31 Days of Halloween: Day 9

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) Director: Roy William Neill

 

Yesterday I decided to interact with other people, so I fell a little behind with the blogging.  Sorry.  I still kept to the plan, and have watched a horror movie each day, so don't worry.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is the first sequel to The Wolf Man and the fifth sequel to Frankenstein.  Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Larry Talbot and this time around Bela Lugosi plays the Frankenstein Monster.  This film is the first example of a shared universe in film, over 70 years before The Avengers came out.  It's pretty awesome seeing the Wolf Man and the Monster share the same screen, and the continuation of Talbot's story is pretty good.  Unfortunately, this is also when the continuity in the Universal monster movies begins to deteriorate, but it's pretty easy to look past that and still have a good time.

The film begins with Talbot's grave being robbed and for reasons that extend only to "we need to make a sequel," the light of the full moon awakens him from the dead as the wolf and he kills the grave robbers (or one, at least).  Talbot later realizes that he apparently cannot die, so he goes on a quest to find a way to end his life.  This leads to him looking for Doctor Frankenstein to learn his secrets of life and death he discovered in his experiments.  Along the way he finds the Monster buried in ice and meets the doctor's granddaughter. 

Taking place after The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Monster has some changes from his original incarnation.  In Ghost, the mind if Ygor (Bela Lugosi) was transplanted to the Monster, but as a result lost his eyesight.  This is why the Monster in this film walks with his hands pointing out, because he can't see.  The Monster was supposed to be able to speak in this movie, but in post-production the producers decided for some reason to remove all of Lugosi's lines.  One can actually see the Monster's lips moving in some scenes, but there is of course no sound.  This change really doesn't make any sense, and it's quite a shame that Lugosi's performance was altered. 

Chaney's performance is just as good as before, and once again the audience truly cares for him.  He comes off as rather selfless in his journey to end his life so he will no longer be able to harm others.  Lugosi also does a fine job as the Monster, although not nearly as good as Karloff. 

Fun fact:  Lugosi was originally offered the role Monster in the original film, but turned it down.  There are varying reports as to why he did so, with some claiming he didn't like the fact that he didn't speak in the film.  Oh, the irony.

Let them fight.

 Frankenstein is a fun film, that works much better as a Wolf Man sequel than a Frankenstein one.  This is mainly due to the fact that the movie is much more about Talbot than anyone named Frankenstein.  The climax is a little clunky, but it is still a blast to see these two monsters sharing the screen and battling it out.