House Of Frankenstein

House of Frankenstein isn't much of a movie, but is very enjoyable just the same. Extremely fast-paced, it packs what look to be three separate stories into its 70-minute running time, bringing out Frankenstein's monster in one chapter, and Dracula in an almost completely separate one. If television wasn't still a few years away it would be tempting to think that somebody at Universal envisioned breaking the film up into tv episodes.  3 Known as a stuntman and producer of lowbudget westerns, producer Malvern packed the film with enough action and horse-stunts for a two-reel oater: Dracula leaps from a careering carriage like Yakima Canutt.

But it does have Karloff and John Carradine, two actors who never slighted a role just because it was beneath their dignity. Karloff is good, but Carradine makes for an excellent Dracula, the first since Lugosi to do anything with the role, and a welcome contrast to the lumpen Lon Chaney in Son of Dracula. Gaunt and gooney-eyed, Carradine is supported by good effects, especially his invisible man-like reconstitution and his shadow transformation into a bat. I can imagine '40s kids, unaware of the classics from 15 years before, thinking these effects very cool; we loved them on television twenty years later.

This may sound like heresy, but Savant prefers Lon Chaney in this quickie Reader's Digest version, to the original George Waggner movie. Chaney isn't much of an actor and grates, frankly, and here the urgency of his romance and even more urgent demise makes its point without repetitive scenes of remorse: "Last night I killed a man." The added triangle with the hunchbacked Daniel places the supernatural curse of lycanthropy as more desirable than a simple deformity, which must have made real hunchbacks in the audience feel perfectly lousy. By the way, Naish is the equal of his co-actors, and plays his scenes with the shallow gypsy girl for maximum pathos.

After keeping up a frantic pace, House of Frankenstein falters at the windup. The Monster is revived just long enough to meet a mob and drag Karloff to a fiery doom, and all the side stories are wrapped up so fast you can almost see the characters looking at their watches and thinking, "Only four minutes left! I've got to get thrown through a window! (or shot with a silver bullet, etc.) You see trooper Karloff duck his head in a greasy bog and the movie ends about eight seconds later. This beat-the-clock short running time must have charmed wartime theater owners, who made fortunes by grinding out shows around the clock for swingshift war-plant workers with money in their pockets.

If the movie succeeds, it's because of its 'horror lite' approach - all the clichés of a decade of monster movies are rushed into its short running time. With top talent like Karloff and Carradine keeping it going, House of Frankenstein is stylish and efficient, communicating in pulp shorthand. It has no resemblance whatsover to an important horror film ... but it's good fun.

The unnecessary side note this time around ... the glass-ball Universal logo that graces most of these pictures is Savant's favorite studio logo of all time. This is the one that followed the '30s airplane, updating the globe as a shimmering light source, reflecting the letters that orbit it. (Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant)