HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN-1944-In prison for his medical experiments, Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) shows his know how to his hunchback assistant Daniel (J.Carroll Nash) and promises to give him a new body. Lightning destroys the prison wall and the pair escape. They hook up with Prof. Lampini (George Zucco) and his horror exhibition which he claims includes the remains of the original Count Dracula. Niemann wants to go to his old lab in Visaria but Lampini has other plans. Too bad. Daniel kills him and Neimann takes over as Lampini. In town, Burgomaster Herr Hussman (Sig Ruman) questions Niemann about his identity while displaying Dracula's skeleton with a stake in it. He remembers it was the burgomaster who put him in prison for putting the brain of a dog into man. Overcome with vengeance Niemann pulls the stake out of the Count's skeleton planning to kill the burgomaster but an amazing thing happens. The skeleton transforms into Dracula who tries to hypnotize Neimann but his will is wrong and he resists. Niemann makes a deal: if Dracula will obey him he'll make sure there's always a coffin waiting for him. Dracula agrees. The count gets right down to work, integrating himself (under the guise of Count Lagos) into the burgomaster's small family unit: his son Karl (Peter Coe) and his American daughter in law Rita (Ann Gwynne). He does in the burgomaster just as the old guy figures out Lampini is Neimann but really has his sights set on Rita who he hypnotizes and plans to take away. Unfortunately his plan runs into a stumbling block when the sun rises. Dracula makes a bee line for his coffin which Niemann has and dumps off his wagon while the police give chase. Dracula goes for his coffin but it's too late. The sun finds him and he turns to dust thus releasing Rita from his thrall.
This is like end of part one. Whew! The rest of the story begins with Daniel's rescue of a gypsy dancer Illonka (Elena Verdugo) after he sees her being whipped by her boss. Clearly infatuated with her Daniel begs his master to take her along. Niemann agrees and gives her the job of driving the horses. Though at first sight repulsed by Daniel's deformity, she feels sorry and they become friends. Later the troupe visit Castle Frankenstein where The Monster and the Wolf man had their battle in the previous entry FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Neimann and Daniel discover their frozen bodies. “The undying monster” Neimann exclaims. He and Danny un-freeze the monsters and this is when the trouble begins. Getting his hands on Dr. Frankenstein's “The Secrets of Life and Death”, Neimann agrees to help Talbot die by switching his brain with the monster's. Meanwhile Illonka falls for Larry which in turn makes Dan very jealous and in a rage spills the beans to gypsy about Larry's hairy curse. As usual Niemann becomes obsessed with reviving the monster and kind of forgets about his promise to fix friend Daniel's deformed body. Illonka figures the only way to help her beloved Larry is to shoot him with a silver bullet. She gets a gun but is fatally attacked by the wolf man who she kills before shortly dying herself. This doesn't sit with Daniel who attempts to strangle his former benefactor. This upsets the monster (who earlier had been whipped by Dan) and he breaks free and kills the hunchback. The angry villagers storm the castle (one of them is un-billed character actor Joe Kirk). The monster grabs the doc and hightails it out. Unfortunately despite the injured mad scientist's pleas, he takes them right into some quicksand where the are quickly swallowed up. The End.
It's nice to see all these monsters and
classic actors together in one Universal horror movie but HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN could
have been better. Dracula never appears with the wolf man or the
monster. A lot of what Neimann does doesn't make sense. One scene
where Niemann has kidnapped two men, Strauss, his former assistant
(Michael Mark) who betrayed him and a juror Ullman (Frank Reicher)
who testified against him, he says he's going to put one of their
brains into the wolf man and the other into the monster sort of
contradicting his original plans. When this scene is over the two
captives are never referred to again and he continues with his
experiments. Also when he's ready to do an operation on Talbot, did
he really have to do it on the night of a full moon? You'd think he'd
know better. But then I guess he was a mad scientist! His was one of
the last screenplays written by Edward T. Lowe who career started in
1912! He wrote HOUSE OF DRACULA the next year. Director Earle Kenton
manages to pull off all the right moves to make this a very
entertaining horror story despite it's small flaws.
Thanks for reading!
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