Category: Film, Television & Music

When it came time to make House of Dracula in 1945, Universal Pictures must have known its classic monster series was winding down for good. The second film to bring Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster together, it doesn’t appear to be too concerned with plot continuity. There are also coincidences aplenty since Count Dracula (John Carradine) and Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) both arrive at the door of the same blood specialist (Onslow Stevens) without once revealing how they managed to come back to life after being felled by sunlight and a silver bullet, respectively, at the end of House of Frankenstein. This is probably for the best, though, because when screenwriter Edward T. Lowe (who also penned House of Frankenstein) gets around to bringing Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) aboard, his explanation for how the monster came to rest in the mud-filled cave beneath the doctor’s house is patently ludicrous. Sometimes it’s best to just leave things unexplained.

Since the film bears his name, it’s fitting that Dracula get the most attention, at least at the start. After being given little more than a glorified cameo in House of Frankenstein, Carradine — here passing himself off as Baron Latos — uses his expanded screen time to exude menace and sexual temptation, particularly when it comes to the doctor’s beautiful assistant (Martha O’Driscoll), who quickly falls under his spell. The same is not the case with the doctor’s less beautiful assistant (Jane Adams), a hunchback who hopes to benefit from his experiments with spore concentrate, which can apparently be used to soften and reshape bones. This comes in handy when the doctor determines that Talbot’s transformations are caused by pressure on his brain, which can be relieved by a simple skull operation, but Dracula requires a different kind of treatment and the doctor soon learns the folly of giving blood transfusions to a vampire. The film also features Lionel Atwill (in one of his final screen appearances) as the local police inspector — the kind of role he could probably play in his sleep by this time.

As with House of Frankstein, the directing chores on House of Dracula were handled by Erle C. Kenton, who made a few more films before jumping to television in the ’50s. And as for Universal’s monsters, this wasn’t quite the end of the road for them since the studio would bring all three back one last time for the 1948 horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In many ways the movies were becoming parodies of themselves anyway, so ending the cycle with an outright spoof was only logical.

Made in 1948 and directed by Charles Barton, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the first in a series where the irascible Bud Abbott and his pudgy pal Lou Costello met up with various creatures from Universal’s stable of monsters. Of course, if the studio had known it was going to be such a huge success they probably wouldn’t have stacked the first one so full of monsters. In addition to the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster (again played by Glenn Strange), the film also features Bela Lugosi’s final appearance as Count Dracula, a role he hadn’t played since the original in 1931. I guess it’s a good thing the cape still fit.

Totally ignoring the fates that had befallen all three of them at the end of House of Dracula (pretty much par for the course for Universal at this point), this film casts Abbott and Costello as railroad baggage handlers who receive a frantic call from Chaney (taking his last turn as the Wolf Man), who phones from London to prevent them from delivering two crates containing the bodies of Dracula and the Monster to a wax museum where they’re to be put on display. They go ahead and deliver them anyway but lose the bodies (that is to say, the bodies get up and walk out on their own volition, which Costello witnesses but Abbott does not), which puts insurance investigator Jane Randolph, who pretends to have a thing for Costello, on the case. Meanwhile, Costello is being played up to by the beautiful Lenore Aubert, who secretly plans to transfer his brain into the body of the Monster at Lugosi’s request. I’ll bet he’s never felt so wanted in all his life.

The first time I saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I wasn’t entirely sold on it despite its reputation as a classic. Maybe that’s because I had only seen the original Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man at that point, so I didn’t know how much their respective series had already fallen into self-parody by the time this came around. In fact, the argument could be made that this film takes the monsters more seriously than some of the films that preceded it. Not that we believe for one minute that the bumbling Costello is actually in danger of losing his brain, but we believe in the threat that the monsters pose to him (and, to a lesser extent, Abbott). Still, it’s a pity this took the place of a House of the Wolf Man, which surely must have been considered at least in passing. As it was, the Wolf Man would have to wait another six decades to find his home.

Made independently in 2009, House of the Wolf Man was written, produced and directed by Eben McGarr, who shot it in black and white and in the Academy ratio of 1.33:1 for verisimilitude’s sake. He even recruited Ron Chaney, the grandson of Lon Chaney Jr. (which makes him the great-grandson of Lon Chaney), to play the sinister Dr. Bela Reinhardt, who picks a rainy night to invite five strangers to his spooky estate to find out which one will inherit it. They include jock Dustin Fitzsimons and intellectual Sara Raftery (who are fraternal twins), geek Jeremie Loncka, sultry siren Cheryl Rodes, and great white hunter Jim Thalman. They are all greeted by Reinhardt’s creepy servant Barlow (John McGarr, who’s made up to look like Warren Publishing’s Cousin Eerie) and try their best to keep their wits about them — no small feat, all things considered.

Like the films that inspired it, House of the Wolf Man is on the short side, clocking it at 76 minutes, and the first hour or so is more or less the preamble to the monster melee that occurs once Reinhardt reveals his true nature to his guests. “My heir will be chosen by the process of elimination,” he tells them early on and he means that literally. Not even the eleventh-hour intervention of Frankenstein’s Monster (who’s being kept in the basement because of course he is) and Dracula can save them from the Wolf Man’s curse. I only wish the ending of the film didn’t feel so abrupt. A little denouement would have gone a long way.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the earliest known werewolf film, a silent short from 1913 called (creatively enough) The Werewolf, about a Navajo woman who uses her ability to transform into a wolf against the white settlers encroaching upon her people’s lands. Unfortunately, this 18-minute film is considered lost, and little is known about its successor, a French silent feature from 1923 called Le loup-garou. At least 2013 can definitively lay claim to being the 70th anniversary of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which was released on March 5, 1943, and plays to a certain degree like the world’s first example of fanfiction (albeit one perpetrated by Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Siodmak).

With its Frankenstein series winding down and the Wolf Man as its new breakout character, Universal decided to combine the two into a film that is more Wolf Man than Frankenstein’s Monster and give it to Roy William Neill (who had just taken over its Sherlock Holmes series) to direct. For starters, the story picks up four years after the events of The Wolf Man, with the cursed Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) being revived when his crypt is disturbed by grave robbers. After reverting back to human form far from home, he’s taken to a hospital where his head wound is treated by kindly doctor Patric Knowles (who had previously played Chaney’s romantic rival in The Wolf Man), who knows nothing of his history or his ability to change out of his hospital pajamas and into his Wolf Man get-up (and back again) when the moon is full.

While Knowles is investigating his puzzling new patient’s identity, Chaney escapes from the hospital and seeks out the old gypsy woman from the first movie (Maria Ouspenskaya) and together they search for Dr. Frankenstein, who is said to hold the secrets of life and death. When they reach the town where he lived, though, they are rebuffed by the townspeople and Chaney is chased by a mob after he transforms under the full moon. Eventually Chaney stumbles upon the monster (now played by Bela Lugosi, a full twelve years after he initially refused the role) frozen in a block of ice in the ruins under Frankenstein’s castle, which makes no sense in light of the ending of 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein (the previous film in that series), but I’m guessing Siodmak wasn’t too concerned about continuity. That also carries over to the casting of Ilona Massey as Elsa Frankenstein, who has a completely different accent than her predecessor did, and the location of the castle at the bottom of a ravine overlooked by a previously unseen dam. (No points for guessing how the castle ends up getting destroyed.)

Eventually Knowles tracks Chaney down and he, Massey and Ouspenskaya team up (with the apparent blessing of town mayor Lionel Atwill) to try to help him end his cursed existence and rid the world of the monster at the same time, but Knowles changes his mind at the last minute and recharges the creature instead, touching off the monster battle royale the audience has been waiting for since the start of the picture. Audiences must have liked what they saw, too, because they were immediately scheduled for a rematch the following year in House of Frankenstein, which introduces a brand new mad scientist played by Boris Karloff, who claims to be the brother of Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant and who is obsessed with the idea of transplanting the brain of a man into the body of a dog (and probably vice versa). Locked up for 15 years for his crimes against man and canine, Karloff escapes from prison thanks to a freak thunderstorm and, with the aid of soulful hunchback J. Carrol Naish, who wants Karloff to give him a new body, sets about getting revenge on those who put him away.

Soon after their escape they come by a traveling Chamber of Horrors that houses the skeletal remains of Dracula, who is embodied by John Carradine when the stake is removed from his chest, but he barely merits a walk-on. Karloff then moves on to the village of Frankenstein, where he hopes to find the doctor’s records and where Naish falls head over hump in love with gypsy girl Elena Verdugo, who finds it hard to see past his physical deformity. In the meantime, Karloff thaws out Talbot and the monster (Glenn Strange) when he finds them frozen in the glacial ice cavern beneath Castle Frankenstein’s ruins. (Doesn’t every castle have one?) When first seen Talbot is the Wolf Man, but upon thawing out there is a too-quick dissolve to his human form, whereupon he agrees to help Karloff in exchange for a brain transplant that will rid him of his curse. How this is actually supposed to work is never adequately explained, but it turns out Karloff has lots of brain transplants in mind once they reach their final destination of Visaria, where his laboratory is still standing.

Directed by Erle C. Kenton, who previously helmed The Ghost of Frankenstein, and based on a story by Curt Siodmak, House of Frankenstein may be a little overstocked in the monster department, especially as it represents the convergence of three disparate series, but it’s kind of disappointing that we never see all of them active at the same time. That said, I did like some of the details that went into the Wolf Man’s subplot, like the way he thoughtfully removes his shoes and socks before transforming. (No reason to ruin good footwear.) This is also the first film in history where a lycanthrope is felled by a silver bullet, so that’s one more trope for the pile. It may have taken a few entries, but Universal’s monster series eventually established all the rules that future werewolf films would abide by (or subvert, as the case may be).

Next Up: A visit to Dracula’s pad, plus a meeting of monsters and comedians.