Movie Review – House of Frankenstein

Principal Cast : Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, J Carrol Naish, Glenn Strange, Anne Gwynne, Peter Coe, Lionel Atwell, George Zucco, Elena Verdugo, Sig Ruman, William Edmunds, Charles F Miller, Julius Tannen, Phillip Van Zandt, Hans Herbert, Dick Dickinson, George Lynn, Michael Mark.
Synopsis: A deranged scientist escapes from prison and recruits Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man to get revenge on his behalf.

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I’ve gotta be honest: it’s incredibly weird to see Boris Karloff in a Frankenstein film in which he doesn’t play the ubiquitous monster. No, here Karloff dominates the film as the dastardly Dr Gustav Niemann, taking over the late Dr Frankenstein’s research on cadavers and who eventually resuscitates a slumbering Monster from a cavern, while threaded into the film’s piecemeal narrative is a fancy-pants Dracula and an angry Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man, as an Avengers-type confabulation of the studio’s then hugely popular monster stars. Unfortunately, despite relatively competent direction from B-movie stalwart Erle C Kenton (Island Of Lost Souls), House of Frankenstein feels more like a wartime dugout than an actual building; the foundation story is bastardised pulp trash, the writing laughable, and the overall plot pretty generic – and there’s no legitimate creepy moments anywhere to be found – so the effect of the film is a handsomely produced, beautifully photographed waste of time.

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