Frankenstein Wednesdays: "Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942)... Bogged Down In Brains

 Well look, it's still Wednesday somewhere. Continuing my weekly "But What Do I Know" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...

 What is happening in this picture? I DO NOT KNOW. Is one of them trying to close the door, one of them trying to keep it open? Who? Which? I have seen this film three times and I still couldn't really tell you what happens in it. Although Erle C. Kenton is credited as director, "The Ghost of Frankenstein" is, even on its own terms - in fact, especially on its own terms - a directionless disappointment, leaving potentially powerful storyline after storyline spitting sulphurous dust in its wake. This could either be a really short piece then, or a really, really long one. I'm going to have to stand up to type it either way or I'll just become insensible. Let's start with a bit of background. Ideally I'd be writing about these films on their own merits, but I have to state something definitively...

Lionel Atwell IS Sir Cedric Hardwicke!

The "Lon Chaney" credited here is actually Lon Chaney's son, Creighton Tull Chaney, forced to adopt (and then lose) the stage name "Junior" in order to get any work at all. Chaney Senior of course was the "man of a thousand faces", an outstanding silent actor particularly celebrated for his Horror work: Quasimodo...

 The Phantom of the Opera...

And a vampire in "London after Midnight" so iconic that he's still one of the most famous make-up jobs in cinema despite the film itself not surviving...

 Creighton was no slouch either. Or rather, he was a consummate slouch. Before this gig he had already appeared on screen as Lenny in "Of Mice and Men"...

 And, more pertinently,proved a huge hit the year before "Ghost" as Larry Talbot in "The Wolfman"...

 ... two tragic and entirely contrasting portraits of pained, bewildered killers. While Boris Karloff may have grown tired of playing the monster therefore, the truth is there's no evidence the now fifty-five year-old actor was ever considered for a fourth outing, and Universal's new "Lon Chaney" was very likely the studio's first choice. So...

So...

You know...

 Huh...

I guess my point is that Chaney's horrifically nothing performance in this film was not necessarily inevitable. There's no ignoring some terrible, terrible decisions were made, those eyelids for a start, and I'm tempted to blame director Kenton for them. Lional Atwill doesn't seem to be helping either though. Wait. Not Lionel Atwill, sorry. Sir Cedric Hardwicke. I always get those two confused, (even though Atwill was so great in "Son" last week). Thank God they're appearing shoulder to shoulder in this film, identically dressed as surgeons. I miss Dwight Fye...

 Oh hey! Aw, that's better, look at the acting on that. How I love Dwight Frye. "Destroy the castle! Wipe the last traces of these accursed Frankensteins from our land!" That's his one line in the whole film though. And look, Lionel "Burgomaster" Bellman's back from the dead too! "The people are right, your honour." And Michael "Maria's Father" Mark! "I agree, your honour." And that's the fan service out of the way in scene one. Still, as a fan, I thank it. And really I could stop writing now. But then we'd miss Bela Lugosi's grinning Ygor nudging battlements down onto the heads of the torch-wielding Frankensteinian mob... I suppose the torch-wielding mob is fan service too... and we'd miss explosion after glorious explosion as Castle Fankenstein is raised to the ground, and we'd miss the poetic irony of the Monster being set free by the mob violence intended for his destruction...

 We'd miss, in other words, one of the strongest beginnings any Frankenstein sequel could hope for. But then...

 Well that actually looks quite fun, doesn't it. And Bela Lugosi is always great as Ygor. So what's going to happen now? Some twisted variant on "Of Mice and Men"? That would be brilliant. This film could go anywhere.

 Sure, Chaney's monster seems a little one-note, and we can't see his eyes, but he's still covered in sulphur.  So...

 Huh...

 Okay. What makes this interpretation particularly upsetting I realise, and this is no fault of Chaney's, is that, for all my protestations a month ago that Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein" gave us the Monster we all know to this day, THIS is actually that monster... not Karloff's tortured, nuanced, sinewy wretch... THIS, clumping, expressionless thicko is what people think of when they hear the word "Frankenstein".

 Here's Janet Ann Gallow as Cloestine Sussman. There is a superb and moving interview with her here, which I won't quote from, because it would lend a poignancy to the Monster's relationship with her which the film never earns, although it's not uninteresting that the film at least tries. He will later want to replace his own brain with Cloestine's, which is sort of touching, but would involve scooping out a four-year-old's brain, also he abandons the idea pretty quickly when she asks to be taken home. That might be what's happening in the picture at the top of this post in fact. Ygor is presumably protesting because he now wants the Monster to take his brain, which again is sort of touching, but again would involve scooping out the brain of "his friend".

 Ludwig Frankenstein, meanwhile (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, on the left, not to be confused with Lionel Atwill's Dr, Bohmer on the right, I mean, who could possibly confuse these two completely different brain surgeons?) being the younger son of Henry Frankenstein (or "Heinrich", as the franchise has Germanically retconned him) and brother to Wolf Frankenstein (whose absence from this sequel is probably the film's greatest flaw) wants to put into the Monster's head neither the brain of Ygor, nor of Cloestine (nor the inflated clown's head that Cloestine carries everywhere, which might explain why she's so unfazed by Chaney) but that of his own murdered assistant Kettering, because the titular ghost of his father Heinrich (also played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke) has explained to him that everything would be fine if the Monster were just given a non-Abnormal brain. So yes, Ludwig's motivation is the appearance of a ghost. Ygor had blackmailed him earlier to take the Monster in, appearing from either behind a curtain or else one of those secret passages I like to think are now just materialising around Ygor, but we couldn't stick with that as a motivation because then we wouldn't have a ghost. Not that we needed a ghost. The original title of this film was apparently "There's Always Tomorrow" (David Cairns explains why here).

 Ludwig's former teacher Dr. Bohmer, meanwhile, also wants to put Ygor's brain into the Monster's body, because Ygor has promised him unlimited power when he somehow eventually takes over the world. So many brains! But I can keep track of all this. This is not why I couldn't tell you what's going on in this film. No, the reason I can't tell you is that the film doesn't know. Does Ygor actually want to take over the world, for example, or does he just need Bohmer to grant him immortality, as he movingly mutters before the operation that might kill him? Why does the Monster want the brain of a four-year-old anyway? To start afresh? But then why does he murder Kettering? Why is he menacing Ludwig's daughter, Elsa? Why is Elsa's love interest, local Prosecutor Erik - the superb Ralph Bellamy - so slack in investigating Kettering's murder when he seems so keen to prevent his village descending into Frankensteinian mob rule otherwise. How have Ludwig and Elsa Frakenstein been keeping hold of Cloestine for two weeks, as the girl's father claims, if the Monster abducted her the night of his surgery and the village are storming Ludwig's hospital the moment the Monster came round? More importantly, WHY did they keep hold of her for two weeks given she asked to be taken home? I suspect they didn't. I suspect someone somewhere made a mistake. I suspect, ultimately, we're not meant to be paying this much attention. I'm making this film sound far too fun. Why does everything explode? Because the end.

 Oh, and if you didn't guess who's brain got put into the Monster at the end, next week Lon Chaney will be returning as the Wolf Man, and Bela Lugosi will be playing the Monster. So that's the better-than-this-film "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man" next week... Elsa Frankenstein, that is!

Further reading: 
imdb, where most of these images come from.
The Dwayger Dungeon.
Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends.
The Titus Andronicus Project's youtube commentary.