| Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Released: 1943 MPAA Rating: None Genre: Werewolf/Zombie Nuts and Bolts: Larry Talbot has returned from the dead but he still suffers from the curse of the Werewolf. His only hope for eternal rest lies in distant Vasaria where the descendent of Doctor Henry Frankenstein may hold the key to bringing Talbot peace. But Frankenstein’s last creation is still running amok through the village of Vasaria. Summary: A grave robber named Freddy Jolly and his cohort break into the Talbot family crypt in a cemetery in Llanwelly Village, Wales. They pry open the tomb of Larry Talbot only to find that Talbot’s corpse is perfectly preserved. The rays of the full moon shine through a window resurrecting him. He turns into the Wolf Man and kills the two men. Wandering the countryside all evening, he finally passes out in an alley in Cardiff. His body is discovered the next morning by a constable and taken to Queen’s Hospital. Doctor Frank Mannering performs an operation to repair the cranial injury that Talbot once suffered at the hands of his own father, when the latter was forced to beat him down with a silver tipped cane. Larry awakens and tells the doctor as well as Inspector Owen that he is indeed Lawrence Talbot. That night, Talbot changes into the Wolf Man again and leaves the hospital. During the course of the evening, he kills a policeman ripping his throat out. In the early morning, the amnesiac Talbot returns to his room. Mannering questions him while Owen calls Llanwelly to certify Talbot’s identity. The inspector in Llanwelly explains to Owen that Lawrence Talbot died over four years ago. Mannering and Owen decide to travel to the Welsh village to investigate the matter for themselves. Talbot is placed in a straight jacket and put into a restraint room. But that evening he changes again and bites through the straight jacket. Leaving Cardiff, the werewolf runs into the night until he finally turns back into Talbot. Larry decides that he must find the gypsy woman Maleva who had helped him in the past. He travels through out all of Europe before eventually finding her camp. He explains to Maleva that he had been resurrected from the dead and that all he wants to do is die. Maleva advises him to seek out Doctor Ludwig Frankenstein in the village of Vasaria. Traveling to Vasaria Larry learns that Ludwig died in a tragic fire that destroyed most of his ancestral castle. The only surviving family member is his daughter the Baroness Elsa Frankenstein. That evening, he becomes the Wolf Man once again and murders a young girl from the village. A throng of villagers form a lynch party and chase the Wolf Man through the woods. He is shot through the shoulder and although the wound is far from fatal, it still proves to be quite painful. Feeling faint, the Wolf Man falls through the broken remains of an exterior cellar door leading into a subterranean dungeon. The interior dungeon is nearly entirely concealed in ice. The Wolf Man passes out and turns back into Talbot. The next morning he finds the remains of the Frankenstein Monster frozen in one of the icy crevices. He breaks him free and asks him to lead him to the diary of Ludwig Frankenstein. The monster fails in this but he does help him learn about Elsa. The next day, Talbot (Under the alias of Taylor) returns to Vasaria to arrange a meeting with Elsa. They attend the Festival of the New Wine. He implores her for the location of her father’s diary but she is not forthcoming. During the festival, Frank Mannering appears. He has been tracking Talbot down ever since Cardiff. Talbot explains to Mannering that he just wants to die and he requires the Frankenstein diary to help him alleviate this curse of immortality he seems to suffer from. As the two argue, the Frankenstein Monster is spotted stalking through the streets of Vasaria. People run about in a panic and pretty soon a lynch mob is formed. While everyone is scrambling about, Larry steals a horse-wagon and escapes with the monster. They return to the cellar crypts of Frankenstein Castle. The townspeople plan on forcing the Baroness to tell them where the monster has been hiding. Mannering promises them that he will do what he can to remove the curse of the monster from these lands. Mannering, Elsa and Maleva eventually follow Larry back to the remains of the cellar. Elsa goes into a secret chamber, which houses the diary of her father. Doctor Mannering believes that he can repair the equipment. The only way to truly kill Larry is to drain his life essence from him. They plan on using the same technique on the Frankenstein monster. Mannering works all through the night to repair the dusty old equipment. After studying the Frankenstein journal, he straps both Larry and the Monster to a set of tables. Halfway through the process however, he realizes that he cannot bring himself to destroy Frankenstein’s creation. “I have to see it at its full power!” he says. He switches some cables about and tries to rejuvenate the creature rather than destroy it. Elsa however tries to stop him and inadvertently trips some switches on the machinery. The equipment overloads and the monster breaks free. While all this is going on, the rays of the full moon shine through the battered walls transforming Talbot back into the Wolf Man. Back in town, Vazec a shop proprietor plans on getting rid of all the people who are conspiring up at the castle. The castle pulls water from a nearby stream by which to operate its turbines. Vazec plans on blowing up the dam behind the castle flooding the entire place completely. As he prepares his dynamite, the Monster and the Wolf Man battle one another. The two knock each other about and throw each other into the walls of the cellar. Elsa, Mannering and Maleva leave the castle before the dam explodes. Once Vazec detonates the dynamite, the dam comes crashing down. Tons of water rush in flooding the castle. The Wolf Man and Frankenstein monster are carried away in the torrent. Acting/Dialogue: Pretty standard fare for a film of this caliber. The character of Talbot is a personality that I can only describe as obsessively flat. Even when he gets emotional, it seems more forced than genuine. Although I will admit, Chaney does a lot better job as Talbot in this than he did in the Wolf Man. Maria Ouspenskaya returns to reprise her role of Maleva the gypsy woman. She gets a bit more screen time in this one and her dialogue consists of more than just poems and prayers. Bela Lugosi plays the Frankenstein Monster this time around. He does an okay job at it, but no one even approaches what Karloff did for the role. It’s also very obvious that it’s Lugosi under the makeup. Gore: None. Not even a broken fingernail. Guilty Pleasures: No nudity but Ilona Massey (Elsa) looks pretty damned good. Gotta love those Vasarians. Rrrowwl! The Good: This film works better as a direct sequel to the Wolf Man than it does anything else. Larry Talbot is clearly the central character here, so just ignore the title and imagine that the movie is actually called Wolf Man 2. Wolf Man fans will be impressed with this flick mostly because Larry gets the most amount of kills in this one; four (As the Wolf Man, he only killed one person in the first movie). The transformation scenes are even more fluid and impressive in this and we are revisited by the Charles Previn/Heinz Roemheld stock music score from the first film. The beginning starts off really strong and it puts forward a real Victorian gothic feel; especially when Freddy Jolly begins reciting the old werewolf poem. I like the idea that the rays of the full moon can bring a werewolf corpse back from the dead. The entire scene is accented by creepy tombstones, leaves blustering about through the wind, hanging cobwebs and cawing ravens. This is my favorite part of the movie as it perfectly captures the old-time horror feel that these movies were always meant to be about. I also liked that they maintained their continuity by having Larry suffer a scar on the left side of his head from where John Talbot tally-whacked him in the first movie. So even when he is completely human, he still has a constant reminder of what he truly is staring back at him every time he looks in a mirror. And speaking of continuity, this film also establishes a bit of a pseudo timeline between this and the Frankenstein films. Now the original Frankenstein story was meant to take place in the late 18th century/early 19th century, but this is clearly not the case in the movies. The Wolf Man flicks appear to occur in real-time so this places the original time line of the first Frankenstein film somewhere in the late 19th century. Here’s the breakdown. Ludwig Frankenstein was roughly fifty or so when he died. This film suggests that he died only recently. He was obviously born a few years after the events depicted in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (Henry and Elizabeth had no children at that point) so that places the first films as taking place somewhere in the early 1890s. This film also establishes the location of Frankenstein Castle. In the novel, the characters moved about between Switzerland and Germany, but Universal Studios decided to slap the Frankenstein family in the fictitious village of Vasaria (Which sounds more like something from a Robert E Howard Conan novel than anything else). So while this film offers little else, it does succeed in at least plugging up some holes left over from previous films. The main difference with Talbot’s character in this is that he is truly a tragic person. In the Wolf Man, we see him as a happy-go-lucky egocentric aristocrat who comes upon some hard times. But in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, his entire motivation throughout the picture is geared towards suicide. This film is definitely at its strongest during its first half, but it seems to lose itself somewhere in the middle. However, for a movie that’s only seventy-four minutes long, it sure jam-packs it with a lot of material. The Bad: Let me start with the title. For a guy who gets first billing in this flick, the Frankenstein Monster really only gets a bit part. We don’t see him at all until about halfway through and even then all he really does is walk through the streets of Vasaria. Frankie doesn’t strangle a single redneck and he also seems to forget that he learned how to talk over the course of the last couple of films. But what Lugosi lacks in dialogue he tries to make up for in theatrics. The monster growls a lot and walks about stiff-legged with his arms sticking straight out. The only time we really get to see Lugosi’s talent is during the operation sequence as we see his eyes begin to flutter open. So if you rented this flick thinking that you are going to see a great Frankenstein movie, then I’m sorry to say, “You got screwed.” He’s really no more than a plot tool used to set up the climax of the movie. This incarnation of the monster offers none of the pathos or dramatic metaphor that existed in the earlier Frankie films of the 1930s. In this flick, it is Talbot who bolsters the lion’s share of the angst. The character of Frank Mannering is kind of a washout in this. He starts out as a guy who genuinely wants to help Larry Talbot. Hell, he even abandons his practice and travels hundreds of miles across Europe to track him down. But towards the climax of the film, he falls prey to the obsessive traits of your standard mad scientist. Something about donning that white coat with the big buttons just makes people go loopy. What stinks about this guy is that he lives AND gets the girl. He’s no hero! He’s a dick! It’s his fault that the monster and the Wolf Man started duking it out to begin with. If he had just done what he promised to do, then Larry would have died and the Monster would have been rendered inert. It’s pretty much an unwritten rule that arrogant fucks need to get their come-uppance in films like this. They sure as hell don’t get to ride off into the sunset with the pretty blonde. All in all, this film marks the beginning of the downward spiral for the Universal Monster franchise. The creatures have ceased to be serious metaphors for society and have become commercial properties by which famous actors get to play musical chairs with. This leads into other such joint-sequel films wherein we get to see Frankenstein throwing down with Dracula who gets pissed at the Wolf Man who wants to go on a date with the Invisible Man because he got jerked by the Phantom of the Opera and so on. Twelve year olds will have a real blast with this film, as it does provide some fun moments and a pretty cool fight scene between Frankie and the Wolf Man. But there is really no way that true fans of Universal Horror films will be able to watch this with more than just passing interest. Great Lines: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.” --Freddy Jolly recites this poem originally provided by the first movie. It’s interesting to note that he actually mis-speaks the last line of the poem. The original line was “…when the autumn moon is bright.” “He is not insane. He simply wants to die.” --Maleva justifying Larry’s sanity to Elsa and Mannering. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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