Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman [VHS]
Over 10 years after first turning down the role, Bela Lugosi donned the neck bolts and platform boots to play Frankenstein's monster for the first and only time inFrankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr., reprising his most famous role), killed at the end ofThe Wolf Man, is inexplicably alive and searching for the brilliant Dr. Frankenstein but instead finds the Monster, frozen in ice beneath the castle, and an ambitious scientist (Patric Knowles) who revives the creature and promises to cure Larry. Lugosi is lurching and clumsy as the Monster, while Chaney is appropriately tortured as Larry but stiff and snarly as the Wolf Man, more man than wolf. Last-minute cuts by the studio renders much of the film incomprehensible: the monster was left blind and vocal at the end ofGhost of Frankenstein, but all references to either were deleted (which partly accounts for Lugosi's performance) and he's now sighted but mute. Roy William Neill, a talented B-movie director best known for his Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone, can't do much with the perfunctory script, but he does deliver a highly entertaining conclusion: the Wolf Man battles the Monster while a spectacular disaster (accomplished with obvious but charming models) wipes the castle off the face of the earth... at least untilHouse of Frankensteinthe next year.--Sean Axmaker