Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man - 3/5

Years before Freddy vs. Jason, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Alien vs. Predator, and to a lesser extent Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (sorry, I just had to throw that one in) came the original head-to-head match of monsters...Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man.

As one can tell from the title this is the first film to pair two or more Universal monsters. It is the fifth entry in the Frankenstein series and the first sequel to The Wolf Man. It even does an adequate job for the most part keeping continuity between the two series (more so to The Wolf Man and lesser to Ghost of Frankenstein) but fans will notice things wrong in the continuity here and there.

Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Lawrence Talbot, the man with the pesky hair problem. When grave robbers open his grave, the full moon brings him back to life and he's back to prowling the night and ends up in London. Desperately wanting to die he heads back to Europe to find the gypsy Maleva (again played by Maria Ouspenskaya) for help. She leads him to find Dr. Frankenstein. Upon finding that he has died, Talbot happens upon Frankenstein's monster in the basement of his burnt building (which happened at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein). For some reason, unknown to me, he finds Frankenstein's monster in a block of ice. I'm sorry but that's a real stretch on how the monster survived the last picture. A doctor that's willing to help Talbot uses Frankenstein's work in order to help kill him (don't think too hard about it...just let it happen). The doctor ends up being corrupted and makes Frankenstein's monster stronger and fans are treated to a match of the titans by the end.

In an odd move the filmmakers cast Bela Lugosi as Frankenstein's monster. Since Lon Chaney Jr. had to play the wolf man, he couldn't return to the role of Frankenstein's monster hence why Bela was cast. Bela doesn't have a hulking body like Chaney but I guess it makes sense since Bela played Ygor in the last Frankenstein film and his character's brain was transplanted into the monsters (it's confusing I know but you just have to watch the films in order). They did keep the monster blind like at the end of the last film but for some reason they decided not to make him talk again.

The plot is...well...kind of ridiculous in some ways. The way the writers brought the two franchises together was a real stretch but who cares about the plot, we've got two of the most popular monsters of all time battling out on the screen together! Overall this film is more of a sequel to The Wolf Man with Frankenstein's monster thrown in for good measure. This would have probably been a much better film if it was just written to be a sequel to The Wolf Man but damn it...two monsters together in one film sounds owe so much more exciting. Sadly the fight scene towards the end isn't all that long but it was still a treat for fans. This is easily one of Universal's most entertaining films of their B-Movie era of monster films.

On a side note there is a problem with the title. Shouldn't it be "Frankenstein's Monster meets the Wolf Man"? Dr. Frankenstein and his sons are not present so there is no meeting between them and the wolf man. That means they are calling the monster itself Frankenstein and that just annoys die-hard Frankenstein fans. 
Written By: Eric Reifschneider

1 comment:

  1. Quite correct, thank you. At the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein," bad Doctor Bomar puts the brain of Igor (played by Bela Lugosi) into the skull of the Frankenstein Monster. As a result, the Monster cat now think and speak in Lugosi's voice, but his blood is of the wrong type and the Lugosi/Monster goes completely blind. When revived for "Frankenstein meets the Wolfman," the Monster not only stumbled around, blindly groping like a drunken man, but also spoke with Lugosi's sick Hungarian accent. At the last moment, the Studio heads at Universal decided against the Frankenstein Monster having the power of speech ( despite the fact that he clearly spoke in "Bride of Frankenstein" and the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein." The film was not reshot, but all of Lugosi's lines were erased, and the film was recut to minimize the Monster's mouth movements without much success. This added yet another bizarre bit of characterization to Lugosi's seemingly inexplicable performance. The Frankenstein monster's blindness is never explained, nor is his muteness. The last minute cutting of Lugosi's dialogue also cut several important plot points, rendering the second half of the film confusing at best. None of this was Lugosi's fault, but rather that of the studio brass. At present, there is no surviving footage of the go sees the ghost he's Lugosi is Bella at present, unfortunately, there is no surviving footage of Lugosi's Monster speaking.