Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #15

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#15. House of Frankenstein (1944- dir. Erle C. Kenton)

I don’t care if they’re schlocky—Universal’s monster rallies scratch a sweet spot that movies with just one creature never could. The Mummy? That guy’s totally lonesome. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man? Closer, but not quite there yet, guys. Erle C. Kenton’s House movies? Ahh, that’s the sweet relief I’ve been craving. One of the best and most monster-crammed rallies is House of Frankenstein. “FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER! WOLF MAN! DRACULA! HUNCHBACK! MAD DOCTOR!... All the Screen's Titans of Terror - Together in the Greatest of All SCREEN SENSATIONS!” went the ballyhoo. The cast is killer with Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man, Glenn Strange as the monster, John Carradine making his elegant debut as the count, and Karloff taking one last bow in a Frankenstein picture a the mad scientist. The one major flaw is the film’s split structure that prevents all of the monsters from ever sharing screen time together.  If you see any other flaws in this big heap of wonderful, I’m not sure if we can be friends anymore.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #25

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#25. House of Dracula (1945- dir. Erle C. Kenton)

Not nearly as much fun as Erle C. Kenton’s previous monster-rally house, House of Dracula does improve on its Frankensteinian predecessor in some ways. The film’s three monster’s are better integrated (though there still seems to be an unwillingness to find much for the Frankenstein Monster to do) since Dracula is not dispatched before the other creeps even appear this time. John Carradine continues to make an interesting and elegant vampire, and the mad scientist plot to cure vampirism is pretty original. Plus, you just can’t go wrong any time Universal’s three main monsters share the screen.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 169

The Date: March 17

The Movie: Island of Lost Souls (1932)

What Is It?: Considering how full of cinematic possibilities H.G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau is, it’s quite impressive and a bit confounding that Erle C. Kenton’s 1932 adaptation still has not been topped. Charles Laughton is the portrait of self-delighted evil as the beast-rehabilitating doc. Richard Arlen is all sweaty angst as the lone survivor of the shipwreck of the Lady Vain.

Why Today?: On this day in the novel, the Lady Vain wrecks.

Review: The Criterion Edition of ‘Island of Lost Souls’

Ask a classic monster fanatic what the most unjustly unavailable movie is and that nut would likely respond, “Island of Lost Souls.” Why Erle C. Kenton’s brilliant 1932 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau has been out of print for so long has never been satisfactorily answered. Fortunately, that question is no longer relevant since Criterion has now given this overdue movie its due. We can finally revel in Charles Laughton’s dastardly portrayal of sadistic vivisectionist/mad scientist Moreau and Bela Lugosi’s desperate Sayer of the Law (“Are we not men?!?”) and Kathleen Burke’s sexy, tragic Lota the Panther Woman and Kenton’s enthralling atmosphere and pre-code edginess on DVD and Blu-ray any time we please.

Criterion’s transfer is a composite of several sources of varying quality. The restoration is not immediately striking because the film is front-loaded with the rougher bits. The daylight scenes that dominate the beginning of the film are gauzy, giving the false impression of weak images. The actors almost seem to glow. Once the picture moves into the shadowy, higher-contrast nighttime scenes that dominate it, the restoration looks very, very good. The composite also includes passages of dialogue censored since the film’s original release. They most likely include Moreau’s “Do you know what it means to feel like God?” which closely resembles a similarly censored line from Whale’s Frankenstein.

We get an audio commentary from the charming horror historian Gregory Mank and four very different video commentaries. The most traditional is a scholarly analysis by David Skal, our best monster movie documentarian and author of the absolutely essential Monster Show. He discusses Wells’s novel and the film’s themes and sources, the most-revelatory suggestion being that Laughton may have based his Moreau on Oscar Wilde. I’m not convinced of his claim that the film reflects co-screenwriter Philip Wylie’s misogyny, though. Both female characters are sympathetic and both are responsible for rescuing the men. Only villainous Moreau expresses any contempt for women. Compared to something like King Kong, Lost Souls is practically progressive.

Next up is a fun roundtable with John Landis, Rick Baker, and Bob Burns, who geek out about the performances, makeup, and atmosphere. Burns also gets off the best comment on the DVD when Landis asks him why he likes Kenton’s schlocky House of Frankenstein. Burns responds, “It has Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.” Hear, hear.

We also get a talk with director Richard Stanley, who was let go from the disastrous 1996 adaptation starring Marlon Brando and completed by John Frankenheimer. Stanley goes in depth about Wells but is fairly dismissive of all the film versions and could have provided more information about his ousting from his own project.

The oddest extra in the bunch is a discussion with Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale of Devo, who talk about the film’s influence on their image, philosophy, and songs (“Are we not men? We are Devo”). The talk leads them on some fascinating tangents about Ohio horror host Ghoulardi, who’s show introduced the guys to the movie, and the infamous Kent State protest/cop-shooting-spree that inspired Neil Young’s “Ohio”. Also included is a valuable Devo short film from 1976, which is basically an edit of music videos for “Secret Agent Man” and “Jocko Homo” that doesn’t quite look like the union of German Expressionism and McDonald’s commercials the guys intended it to be.