Starring Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., J. Carrol Naish, John Carradine, Anne Gwynne
Directed by Erle C. Kenton
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A mad scientist and his hunchback assistant escape prison and in a journey to find Dr. Frankenstein's records, encounter Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's monster.
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, in which Universal's classic monsters met for the first time, and had a battle to the death, spawned this follow-up which returned Chaney as The Wolf Man, and substituted Glenn Strange as the Monster, while adding John Carradine's Dracula, Boris Karloff as the mad Dr. Niemann, and J. Carrol Naish as the hunchback Daniel. However, despite having three of the classic monsters in the film, none of them fight each other this time around, while they are rather showcased in individual vignettes. I liked the Dracula sequence the best with Carradine bringing his own distinguished take on the vampiric Count. Karloff is very welcome in returning to the series after a five year absence, and Naish adds another unique character to his characterizations in the lovelorn hunchback who loses Elena Verdugo's gypsy Ilonka to Chaney's Larry Talbot. I was left a little wanting for the three key monsters never really getting together, but there's lots going on to prevent any viewer boredom, and it's good to see plenty of characters actors from Universal's stable on hand as the various villagers, police inspectors, burgomasters, and torch-bearing mob participants. Hans Salter and Paul Dessau's music score also adds some distinctive themes and a complete new musical tapestry to the Frankenstein series, a change from the culling of old material from the Universal library for past productions.
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