Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Roy William Neill
1943

I'm a bit biased in writing this because I've always seen the Wolf Man as the weakest of all Universal monsters. While Lon Chaney Jr. plays a spectacular mummy, as well as an adequate Frankenstein, his signature beast never seemed to have a good enough makeup or an interesting enough story to keep me in it. Despite a few notable elements, "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" fails to live up to the high quality of its predecessors.

The undying Larry Talbot is resurrected by a pair of hapless graverobbers only to cut a bloody swathe through England. Talbot seeks out the journals of the deceased doctor Frankenstein, who has the power of 'life over death' and vice versa, in an effort to cure the world of his curse. In his exploration of castle Frankenstein Larry manages to thaw out the infamous monster and stir up trouble with the natives.

This particular Frankenstein portrayal is perhaps the weakest of all the monster's incarnations. Bela Lugosi dons the flat head and prominent brow, a role he once mocked but was forced to take up, due to a drug habit and career trouble. The baroness Elsa Frankenstein (Ilona Massey) lends the picture a nice dose of sex appeal, a factor frequently lacking in the Universal horror dept. The climactic fight between the monster and the wolf man is woefully weak. This bummer of a scuffle is clumsy and passionless, perhaps the greatest disappointment the film has to offer. However, "Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man" does have some excellent mob scenes. When the salt-of-the-earth townsfolk have had enough supernatural falderal they light some torches and get to some good old fashioned monster killing. Too bad the monsters they're chasing aren't really worth the effort.

Review by Brett A. Scieszka