The Ghost of Frankenstein
1942 (B & W) U.S.A. 68 minutes Universal Pictures Director: Erie C. Kenton Producer: George Waggner Screenplay: W. Scott Darling Photography: Milton Krasner Cast: Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Bellamy
The Ghost of Frankenstein, while it continues to exploit the by now coherent imagery of the Frankenstein myth shows a marked decline in Hollywood's ability to handle it. Lon Chaney Jr. behind his makeup simply cannot match Karloff as the creature. Still, it is pleasant to watch such seasoned inhabitants of scary movies as Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi at work again. Not a great film, but not quite dreary, either.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man*
1943 (B & W) U.S.A. 74 minutes Universal Pictures Director: Roy William Neill Producer: George Waggner Screenplay: Curt Siodmak Photography: George Robinson
Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, llona Massey, Maria Ouspenskaya
Here is a film that is important only because it marks the signal decline in film of the compelling Frankenstein idea. If the film proves anything it is that one cannot make a fine horror movie by simply throwing great old horror regulars together. Lugosi as the monster elicits pity, but only because his performance is so shabby. Nobody cares that Lon Chaney (as Laurence Talbot) wants medical help to escape the curse of werewolfism. Everybody is grateful when both monsters (so the law of sequels will permit) are destroyed at the end of film. That end comes none too soon.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
1948 (B & W) U.S.A. 83 minutes Universal Pictures Director: Charles T. Barton Producer: Robert Arthur
Screenplay: Robert Lees, Frederic Rinaldo, John Grant Photography: Charles Van Enger
Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert, Vincent Price
* This review of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man appears also in the volume The Ultimate Werewolf.
Another pot pourri film in which Universal Pictures, acting on the principle that if one monster made for great box office then four would make even more money, gave us Dracula, the Frankenstein creature, the Wolfman and the Invisible Man, each of whom makes an appearance of longer or shorter duration. But the real fun in this film is the presence in it of Abbott and Costello, whose disingenuous high jinks turn what would otherwise be a sorry venture into quite a jolly eighty-three minutes of monster mash.
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
1958 (B & W) U.S.A. 76 minutes MGM
Director: Herbert L. Strock Producer: Herman Cohen Screenplay: Kenneth Langtry Photography: Lothrop Worth
Cast: Whit Bis sell, Phyllis Coates, Robert Burton, Gary Conway, George Lynn, John Cliff
This shabby sequel to I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), is important only as an example of the way Hollywood, in the fifties, was trying to address the newly discovered world of teen America.
The plot of the film, a sad parody of the 1931 film story of Frankenstein, has a visiting British scientist, a descendant of Baron Frankenstein, fulfilling his boast that he will make a human being. The creature he makes, though ugly, has sense enough to know that the scientist is evil and turns on him, to the eminent satisfaction of the crocodile that the scientist keeps in his basement.
The Curse of Frankenstein
1957 (Color) Great Britain 82 minutes Hammer Films Director: Terence Fisher Producer: Anthony Hinds Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster Photography: Jack Asher
Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart,
Valerie Gaunt, Noel Hood Michael Mulcaster, Patrick Trough ton, Marjorie Hume
This is the first of the great Hammer Films that revivified both the Dracula and the Frankenstein legends in the movies and is also the first Frankenstein film in color. Hammer's contribution to the genre was the formula it invented for its films: look expensive, sound intelligent, don't spare the sex. The result was a series of films whose sets had the look of luxurious elegance and whose ingenues radiated sensuality. Beyond that, the Hammer horror films have shrewd casting, brilliant direction and intelligent screenplays working for them.
Here, in The Curse of Frankenstein, Christopher Lee, playing the role of the creature, manages to convey through pounds of makeup the creature's isolation and dismay, while Peter Cushing is the glacial scientist who will not permit feelings to stand in the way of his research. Cushing and Lee would go on together gracing Hammer horror films for more than a decade after this notable beginning.
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein 's Daughter
1965 (Color) U.S.A. 82 minutes Circle Productions Director: William Beaudine Producer: Carroll Case Screenplay: Carl K. Hittleman Photography: Lothrop Worth
Surely, the two most obvious contenders for the title of the world's worst horror film are Plan Nine From Outer Space and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. I suspect JJMFD would lose by a point or so because its outrageous plot and its ridiculous casting invest it with some vague aura of charm. Then, too, it is the vulgar twin of William Beaudine's Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and that should keep it from deserving a place at the bottom of the barrel—but only just.
The plot? Onyx, a granddaughter of Henry Frankenstein who finds herself in the American West, decides to follow in her ancestor's footsteps in the people-creating line by inserting an artificial brain into the skull of Jesse James' friend. The sutures on his skull when she is done look as if they were sewn with barbed wire. Everything else about this film is just as delicate.
Frankenstein Created Woman
1967 (Color) Great Britain 92 minutes Hammer Films Director: Terence Fisher Producer: Anthony Nelson Keys Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds) Photography: Arthur Grant
Cast: Peter Cushing, Susan Denberg, Throley Walters, Duncan Lamont, Robert Morris, Peter Blythe
Here is a breakthrough Frankenstein film, for two reasons: first, there is no home made male creature in it fresh from the laboratory and creating havoc; and second, it introduces such a bizarre sexual ambiguity into its plot that it adds fresh complexity to the Frankenstein idea.
This time Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing in a particularly fine performance) transplants the soul of a man decapitated for a crime he did not commit into the voluptuous body of a female suicide. The revived woman, with the man's soul guiding her, sets out to take vengeance on the people who contrived his execution. The result is something of a Hammer film festival as scenes of subtle sexual symbolism and ingenious revenge are played out for our delectation on the screen. The result, even without the presence of the tragically abused "monster," is a film that deserves to be taken seriously for its own quite satisfying sake.
Young Frankenstein
1974 (B & W) U.S.A. 108 minutes Gruskoff Ventures/20th Century Fox Director: Mel Brooks Producer: Michael Gruskoff Screenplay: Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks Photography: Gerald Hirshfield
Cast: Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Terri Garr, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman
The plot of this bubbly spoof of Frankenstein films is a crazy quilt of plots from the three great Universal Frankenstein films of the thirties. What makes this at once an enduring and an endearing film is that Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder respected the material at which they were poking fun. The result is that viewers experience two pleasures at once watching the film: frequent shocks of nostalgia as they recognize snippets or whole scenes from Frankenstein film lore; and the delight that comes from seeing those scenes distorted through the comic lenses provided by two of America's zaniest talents.
A caution: the film, hilarious and zestful as it is, is occasionally marred by macho sexual humor that, depending on the context, is either tasteless or coarse.
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The Ultimate Frankenstein Page 30
