HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944)
Tagline : All the Screen's Titans of Terror - Together in the Greatest of All SCREEN SENSATIONS!
In this one Dr. Niemann (played by Boris Karloff) decides it’s a great idea to break out of prison and continue to the work of Dr. Frankenstein. He has a hunchback in tow which I am guessing was supposed to draw in horror fans, but they might as well have just made him Egor’s brother or something, because he serves almost completely the same role. Somehow the Wolfman (played by Lon Chaney Jr.) and Frankenstein’s monster survived the end of the last installment (FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN) in an icy grave that looks pretty much like the one Frankenstein’s monster was in the last time he got jacked up. On the way to revive them Dr. Niemann and Daniel (the hunchback) run across a traveling Chamber of Horrors that possesses the remains of the infamous Count Dracula, run by a Professor Lampini (George Zucco).
Oh man, this movie unfortunately fails in a few ways. On one hand this girl Rita (played by Anne Gwynne) just automatically falls in love with the Wolfman even after knowing he kills people in his spare time. I’m not saying people can’t fall in love in 3 days, but it seems nuts that she would just be all about a werewolf she knows will likely kill her. I mean…that isn’t normal right? It turns out that we don’t get Bela Lugosi as Franenstein’s monster this time. It’s some other dude named Glenn Strange that looks better in the role. Glenn actually gets quite a bit of screen time for a guy that only got $500 bucks to make this movie. Even back then, that wasn’t that good at all for anything in a lead role from Universal.
The strong points in this film are the sets and acting. Everything in this acting wise is actually very solid. This thing has the same creepy look as the two prequels, however the poster and billing are a bit misleading. Some of the monsters on the poster are just not in this enough. There is a cool moment effects wise for the time period involving Dracula played by John Carradine.
Overall I can see why fans now and back then were disappointed. The set-up is fine, the promotion is fine, but the story falls flat and the ending almost feels like a cop out. Maybe I will feel better about it after watching the next movie in the series. Just grading it on the merits of this movie as a stand alone it’s a 4 out of 7 for me. Only the acting and production value kept it from sinking into a lower rating than that. So much more could have been done with this thing.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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