Synopsis: In Neustadt prison, mad scientist Dr. Niemann and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel are unexpectedly freed when a wall of their cell collapses during a violent thunderstorm. The two happen upon Lampini’s traveling horror show, which boasts as its main attraction the skeleton of Count Dracula. Neimann and Eric quickly murder Lampini and his driver and take their places. Niemann has been obsessed with proving the genius of Dr. Frankenstein and he sets out to the village where the Monster was created.
Niemann discovers that the skeleton of Dracula is authentic when he removes the stake that had been thrust through the vampire’s heart. The skeleton promptly transforms into the Count. Threatening to replace the stake if Dracula doesn’t do his bidding, Niemann sends the vampire out to kill the three men who had him imprisoned: Strauss, Ullman and Hussman. Dracula kills Hussman but dies before he can dispense with the hated Strauss and Ullman.
Reaching the village of Vasaria, they encounter a band of gypsies. Seeing a gypsy woman Ilonka being abused, Daniel saves her and, smitten with her, asks her to join them.
Later, examining the ruins of Frankenstein Castle, Neimann and Daniel discover the frozen bodies of Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man. Niemann realizes that the Monster can be revived, and he plans to place the Monster’s brain in Lawrence Talbot’s body; Talbot’s brain in Strauss’ body, and Ullman’s brain in the Monster’s body. But discovering that the Ilonka has fallen in love with Lawrence Talbot, Daniel wants his own brain placed into Talbot’s body….
Comments: House of Frankenstein is a movie about many things. It is an indictment of science without discipline, of ambition without morals, of the loss of identity in a scientific age, of the cruelty of unrequited love; and in Lawrence Talbot’s case, the lure of the thanatos, the existential knowledge that dogs us all — the knowledge that the only peace we will find in this world is in the grave….
Aw, who the hell am I kidding? It’s a Frankenstein movie, okay? There’s a wolf man! And a mad scientist! And a really lazy, ineffectual Dracula! If you’re looking for more than that, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Really, if there is any moral to be found at the heart of House of Frankenstein, it is this: everyone should be happy with their own brain. Everybody is lusting after somebody else’s brain in this movie, and it actually made me very sad.
House of Frankenstein is generally better-regarded than its predecessor Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but I’m not sure why; there are too many characters here and altogether too much going on. Dracula appears early on and is killed off too quickly and too glibly. In fact, Dracula dies before any of the other monsters are brought into the story.
For this reason the movie is often described as “episodic”, but the plot actually holds together fairly well once the Dracula subplot is (rather unceremoniously) dispensed with.
Interestingly, having Frankenstein’s monster — essentially a science-fiction element — occupy the screen with supernatural things like vampires and werewolves seemed more jarring in this movie than in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. This might be because Siodmak’s script for the earlier film introduced the Wolf Man first, and from there led Dr. Mannering to Baroness Frankenstein and the perversion of science that her family created.
But this movie gives us the science first, and Dr. Niemann (a scientist, though admittedly an unconventional one) doesn’t seem to be particularly surprised that the Dracula skeleton in Lampini’s collection is imbued with supernatural powers, or that Lawrence Talbot is really a werewolf.
The cast is generally pretty good here, with Boris Karloff showing a sinister charm as Niemann. I particularly liked his conversation with Lampini in the trailer — he imbues the character with an ironic sense of detachment, an interesting note added to a fairly straightforward mad-scientist role.
Lugosi was originally slated to reprise his Dracula role, but (in one of those little Hollywood ironies) he had committed to appear in a touring production of Arsenic and Old Lace, as Jonathan Brewster, the role originated by Boris Karloff.
This is too bad, because without Lugosi, the role goes to a surprisingly laconic John Carradine, who plays Dracula as if he were a two-bit riverboat gambler.
Lon Chaney, Jr. seems oddly distracted, as though wondering how many more of these movies he’s going to have to do (answer: not many). Ann Gwynne, as the spunky, fast-talking American gal, seems to have breezed in from a Howard Hawks picture.
J. Carrol Naish has the most interesting performance, as the tormented hunchback Daniel. How hunchbacks became a desirable accessory for mad scientists is beyond me, but in the 13 years since the original Frankenstein they are apparently a requirement. Daniel gets the most poignant story and as a result, is rewarded with the most tragic death. The truth is, all the principal characters are killed in quick succession during the last two minutes of the film, apparently in a desperate attempt to tie up loose ends. House of Frankenstein doesn’t work well, but the plot is so overloaded that, really, you’re amazed it works at all.
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Synopsis:Medical student Pierre Dupin (Leon Waycoff) is at a carnival with his beloved Camille L’Espanaye (Sidney Fox). They enter the exhibit of Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi) who has a gorilla named Erik. Mirakle claims to be able to speak Erik’s ancient simian language, then goes on to talk about his personal theories about evolution. At the end of his presentation he urges Camille to come closer to Erik, but when she does so Erik lunges at her, grabbing her and stealing her bonnet. Dr. Mirakle apologizes and tells her that if she gives him her address, he’ll send her a new one. Pierre is suspicious and tells her not to do so.
But Mirakle will not be deterred. He has Camille followed and gets her address anyway.
Meanwhile, the police are baffled by a series of prostitute killings, and we learn Dr. Mirakle is the culprit. Picking up streetwalkers and bringing them home, Mirakle injects them with gorilla’s blood, with the stated intention of finding out the “true connection” between humans and apes. But the blood of prostitutes is “dirty”, according to Mirakle; he needs a woman with pure blood. And so he plots to kidnap Camille and use her to prove his theory of human – ape kinship….
Comments: The stories of Edgar Allan Poe are justifiably famous, but they tend to be long on atmosphere and short on plot. For this reason, films based upon them take plenty of liberties. We’ve already seen what Hollywood did with The Raven and The Black Cat; and tonight we get to see what they make of “The Murders In the Rue Morgue”.
Like a lot of adaptations, this one comes off better if you’ve never read the story it’s based upon. Understandably, a lot of changes had to be made in translation. But this adaptation is particularly distressing because it throws out everything that made the short story interesting and memorable.
That story – widely credited as the first detective tale – was published in 1841. It describes how a brilliant, penniless young man named C. Auguste Dupin solves a sensational double homicide that has baffled the Paris police department. The circumstances surrounding the murders are what we would describe today as a classic “locked-room” mystery: two women are found dead in their home, one nearly decapitated and the other beaten and strangled, her body pushed up the chimney by an enormously strong assailant. The door is locked from the inside, and the only windows the killer could have escaped from are nailed shut, also from the inside.
Dupin solves the mystery simply by applying his keen, disciplined mind to the problem, identifying and rejecting irrelevant clues and logically working his way through the facts until he arrives at the correct solution. That an amateur easily, almost effortlessly, solves this “insoluble” mystery is one thing. That he does so basically as a lark is quite another, and it makes C. August Dupin one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in literature.
But for the screen adaptation, the writers felt it was necessary to dismantle the elaborate puzzle-box that Poe had constructed and sand down the rough edges from their protagonist. Camille L’Espanayle is no longer one of the two murder victims. She has been pulled from the chimney, brought back to life, and transformed into Dupin’s girlfriend. Dupin (inexplicably renamed Pierre) is now a poor medical student, rather than an eccentric bohemian.
And the screenwriters, needing an antagonist, dreamed up a character named Dr. Mirakle, played with scenery-chewing zest by Bela Lugosi, an actor who was still basking in the success of the previous year’s Dracula. Mirakle’s motivations are shaky throughout — he seems to find Camille herself alluring, yet also wants her blood for his experiments proving human-ape kinship. This all figures (or is supposed to figure, somehow) into his theories of evolution. That Darwin’s On the Origin of Species would not be published until 1859 is apparently ignored. And why not? Mirakle’s motive doesn’t make sense anyway.
Lugosi is at least amusing as Dr. Mirakle; the same cannot be said, unfortunately, for the other principles. Leon Waycoff’s Dupin is an insufferable and ineffectual dullard, only a pale shadow of Poe’s creation. Diminutive leading lady Sidney Fox is certainly cute, but sweetness seems to be the only quality she can project.
As for Erik the gorilla, we get a man in a suit for the distant shots, and a chimpanzee for the close-ups. Movie audiences were much more forgiving — or, perhaps, much less discerning — in those days.
The Horror Incorporated Project 
