A Last Hurrah - Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

 

  The last hurrah of the Universal monsters took a big risk in going for laughs with Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) but, somehow, it works. Some weird alchemy was at work here, in what could have been a total embarrassment for Universal’s gallery of horrors. House of Dracula (1945) had left things in a precarious position, with everything looking well past its sell by date to me, and to end things on that note would have been a shame; which does make me wonder about the decision to have the Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster support arguably the biggest comedy duo in US cinema at that time. Would they simply be there to provide laughs and be mocked? What audiences got was a pretty well-judged balance between comedy and horror, with our favourite ghouls played straight while the humour largely came from Bud and Lou’s reactions as well as their usual interactions.

 

 Bud and Lou play Chick Young (a name which should amuse Scottish Football fans of a certain age) and Wilbur Gray, respectively, who work in a parcel office. They receive two large boxes, to be delivered to the unreasonably antagonistic Mr McDougall. Seriously, this guy shouts from the outset, slapping Lou around and demanding they both be jailed for losing the contents of his boxes. Boxes, we learn, which contain Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and Count Dracula himself. Gone is the thin faced, totally wrong John Carradine and returning is the original Count himself, Bela Lugosi. It’s well known that Lugosi’s final years were marked by appearances in very poor z-grade horror films and I feared that he might have been doing himself a disservice appearing here, but he’s great. He knows who the stars really are and plays it all straight and with aplomb. Of course, this is nowhere near like his original appearance as Dracula, but he reaffirms his decades-long identification with the role. Strange gets a bit more to do here at the end and even gets some lines, lumbering around after our heroes. 

 Lon Chaney. Jr joins in the fun as Lawrence Talbot, this time featuring make-up from Bud Westmore, which really looks like a poorer man’s version of Jack Pierce’s original design. While Pierce liked to build up layers of make-up, I’ve read that Westmore was keener on larger appliances, which just look a bit stuck on. A scene in Talbot’s apartment where he stalks an unsuspecting Wilbur does have more of an element of scariness than they previous couple of films in the series, but of course we know Abbott & Costello aren’t about to get their throats ripped out. The Wolf-Man and Dracula get an expensive exit as they plummet into the sea, with what looks like an early matte effect folloed by an animated splash. The Count’s own animated transitions into a bat also look far better than Carradine’s, with the animation looking far slicker. Seems more money was spent on this one that the previous Universal monster movies.

 

  Regarded as one of the greatest horror comedies ever made, it made me laugh a fair bit and a surprise “appearance” from another Universal horror character in the closing seconds of the film came as a pleasant surprise, voiced by another horror icon (no spoilers). It's not meant to be taken that seriously, but the serious approach to the monsters among the comedy lifts up what could have been an ignominious end for them. It was the end for this Holy Trinity of the Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein appearing together like this, but Bud and Lou would go on to meet more of Universal's other monsters. But, since this is a werewolf thing I'm doing, those will have to wait.

(More) Houses of Horror, Universally Speaking Part 2

 
House of Dracula (1945) is not great. It’s creaky as hell, but at least there’s more Dracula and he is integral to the plot, until he’s done away with. A film of two distinct halves, for sure. Earl C. Kenton returns to direct one of the last (if not the last) films of Universal’s horror/monster cycle. His direction doesn’t seem quite as assured as his previous entry, House of Frankenstein (1944), and this one seems to resurrect all three monsters without any explanation. When we last saw them, Dracula had come a cropper off a horse drawn coach and shrivelled in the sunshine, the Wolfman was shot "dead" with a silver bullet by his love, and Frankenstein’s monster sank into quicksand. At least we get a little hint of the Monster’s fate when they discover his corpse in a cave, along with the skeleton of Boris Karloff’s Dr Niemann. How they got from quicksand into a rocky cave is…ah, why should we ask? I do ask, why Dracula is even looking for a cure to his vampirism, especially when he has no compunction at seducing another victim and then turning the tables on the doctor trying to cure him.

 Driven by either co-incidence, or the unspoken fact the Onslow Stevens’ Dr Edelman is clearly a magnet for monsters who seek to be free of the respective curses, the film focuses on the good doctor, until a ropey blood transfusion involving Dracula, turns him into more of a Mr Hyde, jumping between good and bad incarnations as he either tries to save Lawrence Talbot (his curse is actually pressure on the brain…) or resurrect Glenn Strange’s Monster. It seems he’s successful with the former, but things go awry when the Monster witnesses Edelman murdering his hunchbacked assistant, Nina (Jane Adams). Scoliosis seems to be quite the rage in Visaria, even if Nina’s own affliction looks remarkably convincing as a real case of scoliosis. In the ensuing chaos, guns are fired and the mob attends with the usual aplomb; Skelton Knaggs (possessor of one the greatest names in film history) gurns and grimaces his way through it as leader of the mob. Universal stalwart, Lionel Atwill, in one of his final roles, gets a dynamic send off when he’s thrust into an electrical circuit, but the castle falls prey to the usual destruction

 

 In terms of the Wolf Man, there is some fun to be had but not as much as usual. What differs is his initial transformation in a police cell is witnessed by the other characters, leaving his curse in no doubt to the others. There is the usual scene of Talbot sitting in a garden, bemoaning his curse as the attractive female lead finds him, sits down and pours pity on him. All getting a bit samey. Chaney first turns up dressed very differently than in previous entries, looking almost like a London spiv from the Second World War, black shirt and white tie and moustache. Story goes that Chaney was drinking a lot during this shoot and got Glenn Strange hammered when he had to lie down in the freezing cold for an extended period (I would presume it's during the scene in the cave where they find the Monster). Convinced booze would warm him up, Chaney slipped him booze throughout the day. Once the scene was in the can, Strange was so pished he couldn't stand up.

 

 Speaking of Strange, Frankenstein’s Monster is given particular short shrift, only coming to life in the film’s final moments. The poster has the same rogue’s gallery as the previous film to invite the audience, just with a few different faces with the same labels. But it feels like it’s all run its course here. The end was surely in sight for the Universal Monsters…

An American Werewolf in a Phony ̶E̶n̶g̶l̶i̶s̶h̶ WELSH Town

 

Spoilers follow, as they likely will for all entries in this run of blogs.

 Well, if you're watching werewolf movies for a month (what have I done?), you can’t go wrong with The Wolf Man (1941), directed by George Waggner and written by Curt Siodmak. One of the old titans of werewolf films, it still has some power where many of my own generation can only mention American Werewolves in English cities.And I still love this film.

 It’s only been a few years since I last watched it and yet I saw more this time. Particularly, Lon Chaney’s tragic Lawrence Talbot is introduced to us as a peeping tom. His casually mentioned (and never again mentioned) expertise working with optics leads him to help set up his father’s telescope in their stately home which the producers seemed to think looked like what they thought might be a castle. No sooner is dad out of the scene than old Larry is scanning the quant “English” village (more on that later) and settles on the bedroom of sort-of-love interest Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers). He pursues her with some cryptic questioning that made me slightly shudder. No wonder she said no. but Larry’s no quitter, even though Gwen is engaged to Patric Knowles’ solid, dependable Frank.

 We should all know how this goes, as Larry & co go for an evening walk and come across Maria Ouspenskaya and Bela Lugosi’s gypsy caravan and try to get their fortunes told. But with Bela being a werewolf and all, well, one werewolf attack later, Larry has been bitten by Bela (playing a man called Bela) and the curse has jumped bodies once again. Larry is consumed with guilt at killing Bela and this guilt comes to define the character in this and his subsequent cinematic appearances. The body count is remarkably low, however, until the end where Claude Rains’ father figure intervenes and bashes in his spawn with his own walking stick. It should be noted that Maria Ouspenskaya is fantastic every time I see this film, bringing some grounded emotion and dignity among the pained tragedy and phoney non-English accents. Virtually none of the leading men, dressed in very US cut suits, attempt anything resembling a UK accent, and that’s maybe for the best.

 Chaney’s performance ranges from cocky scion to tragic child – there are times when a kind of boyish innocence comes across, even though Chaney was a big man. That’s something that always came to mind – for his size as a human performer, I always thought his Wolf Man seemed smaller, and not just because he crouched to achieve something like a more animalistic gait; he just appeared to be a smaller man under Jack Pierce’s stunning make up. But in Chaney's first transformation scene, he takes his white shirt of as he starts to transform, only to be somehow wearing a buttoned up dark shirt when on the canine prowl. Did the Wolf Man stop to get dressed before jumping out the window? I was curious as to why for both transformation scenes, we never see his face turn wolfish, only his feet, whereas the previous Werewolf of London not only gace us the generally recognised dissolve technique on the face, but also tried so,mething different by having a transforming Henry Hull walks past beams or dark objects in the screen, each hiding a cut where more make up was applied. But, as we'll see, the later Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man remedied that.

 The images of the Wolf Man snarling his way through misty woods are well known but the scenes in the old English village where much of the action takes place are just distracting from a UK viewer’s POV. It’s clearly the same Universal backlot where previous Frankenstein films were shot, with a generic but also semi-gothic north European look to the architecture. In short, it all looks about as English as a kilt. But, it’s part of the Universal charm, I guess.

 I was saddened to discover what happened to Pierce after Universal let him go -  an act of the most short-sighted ignorance. Overtaken by the merciless Westmores (a name I come to dislike the more I read about them), he moved on to TV and B features and died largely forgotten and poor in the late 60s. His relationship with Boris Karloff seemed very warm and a clip I saw form an old episode of This Is Your Life featuring Karloff showed two old friends are reunited in a wonderful moment where Pierce came on to greet his old victim of the make-up chair. 

 Next up is Poverty Row production, The Mad Monster (1942), which has kind of a Doctor Moreau thing going on.