Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

A year after The Wolf Man became a huge success, Lon Chaney Jr played the part of Frankenstein in the latest sequel "Ghost of Frankenstein". He was excellent in the role, and from that you can clearly see where the inspiration came from to combine the two strands and have these characters meet each other. Incidentally, Chaney also played a vampire later that year in "Son of Dracula", even though he was completely unsuited to the part, but that makes him the only actor to play all three of Universal's main monsters. Oh, and he also played the Mummy in "The Mummy's Tomb".

Anyway, I digress ... here we have Curt Siodmak, writer of The Wolf Man, returning again as screenwriter. All of the ingredients are there for a great sequel. It opens in Larry Talbot's tomb, with two graverobbers breaking in and disturbing his resting place. The moonlight comes through the window and falls on Larry's corpse, waking him from his slumber as the wolf man. He then gets taken to a hospital where he is deemed insane due to his insistence that he's a werewolf, but promptly escapes in search of the gypsy woman from the original film. She takes him to Frankenstein's town in search of his scientific expertise, and there he encounters Frankenstein's monster encased in ice ... my memory is a little hazy, but wasn't he consumed in fire at the end of the last movie? Ah, well.

It should really have been called "The Wolf Man Meets Frankenstein", because Frankenstein here is only a fairly minor character in the story. Lon Chaney Jr delivers another great performance, at least as good as that in the first film if not better. Of course, he does only have to have one mood to convey here -- desperation. Bela Lugosi, much as I love him, is a terrible Frankenstein. He's the wrong size and shape, and he clearly has no respect for the role. Thank god he doesn't appear for that long. Although having said that, it does kind of make sense that he plays the monster, as the brain of his Igor character was placed in Frankenstein's head at the end of the previous movie. Not that they have much continuity other than that.

The script certainly has it's moments, and the atmosphere of the two worlds of the Wolf Man and Frankenstein blend together fairly well, but on the whole this film just doesn't have enough interesting ideas and far too many dull moments. The set pieces are decent enough, but certainly not as striking as those in the earlier Frankenstein movies. Also, there's a fair bit of decidedly wooden acting from certain cast members, but that's to be expected from most of Universal's horror films.

This sequel is entertaining enough, but it's not half as good as it could have been. It's worth watching if you liked the original.

MORD39 RATING: ***(of ****)

It's the first Monster Mash teamup movie, a Universal Classic, and curiously panned nowadays.

Lon Chaney gives his most heartfelt performance this time as doomed werewolf Larry Talbot. He seeks the help of the second son of Dr. Frankenstein, but ultimately crosses paths with the Frankenstein Monster instead.

As originally scripted and shot, the monster was to be blind and sick, as the climax of the previous GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN left off. It is actually Ygor's brain that is in the monster's head, and therefore Bela Lugosi was an inspired choice to play the creature. Critics have unfairly lambasted Bela's performance, but in truth it's really brilliant when taken in its original context: the creature blindly stumbles around with out-stretched arms, appearing awkward and searching for strength. Lugosi had much dialogue as first shot, but legend claims that it sounded too funny at test screenings, so all language and references to the monster's violence were edited out! Let's remember that Bela Lugosi was playing the monster in a way that was never attempted before. As intended, this film would have been much more acceptable as Talbot and the monster would discuss their plan to find Frankenstein's diary and use the information to their own ends: Talbot to find a way to die, the monster to gain back his strength.

With great music and nostalgic atmosphere to boot, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN is good, clean fun from the innocent days of Universal Horrors.

One must pity the Wolf Man. Marked not only with the pentagram, but marked to never have a sequel that was all his own. A real shame, considering that even the likes of the Mummy got 'four' sequels. Universal begins their monster-mash rallies of the 1940s here, as Wolfie must share his sandbox with the "undying monster" & the two get along well for the most part, but eventually, even the best of friends will have their disputes....

The film begins on a very high note, with one of the most chilling and atmospheric openings in any horror movie. The potential was certainly here for a great 'Wolf Man' sequel that could've surpassed the original. Too bad the monster has to rear his ugly, stitched up head.

Speaking of that monster, "Poor Bela" always get the blame dumped on him for why this film had to be chopped up in post-production, the story always being that the monster with his voice was simply too "Hungarian funny", yet this film was produced by the same Universal that a year earlier made "Ghost of Frankenstein" which featured the monster with Bela's voice. It didn't bother anyone then, so what was the problem now? There has to be more to the story than "it was all Lugosi's fault". Would it be considered out of the realm of possibility to speculate that perhaps the great Curt Siodmak (the screenwriter) wrote some seriously crappy dialogue for the creature to recite that would've produced titters no matter who spoke it?

Also marring the proceedings a bit is some shaky continuity in regards to the monster's portion of the story if you're familiar with the previous 'Ghost' movie. How is it, that there's suddenly a Frankenstein castle in Vasaria (or is it Vi·Saria), when in the previous film, the villagers in the town called "Frankenstein" blew it up. And there are many instances where the screenwriter doesn't seem to know the difference between Ludwig Frankenstein & his father Henry who made the monster, as Talbot, the villagers, even Baroness Frankenstein speak as if Ludwig actually created the monster.

And yet, in spite of its inconsistencies (not to mention the heavy editing done to it), the whole of 'FMTWM' still turns out very good, and the ending clash of the monsters is very entertaining. While Frankenstein fans may be disappointed, this picture definitely works as a great 'Wolf Man' sequel & one of the top Universal romps from the 1940s. After this picture, Dracula and a few other fiends would get invited to the monster party.

8/10

Of all of the later Frankenstein movies made by Universal, this one seems to be overlooked when compared to the previous "Ghost of Frankenstein" or the campy fun of "House of Frankenstein". Nevertheless, "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" is probably the best of the bunch.

A direct sequel to both "The Wolf Man" and "Ghost of Frankenstein", the plot follows Larry Talbot (played again by Lon Chaney Jr.), the werewolf, who realizes that he can't die. In order to find inner peace he is on a quest for death, and Maleva, the gypsy, takes him to Vasaria, in order to fin Dr. Frankenstein. When they realize that Frankenstein is dead, Talbot finds the Creature (Bela Lugosi), now with Ygor's brain but severely damaged. When a doctor teams up with Talbot in order to help him, the Wolf Man won't be happy to discover the doctor's true intentions.

This movie is carried by Chaney Jr. who is totally inside the character of the Wolf Man. It is probably Chaney's best performance as beast, and he steals every scene he is in. As Talbot, he shows the horrible trauma of being an unwilling murderer, giving the character a greater presence that fills the screen with charm.

Bela Lugosi, as the creature, has more troubles to be satisfying, but it is important to note that most of his scenes were changed as the previous subplot of Ygor's brain was abandoned. Bad choice since the first scenes with the monster show him confused and blind without giving any explanation. The poor editing is responsible of Lugosi's apparent bad performance.

The rest of the cast is surprisingly good, with old friends like Lionel Atwill and Dwight Frye in small supporting roles. Beautiful Ilona Massey plays Elsa Frankenstein who in an odd change appears as a cold smart businesswoman vastly different from the character's traits in "Ghost of Frankenstein". Nevertheless, Massey plays the role with grace and her beauty shines in the screen.

Director Roy William Neill, known for his Sherlock Holmes movies, does a superior work than predecessor Erle C. Kenton and makes the most of his actors. Depsite the plot holes of the story and the awful changes the studio made to the original script, the movie flows with a good pace.

The whole atmosphere is an improvement that while it never reaches the levels of "Bride" or "Son", works very well and give the film a distinctive look.

Overall, a worthy addition to the Frankenstein saga, that even when it certainly could have been better, it is an enjoyable underrated movie. 7/10

Poor Bela Lugosi. After achieving big-screen stardom in 1931's "Dracula," he turned down the role of the Monster in "Frankenstein," calling the inaudible creature a part for an "idiot" or a "tall extra" (according to William Gregory Manks' fine book on the Frankenstein series, "It's Alive"). As a result, a bit player named Boris Karloff accepted the part and became the cinema's number one boogieman, far eclipsing the proud Hungarian actor who would soon be reduced to supporting roles, often second-billed to the lisping Englishman he is often said to have envied and despised. For Lugosi, "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" may have been more traumatic and embarrassing than the Ed Wood films he would soon be reduced to appearing in, because here the rarely employed actor was cast in the very role he so proudly declined, the role that helped put his more successful rival on the map.

As the Monster, Lugosi is pretty terrible but his ineffective performance was made worse in the editing room where his dialogue was cut out after it was decided that the Monster should not have an Hungarian accent. Yet Lugosi's lips move and he flails his arms about as if he were speaking. It's a rather sad footnote to what is an enjoyable horror yarn, albeit one that was perhaps the first step in turning Universal's classic horror characters into a joke, ones that would soon have no choice but to meet Abbott and Costello. What really makes this one memorable is the atmosphere provided by the great and unheralded Roy William Neill, then taking a break from the studio's Sherlock Holmes series. This film has a wonderful look that helps make it the best of the later Frankenstein films produced by the studio (although everything after 1939's "Son of Frankenstein" represented a steady and steep decline for the series).