses a false identity) and he seduces the woman with a magic ring while her husband is using the bathroom, then he leaves, only to come back shortly after and attack her grandfather. He turns into a bat in silhouette and it looks more comical than scary. The honeymooning couple disappears from the story after this.

After Dracula’s one and only murder in this movie, a big chase ensues with horses and carriages. The authorities are after Dracula, and Daniel shoves Dracula’s coffin out the back of their carriage. Dracula goes after it and ends up turning back into a skeleton in the sunlight. It's not a very satisfying plot line for Dracula fans; he’s weak, doesn’t get to do much, and never meets the other monsters. Neimann and Daniel continue on to Visaria in search of Frankenstein's castle, and come across a woman dancing. The fiddles playing as she dances sound way too cheery for a scene following the death of Dracula. The scene feels like filler, and Daniel gets creepily fixated on the dancer. He saves her from being whipped by her boss and brings her along for the rest of the journey. Even though he is creepy, he’s far less creepy than Lugosi’s Ygor hunchback of previous films. Daniel means well and hits it off with the dancer at first, but when she gets a look at that hunch back, she isn’t quite as turned on.  

Beneath the castle they find the glacial cavern where Larry Talbot discovered Frankenstein’s monster frozen in the last movie. This time both The Monster and the Wolf Man are frozen down there. Neimann’s plan: set them both free because they might know where Frankenstein’s records are. It’s essentially the same plan Larry had last time, only even more nonsensical somehow. Wolf Man thaws first, changes back into Larry, and has a conversation with Neimann. It’s great to see Chaney and Karloff together, even though their dialogue isn’t the best. Neimann offers to build Larry a new brain to lift his curse. How the hell will that help? A new brain would mean a new person in Larry’s body, wouldn't it? What would happen to Larry’s brain? Larry likes the sound of the plan anyway. The dancer becomes attracted to the cursed man, which makes Daniel sad. They get the monster back to Neimann’s lab, but the doctor has to restore the monster first because being frozen messed it up (unlike last time).

After a quick montage the lab is back in order and the monster is ready for the procedure. Larry is impatient because the moon will be full again that night, but Neimann is more concerned with restoring the monster and following his own vengeful agenda. In order to protect her, a jealous Daniel explains to the dancer that Larry is a werewolf, but she thinks he’s lying and tells him to his face that she hates him, and she thinks he’s mean, and ugly! Brutal. The moon comes up and the Wolf Man comes out, but the transformation isn’t shown. The laboratory scene with the resurrection of the monster is better in this movie than the previous one, though, so you win some, you lose some.

The classic angry mob manages to assemble before the big ending. Larry turns into the Wolf Man (we get to see him transform this time), the dancer shoots him with a silver bullet as he attacks, she dies on top of his dead body, and Daniel is devastated. He blames Neimann, so turns on him and tries to choke him to death—damn, Daniel! But then the monster breaks free and throws Daniel out a window before carrying Neimann away as the mob pursues them. Neimann warns the monster not to go into the bog, but it disregards his warning, and both of them sink to their doom in the final minute of the film. It's a rollercoaster of an ending. I can't believe how much they packed into the 70 minute runtime, but I really can’t believe this ending in particular. What I just described in this paragraph all occurs in only the last 10 minutes.  

House of Frankenstein is all over the place. It doesn’t progress the stories much for the Wolf Man or Frankenstein’s monster or Dracula, but still has some great moments, and the focus on Neimann and Daniel is satisfying in the absence of more significant scenes with the big headliner monsters. This one has never been one of my favourite monster mashups, but I still enjoy it, and if you want a quick paced movie featuring all the best monsters, plus a villainous Boris Karloff, it’s worth checking out.