HOUSE OF DRACULA
(1945)With Onslow Stevens, Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Glenn Strange
Directed by Eric C. Kenton
Black and White
Reviewed by JB (previously published in a different form elsewhere)
Like its immediate
predecessor HOUSE OF
FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945) promises the thrills and chills
of The Frankenstein Monster, Count Dracula and The Wolf Man all in one
film, but does not allow any two monsters to appear on screen at the
same time until the movie was almost over. The filmmakers apparently
assumed that 1945 audiences, who had just lived through Hitler,
Mussolini, and World War II (now there was a sequel!) would somehow not
be able to deal with more than one Universal ghoul at a time.
The film begins with the
dubious premise that
Count Dracula and Lawrence "Wolf Man" Talbot would both show up
separately at the house of a famous doctor on the same day, both
looking for a cure to their supernatural ills. Seriously, what are the
odds? Dracula is again played by John Carradine, who does
wonderfully well in the role. Talbot is played, as always, by
Lon
Chaney, Jr. Sadly, despite showing up on the same day, Drac
and
Wolfie never meet.
Dracula begs the doctor to
look for a cure of
the curse that has tortured him since time immemorial. He has
been thinking about this for a long time, and it is now or never, a
decision that will alter his life forever. Yet he gets one eyeful of
the doctor's leggy nurse and - poof! - all thoughts of change
immediately fly out the window like a bat out of hell. Old Drac is also
something of a risk taker in this film, as he keeps scheduling all of
his important business for 5:59 every morning, just before the sun
comes up. Alas, you can only play that game for a few centuries before
it catches up to you, and before he even gets a chance to suck any
blood, the evil Count succumbs to the morning sunrise, leaving nothing
behind but the usual phony-looking skeleton. Where did his clothes
go? And if the movie is titled HOUSE OF DRACULA, why is the
Count
yet again a pointless throwaway character? And exactly where
is
his house anyway? And, while we're at it, didn't both Dracula
and
Talbot both die in the previous film?
No time to answer these
questions, because we
now shift to the doctor (Onslow Stevens), who is having a strange dream
which features a quick clip of Boris Karloff from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
(1936). Unbeknownst to the doctor, he has been infected with vampire
blood (hey, if you're gonna play around with monsters, this kind of
stuff is bound to happen). He is now a sort of Jekyll and Hyde
character, who not only dreams of previous monster movies but also
changes into a bloodthirsty killer whenever there is a lull in the
story.
In between murderous rampages, the
doctor attempts
to cure Talbot of his lycanthropy. The cure involves some sort of
spores, and a layer of silly putty that relieves pressure on the skull,
or, as every mad doctor calls it, "the cranium". I never went to Mad
Medical School, but it all sounds like hooey to me.
So far I have said little
about The Monster,
henceforth known here as "Frankie". That is because Frankie spends most
of the film lying on a slab in the doctor's office. How did Frankie get
into the film? Let's just say he found one of the holes in
the
plot and stepped right through. The doctor, who doesn't think his
medical plate is quite full enough with Dracula and The Wolfman on his
list of "Things to Cure", now decides that Frankie deserves to be
revived, because, after all, the monster cannot possibly be responsible
for his own crimes. Just what the world needs - a touchy-feely mad
scientist. ("I'll transplant the brain of Susan Sarandon into the body
of Rush Limbaugh!")
Glenn Strange plays Frankie
again but
unfortunately, he is strapped to that damned slab until the final two
minutes of the movie. The doctor has been trying to revive Frankie
throughout the film, but there's always one thing or another
interrupting him ("Tell the Mummy those bandages have to stay on at
least another two weeks!") and so it is not until the last seconds of
the film that Frankie receives enough required electricity to enable
him to break free from his restraining straps.
Finally, things seem to be
heating up.
Frankie's on the loose, ready to unleash a reign of terror. And here
come the rent-a-mob villagers with torches! Well,
the
villagers with torches do show up, take one look at Frankie, and run
away like Monty Python's Knights of the Round Table running from a
killer rabbit. Frankie's reign of terror begins and ends with him
knocking one policeman on his butt before Talbot rushes in and set the
poor creature on fire. Proving that some days it is better
just
to stay in bed, or on a slab.
HOUSE OF DRACULA is amusing
enough in a campy
way, but it is it is also the final nail in the coffin of the once
classy and terrific Universal Studios horror movie cycle. The next step
was pitting all the Monsters against Universal's dynamic comedy duo in
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, a film which surprisingly
manages to capture some of the spirit of the earlier Frankenstein films
while also being one of the team's most entertaining vehicles. 
½ -
JB
http://thestuffyougottawatch.com
Copyright © 2008 John V. Brennan, John Larrabee