If FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN was two horror movies for the price of one HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN tries to up the ante by giving the audience three horror icons in one film . The problem with FMTWM was that it never successfully meshed the Frankenstein monster with the Lawrence Talbot storyline and this film makes an even bigger mess of bringing the monsters together
Casting Karloff as Dr Niemann must have been something of a coup for the studio but the problem is that pushes the much anticipated monster parade to the periphery of the story . In fact if the monsters didn't appear at all you might have had a better movie since Karloff is so entertaining in his role but this is a franchise film involving a monster cavalcade so the monsters must remain even though screenwriter Edward T Lowe obviously doesn't know what to do with them
Count Dracula gets the short straw and amounts to a mere cameo . John Carridine possibly makes the worst on screen version of the Count since he has all the presence and mannerisms of a wild west snake oil doctor . Please remember Dracula is supposed to be a Romanian vampire . If they'd cast John Wayne in the part he wouldn't have been much worse . That said neither Talbot and the Frankenstein monster are given much to do . And like so many other films in the series it's puzzling to think how they survived their demise from the previous movie . They were entombed in an ice chamber therefore preserving their bodies for years . Fair enough but how are they supposed to breath ? And is an ice chamber a few feet below a temperate region an natural phenomena ?
There's equal stupidity in the confused storyline . Dr Niemann wants to swap bodies with a few characters in the story but it's never made clear who . He tells a couple of abductees who betrayed him years before that he'll swap their brains with the monster and Talbot then when these characters inexplicably disappear from the story he insinuates he'll swap Talbot's brain with the monster . Why ? Well this is never explained and you're left feeling that there's a major part of the movie that's ended up back at the editing suite . Truth be told someone might have been better giving the screenwriter a bigger brain
Casting Karloff as Dr Niemann must have been something of a coup for the studio but the problem is that pushes the much anticipated monster parade to the periphery of the story . In fact if the monsters didn't appear at all you might have had a better movie since Karloff is so entertaining in his role but this is a franchise film involving a monster cavalcade so the monsters must remain even though screenwriter Edward T Lowe obviously doesn't know what to do with them
Count Dracula gets the short straw and amounts to a mere cameo . John Carridine possibly makes the worst on screen version of the Count since he has all the presence and mannerisms of a wild west snake oil doctor . Please remember Dracula is supposed to be a Romanian vampire . If they'd cast John Wayne in the part he wouldn't have been much worse . That said neither Talbot and the Frankenstein monster are given much to do . And like so many other films in the series it's puzzling to think how they survived their demise from the previous movie . They were entombed in an ice chamber therefore preserving their bodies for years . Fair enough but how are they supposed to breath ? And is an ice chamber a few feet below a temperate region an natural phenomena ?
There's equal stupidity in the confused storyline . Dr Niemann wants to swap bodies with a few characters in the story but it's never made clear who . He tells a couple of abductees who betrayed him years before that he'll swap their brains with the monster and Talbot then when these characters inexplicably disappear from the story he insinuates he'll swap Talbot's brain with the monster . Why ? Well this is never explained and you're left feeling that there's a major part of the movie that's ended up back at the editing suite . Truth be told someone might have been better giving the screenwriter a bigger brain