Frankenstein Wednesday: "House of Dracula" (1945)... Test The Blood of Dracula!

  Continuing my weekly "But What Do I Know" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...

"That's IT?!"

 Here is a publicity still of Award-Winning Make-Up Artist Jack Pierce preparing Boris Karloff for 1933's "Bride of Frankenstein"...

 And here is a publicity still of Onslow Stevens (left) making up his stand-in Carey Loftin for "House of Dracula" twelve years later (source)...

 I don't know who made up Onslow Stevens, but my guess is it might also have been Onslow Stevens. There's just something not very Award-Winning Make-Up Artist Jack Piercey about his make-up. I also suspect John Carradine might have done his own make-up as Dracula, although at least in this film the moustache he wears to prove he's read the book stays on.

Not a play. An actual film.

 Digital restoration can be unkind, and Erle C. Kenton's "House of Dracula" does not bear close examination, if any. It is a bad film. So I might just keep talking about the make-up. Onslow Stevens is wearing scientist make-up then because he's playing Dr. Franz Edelmann. Dracula has come to Edelmann because he wants to be cured of Vampirism, or because he has a crush on one of Edelmann's nurses, Miliza, played by Martha O'Driscoll. It's unclear which. Both motives are rubbish. But at least this film doesn't have a misleadingly good opening.

"I wear this top hat so my waddle when ascending or descending stairs might describe an even wider arc. And I ascend and descend stairs a lot"

 Dracula introduces himself as Baron Latos, as he did in "House of Frankenstein", possibly because nobody wants to hear John Carradine say "I am Dracula", or possibly because he's trying to conceal his true identity. He's moved his coffin bearing the Dracula crest into Edelmann's cellar though, and shown it to Edelmann the moment they meet, so it's probably the former. Edelmann, a Man of Science, believes that Vampirism is simply a mental disorder and so prescribes a series of transfusions of his own blood into Dracula's as a cure. 

 But (?) Dracula then tricks (?) Edelmann by reversing the flow of the syringe (?) which (?) transforms the good doctor into Jekyll and Hyde. You can see the make-up for Edelmann's hideous transformation in the image at the top of this post. Below is another example. I have literally no idea what anyone was thinking at this point.

  "Push the button, Frank!"

Also, who in red hell is Onslow Stevens, and why is he the star of this film? Anyway, believing in vampires now, the good doctor moves Dracula's coffin into the sunlight, killing its occupant, and that's the end of Dracula's stupid story that makes no sense. Larry Talbot meanwhile (Lon Chaney of course) has also come to Edelmann looking for a cure for his Werewolfism, which makes a bit more sense, although both he and Dracula definitely died in the previous film. Edelmann is busy with "Baron Latos" however, so Talbot hands himself over to the local police, and then transforms into a wolf man, but it's fine because he's locked up safely in a cell now. He doesn't escape or anything. Nobody is killed. It's all fine, and so is his make-up.

 "This is actually fine."

 If the Wolf Man looks a little bushier than before it's because, according to The Titus Andronicus Project, the war caused a serious shortage of the European yak hair that Pierce had previously relied on, but the make-up's still basically fine. Talbot is then released from prison and throws himself into the sea. Edelmann lowers himself down on a winch to look for him in the mud, finds the reliably unconscious body of Frankenstein's Monster, and brings both back to his not mad hospital/lab/castle, where he does not revive the Monster, because another nurse, Nina (played by Jane Adams) points out that this would be bad, but he does cure Talbot, which is good, and the end of the Wolf Man's story.

"You have been cured with spores. Now I love you."

 We haven't seen a moustache on Talbot before, but he obviously has every right to try one. Perhaps he'd just seen "A Matter of Life and Death" and hoped that, combined with silk pyjamas and a brain surgery bandage, it might make him look more like David Niven, and not Houdi Elbow. It looks real anyway. Martha O' Driscoll and Jane Adams both look superb, but that doesn't mean they didn't also do their own make-up. Jane Adams really sells the hump too. Her performance as Nina is probably the best thing in the film, which is not to say that her role of "HUNCHBACK" isn't exploitative and infantilising, but she manages to make Nina the protagonist of ever scene she's in regardless - heroic, if childishly heroic - until she's horrifically thrown down a trapdoor at the end by evil Edelmann and dies, in long shot, because this film is bad.

 Glenn Strange's make-up as the Monster is absolutely fine too, athough yet again he has absolutely nothing to do except lie unconscious on a gurney for the duration of the film until he breaks out of some straps when a mad scientist revives him, so there's probably not much that could have gone wrong. If his firey death the following minute, trapped beneath some Linda Barker shelves, reminds you of the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein", that is because it's the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein". The studio simply recycled the footage. And that's the end of the Monster's non-story. It doesn't look like Strange was given a dresser either.

"Lon Helping Glenn into his Costume" Actual caption.

 Lionel Atwill probably did some recycling too, wearing the same uniform for Inspector Holtz that he'd worn for Inspector Arnz in "House of Frankenstein" and Inspector Krogh in "Son of Frankenstein", while Skelton Knaggs, as this film's sweaty weirdo the whole village listens to instead of their Police Inspector, is a new face, and I'm not sure anyone did his make-up. I don't think he's wearing any. I think that's just Skelton Knagg's deal.

 Anything else? Oh, there's one other death; a scene in which the evil Edelmann toys with, and then murders, his gardner. And for that one scene we're reminded of the queasily attractive power fantasy promised by Horror, and what Steven Moffat calls "the game of the monster". House of Dracula forgot the rules of that game. There was no sequel the following year. And while there's so much more to the best of these films than this game, you still have to play it. It's through this game in fact that we first came to Frankenstein and Dracula and the Wolf Man as children, not through "Scooby Doo". Exactly as we might have dressed up as super heroes, we groaned and hissed and adopted the stiff walk and suddenly felt power because people were running from us, because that was the game. And the fangs, and the claws and the face paint and the stick-on bolts and the scars were the toys we bought to play that game. We learnt of these monsters through make-up.

Next week... "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man" in which a comedy finally comes along to sort all this shit out. And then we're done!