Time for another old black and white Horror movie, preferably something classic and also unintentionally silly. So we arrive at The House Of Frankenstein!
In this film, Boris Karloff plays Dr. Niemann, a sort of self-proclaimed disciple of Frankenstein who was imprisoned for grave-robbing and for trying to put the brain of a man into a dog. He escapes with his hunchback assistant, Friend Daniel, and goes about treachery immediately and with purpose. Along the way he acquires a traveling show that boasts having the actual skeleton of Dracula. Which turns out to be real. Unleashing the softest Dracula anybody's ever seen.
He intends to use it and ultimately the secrets of Frankenstein and any monsters he encounters along the way to exact his revenge and further his glorious purpose.
This is a strange movie. It's kinda just throwing everything at the screen and having Karloff and Atwill and a few others exposit whatever dialogue is necessary to advance whatever isn't already painfully obvious.
“Our village has been quiet and peaceful since the dam broke and swept The Wolfman and The Frankenstein Monster to their destruction several years ago.”
I guess, by the time you get to the SIXTH film in a franchise, you’re always kinda stretching pretty thin.
This movie really tries to do everything. You have the Mad Scientist, his hunchback assistant, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolfman, gypsies, then they introduce a Hunchback Of Notre Dame thing with the hunchback assistant, Friend Daniel, falling in love with the gypsy dancer - hell, they even threw Lionel Atwill in here for his FOURTH Frankenstein movie in a row - in four different roles! What a trooper!
Also Lon Chaney Jr. was just an appallingly bad actor.
But it's fun to see Karloff as the mad doctor with the dumb mute monster making faces at him for a change.
Karloff overdelivers as usual, giving a performance that keeps all these shenanigans afloat. Guy was an absurdly underrated actor.
This is a fun-enough little hour-and-ten-minute movie with everything I listed above crammed in. That ought to be enough to get a couple of you to get off your asses and watch it, even if it is probably past the point they should have stopped.
Last edited by Wooley; 10-20-21 at 03:56 PM.