(1943)**1/2
Grave robbers stumble upon Larry Talbot’s (i.e., the Wolf Man) crypt and accidentally revive the tragic character. After escaping from his crypt he arrives at the local hospital, where nobody believes that he is Larry Talbot (because he died 4 years ago, you see!). Larry locates the old gypsy woman from the original Wolf Man film and seeks her advice. She believes that the answer to Larry’s problem can be found in (the now deceased) Baron Frankenstein’s diary. Together they travel to Vasaria, where they meet Baron Frankenstein’s granddaughter, Elsa. While searching for the diary, Larry finds the Frankenstein monster encased in ice and for no particular reason revives him. Once Elsa shows him where the diary is hidden, Baron Frankenstein’s lab is fixed up and turned on so Larry can attempt to end his wolf man curse.
At this point a number of Frankenstein and Wolf Man films had been made and Universal needed a new way to energize these once huge franchises (think Freddy vs. Jason). Thus we get one of several monster team-ups. The thing about these team-up movies is that the “monsters” are never really combined in any very interesting manner. Sure we have Frankenstein and the Wolf Man of screen together, but they basically just hang out rather than cause some much-needed mayhem. Bela Lugosi plays Frankenstein in this one and boy is he ever awful. Picture a blind drunk leaving a bar and staggering down the street without his cane to get the picture. Larry’s plight, similar to David Banner’s Hulk plight, begins to wear thin. Stop whining already and kill some people. More than once Larry exclaims, “I just want to die!” What’s with this mamma’s boy monster? Don’t get me wrong, this film is no better or worse than all of the classic monster movies, I’m just sayin’.
4 comments:
Man, the Wolf Man was such a wet blanket! Just get over it already and move on!
That picture never happened in the film. I wish they fought like that!
I had a feeling from the all-white background that this was a promo shot, but it's with these old Universals it's hard to tell if you're grabbing a still from the right movie. The Frankenstein looked dysfunctional enough.
The most Frankenstein ever does in this film is stumple around in the background. Come to think of it, that's pretty much the most he does in any of the Frankenstein films!
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