Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943)
A film significant only to those who already love the Universal-era monster films going back to "Dracula" and "Frankenstein." It's not bad in any way, really, and has some dramatic lighting and archetypal moments. And it's actually really good for one thing (to me): Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman. His pathos convinces and wins every scene.
Bela Legosi is a surprisingly weak monster, stumbling around with his arms up in a parody of the truly ungainly vigor of the original Karloff versions (which include the first three "Frankenstein" movies). The meeting of the two legends, as both actors and characters, is the hook to the movie.
And so of course we keep waiting for them to meet, which they do, and it is clearly the monster who is bad and the Wolfman who is good, deep down. This avoids, unfortunately, the pathos once attributed to the Frankenstein monster, and the second half of the film turns into some simplified fighting and silliness that undermines the building up of the Wolfman story in the first half.
There are a few obvious borrowings (lets call them homages) from the earlier 1930s films (Chaney's original "Wolfman" was 1941, just before this one). One of them is the laboratory where Dr. Frankenstein once worked. And there is an also obvious low budget at work, limiting some of the effects needed to make things creepy-and it fails to update to a Casablanca-era production value the audience is now used to.
But it's fun, and Chaney is great.
A film significant only to those who already love the Universal-era monster films going back to "Dracula" and "Frankenstein." It's not bad in any way, really, and has some dramatic lighting and archetypal moments. And it's actually really good for one thing (to me): Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman. His pathos convinces and wins every scene.
Bela Legosi is a surprisingly weak monster, stumbling around with his arms up in a parody of the truly ungainly vigor of the original Karloff versions (which include the first three "Frankenstein" movies). The meeting of the two legends, as both actors and characters, is the hook to the movie.
And so of course we keep waiting for them to meet, which they do, and it is clearly the monster who is bad and the Wolfman who is good, deep down. This avoids, unfortunately, the pathos once attributed to the Frankenstein monster, and the second half of the film turns into some simplified fighting and silliness that undermines the building up of the Wolfman story in the first half.
There are a few obvious borrowings (lets call them homages) from the earlier 1930s films (Chaney's original "Wolfman" was 1941, just before this one). One of them is the laboratory where Dr. Frankenstein once worked. And there is an also obvious low budget at work, limiting some of the effects needed to make things creepy-and it fails to update to a Casablanca-era production value the audience is now used to.
But it's fun, and Chaney is great.