Frankenstein Wednesdays: "House of Frankenstein" (1944) – The Things That Wouldn't Die

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

 

"Ta-daa! Is this what you like? Is it? We've no idea any more."

 There's a reason I spend more time writing about these later film's beginnings than their ends. "House of..." opens superbly. Boris Karloff is back from his theatrical sabbatical. We see only his hand at first, the same way we were introduced to him in "Frankenstein" thirteen years earlier. It shoots out from the hatch of a cell door to throttle a jailor, Karloff's astonishing brow – wreathed with filth and hair – follows, and then the voice – that unaltered South London lisp, sepulchral but local (the ghoul next door), slow yet without vibrato, unwavering as entropy: "Nowwww will you give me my CHALK?" He is given his chalk, and we move into his cell, a beautifully realised, early example of the trope of mad scrawlings on a prison wall. How mad? He's working out how to put a human brain into the skull of a dog.

 I just photographed the television.

 By 1944  Karloff was as iconic as the Monster he'd created. Onstage he had just finished playing Jonathan Brewster in "Arsenic and Old Lake", the villainous victim of botched plastic surgery that leaves him looking "like Boris Karloff". That's how iconic. (Beautifully, when the play went on tour the role was taken over by Bela Lugosi.) He was the consummate maniac now, top draw, so while his Top Trump Type: "Mad Doctor" is fifth billed on the poster below, Karloff himself got top billing among the cast.

I can't tell who the woman is. Also, this film doesn't really like women.

  This would be Karloff's last Horror Film for Universal however, because... huhhh... not just because it was helmed by the uninspiring director of "Ghost of Frankenstein", Erle C. Kenton, but that can't have helped. "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman"'s director, the far superior Roy William Neil, was busy shooting updated Sherlock Holmes stories with Basil Rathbone, extraordinarily rewatchable adventures, rich in dark character and macarbre detail, which benefit hugely from a solid appreciation of the importance of goodness and evil in a shocker. It's these Holmes pictures, a fan favourite – if not definitive – interpretation of the Great Detective, which stand as Universal's best contribution to the B-movies of this period. "House" meanwhile (the abbreviation, not the TV show), while having some superb stuff in it, doesn't seem to know it. The film lacks care. There's a sense it exists only because audiences still seemed to like this kind of thing. For a few beautiful moments at the beginning though, it looks like this might actually become the theme of the film. So let's return to those moments.

 Everything crumbles on the continent. The lightning that gave Karloff life in "Frankenstein" sets him free in "House" by striking his prison. In his escape, he is accompanied by the poster's promised "HUNCHBACK!" hoping for a better body to put his brain in. Daniel, played by J. Carrol Naish, has lovely, big eyes and horrible hair. (Returning to the poster quickly: the promise of a returning character is also the promise of a returning story. "The MAD DOCTOR" will therefore be destroyed by his own hubris, "The WOLF MAN" will look for an escape from his curse, even in death, "FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER" will go just sort of go wrong, "DRACULA" will try and steal your wife, and "The HUNCHBACK" will swing from awnings and suffer unrequited love for a Gypsy.) Daniel and Karloff's Professor Niemann, a protegé and fan of the original Dr. Frankenstein, escape into the rain (a welcome attention to detail in a Kenton film) and immediately encounter a travelling Circus of Horrors, run by former Moriarty actor George Zucco in a fez.

  This is where things get interesting (and we've aleady had Boris Karloff give a lecture on transplanting a human brain into a dog followed by an exploding prison). The star exhibit of Lampini's two coach carnival is the actual skeleton of Dracula, who, in this film, is an "old legend" rather than a recent casualty, but nobody believes it. "Doubts! Jeers! Cries of Fake! Fake!" Lampini complains of his audience, and who can blame them? And this is what I find interesting, that Horror now finds itself occupying the same simultaneously real and pretend narrative space as Father Christmas...

... If Lampini's cheap sideshow is authentic, maybe all cheap sideshows are. There are two worlds, the world of the story and the world of the audience, and the sideshow is its threshold, perhaps even that same threshold diagnosed as madness in the poster's "MAD DOCTOR", a potent idea in the future of horror writing, which this film inevitably does absolutely nothing with. A familiar refrain now: God, what a film this might have been.

This shot, while included in the film, is arguably better than it.

 But no, the sideshow is just a plot device. Niemann needs transport, and so has Daniel strangle Lampini and the caravan driver, stealing their identities. A vampire might also come in handy to help him exact revenge on the Burgomaster who imprisoned him, and against his former colleagues who testified for the prosecution, and so – even though Daniel already appears a perfectly adequate multiple murderer – Niemann removes Dracula's stake. Veins appear in the coffin, followed by muscle, followed finally by the suave Pez dispenser John Carradine, licking his lips. He has clearly read Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in preparation for this role, and has the moustache to prove it.

"I don't need to say the line, 'Look into my eyes.'

 I can just say it with my eyes. Look. 
I am such a great Dracula."

 Holding the stake over Dracula's heart, Niemann promises to look after his coffin. "In that case," replies the Prince of Darkness, "I will do whatever you wish." Okay, it's rubbish, but here's how I think we're supposed to watch this: Dracula's back, let's not worry how or why, let's just have some Dracula for a bit and treat this as a portmanteau film, a series of stories rather than a single... you know... Let's have some fun with Dracula and see if it's interesting if he's just sort of unremarkable on the surface this time, just thin and randy, and watch him turn into a bat and get invited into a house and talk to a lady about his sexy world of the dead and give her a magic ring and leave holes in Sig Ruman's neck and get chased so hard by the police that his carriage disintegrates, and let's also keep this shot in:

  Actually let's return to this shot where his moustache has come off a couple of times, and then the sun rises and he turns into a skeleton and the magic ring falls off so we definitely know the story's over and that it had no consequence on any of its survivors, and then let's get back to Professor Niemann who didn't even look after his coffin.

 Which we do. Niemann and Daniel have arrived in the village of Vasaria, so that Niemann can pick up Frankenstein's old notebooks. Actually, in this film the village is called Frankenstein, but there's the burst dam and castle from "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" so it's definitely the film that's wrong, and I'm right, and this is Vasaria. In the ruins of the castle Niemann also finds Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman frozen in the ice, presumably because people really liked the ice in the last film. No wait, this is the same ice cave as before, isn't it? Is it? It's hard to keep track.

 Niemann and Daniel's descent into the glacier is a beatifully orchestrated set piece, with the land giving way beneath Daniel entirely convincingly. Again, a crumbling world, and Karloff in particular is dressed for it superbly. But again, the image deserves a better film:

 The ice melts, Lon Chaney's Larry Talbot the Wolf Man resumes consciousness, and is natually depressed to find himself still alive a third time. He explains to Niemann what happened in the previous film – refers to Dr. Mannering, the whole kaboodle – and Niemann promises.... Do you know what? I can't remember... to look after his shoes or something, if Talbot helps to cart Frankenstein's handily unconscious Monster to the Professor's own lab in the village of Visaria. With an "i". That's the name of Niemann's village. Some villages just have very similar names. It's a hundred kilometers away, and joining them will be the Gypsy Ilonka, played by Elena Verdugo, for there are Gypsies in Vasaria, not the Gypsies of 'The Wolfman", but one-dimensional, heavily sexualised stereotypes, one of whom Daniel saves from a whipping. So now Ilonka's with them, and very grateful, and very playful. She tickles the driver's ankle, that kind of thing. When Larry Talbot takes the reins from Daniel, romantic complications ensue. The War is definitely not a thing.

Braining Bad. "Frankenstien Meets the Wolfman"'s cinematographer George Robinson shot all this, which might be why it looks so great.

 We arrive in Visaria with an "i", where Daniel kidnaps Niemann's two former colleagues, Ullman and Strauss (MICHAEL MARK!) and Frankenstein's Monster is "preserved" with steam in Niemann's pub-tat-strewn lab, a gig that even first-time Monster actor Glenn Strange couldn't be arsed to lie down for, and so an old Lon Chaney mask glued to a dummy takes his place until the story can work out what to do with him. Daniel meanwhile loves Ilonka, but Ilonka loves Larry Talbot, so Daniel wants Niemann to put his brain put into Talbot's body. But Niemann wants to put the Monster's brain into Talbot's body, and Ullman's brain into the Monster's body, and Larry Talbot's brain into Strauss' body. It's like The Seagull. Talbot then transforms into the Wolf Man in front of a mirror and kills a Visarian, and the mob get their torches. He has a nice scene explaining to Ilonka that he absolutely remembers what it's like to be the Wolf Man, and what it's like to want to kill. He also – having accompanied Niemann all this distance in the hope of finding a science that can put him out of his misery – explains that the only way he can be killed is by a silver bullet shot by someone who loves him WHICH IS NEWS TO ME. 

 Anyway, that then happens:

  The Wolf Man attacks Ilonka, she shoots him, and they both die. So ends Larry Talbot's least creepy relationship with a woman by far, while Daniel is left heart-broken. The End. Surely. Oh wait, no! Frankenstein's Monster! He's still strapped to the gurney! 

 Speaking of gurny:

 Daniel takes his grief out on Niemann, who has yet to do a damn thing for him in return for all those helpful murders. Professor Niemann lied to Daniel and he lied to Dracula – in fact I'd love to believe he was secretly a quack all along, which is why he kept everyone waiting for their new brains in Visaria. After all he never performs a transplant in the end, and while the Monster was revived, Talbot was also revived without any boffinry. Clearly, however, the Monster upon regaining consciousness considers Niemann his saviour, so I suppose this film did as well. Strange wakes with a face like a landed fish, mouth wide and soundless, interestingly incapacitated. Is he smiling, or did Karloff teach him that silent scream? Or wait, is he going for palsy? Anyway, he bursts from his restraints and throws Daniel out of the window. Like Dracula, the Monster is reduced to just another of Niemann's goons. The mob then arrive and set fire to the bog and, dragging the unconscious Niemann out of his lab, the Monster escapes into some quicksand. Everyone loves this mess, so Universal have to make yet another one. Karloff, intensely aware that Horror is allowed to be anything but mediocre, goes off instead to work on some extraordinary collaborations with Val Lewton at RKO: "Isle of the Dead", "Bedlam" and "The Bodysnatcher". Bobby Pickett records "The Monster Mash". The BBC ban it. The End.

 Your homework for next week is 1945's "The House of Dracula". There will be blood. I'm not actually suggesting you watch it, I'd never want to be responsible for that, but now I've said that, aren't you curious? I mean, everyone died in this one, how will they come back? And will John Carradine be Dracula again? Will his top hat turn into a bit of a bat? Will I ever get round to writing about the Wolf Man make up? Is Frankenstein even in this bloody one? Will it be a really short blog? Find out!