In respect to the formula of diminishing returns, Erle Kenton’s House of Dracula–though more structured than his previous foray with the Universal Monster collective a year prior with House of Frankenstein–is a poorly written, uneven work which merely observes the legacies of the creatures without contributing to them while ignoring continuity issues throughout. As a consequence, Kenton sinfully permits the greatest cinematic terrors of all time in their final dramatic appearance to fade out with an embarrassing whimper.
Baron Latos, a.k.a. Count Dracula (John Carradine), arrives in Vasaria in hopes of having Doctor Edelman (Onslow Stevens) diagnose and cure his vampirism. Shortly thereafter, Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) appears at the Doctor’s door, seeking a solution for his lycanthropy. Yet, at the doctor’s disclosure that he will not be able to solve Talbot’s infliction before the next full moon, Talbot attempts suicide by jumping off a cliff. When Edelman retrieves the desperate soul, they find the Frankenstein monster in an underground cave and transport it back to the Doctor’s laboratory. Later, as Talbot recovers from Edelman’s surgery which will hopefully return him back to normalcy, Dracula’s ulterior motive is revealed in that he infects Edelman before pursuing the doctor’s assistant, Miliza Morrelle (Martha O’Driscoll). Will Talbot be able to avenge the Count’s malevolent intentions or will it be too late?
To begin with, Kenton does not bother attempting to validate Dracula’s reemergence after the Count was directly exposed to sunlight in House of Frankenstein, nor does he bother legitimizing the Wolf Man’s resurrection (Chaney appearing noticeably older in this film) after disclosing and depicting the only lethal blow in which to quell the villain: a silver bullet shot by a loved one. However, he does pause in order to justify the return of Frankenstein’s monster, which washes up in an underground cave after having sunk into a bog filled with quicksand (replete with Doctor Gustav Niemann’s skeleton loving wrapped around his buddy).
Instead, Kenton moves right along to where he wants to be, that is, being the man responsible for explaining the various causes for the diverse aggregate’s ailments. In order to do so, he presents Doctor Edelman, Monster Fixer and Vasaria’s resident Jesus Freak (thus, we have a mad scientist with a God Complex who posits reverence nonetheless, go figure). Thanks to Nina (Jane Adams), the hunchbacked nurse (I pitied the actress, as I would any actress in said role–which, honestly, belongs in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein–only to later discover, natch, that this is Adams’s signature performance!), and Endelman’s expertise in the unknown, we learn that Dracula suffers from a form of parasitic anemia in which his blood cells need others upon which to feed; the Wolf Man’s skull is too small, forcing pressure on certain glands, thus prompting his psychosomatic symptoms to become manifest (thus, Kenton–in his cinematic omniscience–happily closes the debate upon whether Talbot is merely insane or if lycanthropy is more than a mere clinical condition); and Frankenstein’s creation, well, he’s still just that.
And what does Doctor E gets for his efforts? Dracula infects him with the Count’s tainted blood. However, rather fuzzily I might add, though we see Edelman’s image dissipate before a mirror, thus insinuating that he’s a vampire, he is later dispatched by a single bullet, no strings attached (this after fleeing through a cemetery fraught with crosses without so much as stopping to wince–so, two for three, he was still mortal, right?). Of course, the Count would merely state this is karma at its reciprocal best after Edelman–peeved that the Count isn’t interested in science but merely the neckline of Miliza–finally, only after roughly fifty years of cinema, waits for the vampire master to retreat to his coffin before pulling the casket into the sunlight and opening it (overlook the fact that said enclosure houses very expansive windows for such a locale). Unfortunately for vampire aficionados, the big D bites the dust first and foremost, the director leaving us, as he did with House of Frankenstein, with the hairy one as our character mediator. (A deduction of even more aesthetic points is to be issued to Edward Lowe Jr. here for conveniently dismissing Talbot for a month while he awaits his curative spores to, I suppose, spore, in order to permit screen time for the Count instead of contending with what is on his plate as he kills the vampire and replaces him with the Wolf Man.)
But who cares? THE WOLF MAN’S CURED! But wait, we still have to deal with the only steadfast element in all of the Frankenstein films, an ensuing mob of starch-raving mad, fanatical, incessantly petulant, torch-carrying townspeople which, I suppose, might have been implemented in order to foreshadow the monster’s death by fire for no other reason than old time sake. Probably not.
Twelve films in the combined making, the Universal monsters deserved, as did their fans, a better send off if, for no other reason, than what the creatures did for the studio’s bank account. Ultimately, Erle Kenton’s House of Dracula is a lesser version of his previous film combining the big boys of horror which, by implication, dually admits the poor judgment of Universal executives in their decision to only issue the Wolf Man one solo outing before aligning him with other monsters in that he is the focal point in all three communal affairs carrying his image (Roy William Neill’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man being the third of the lot). (Ironically, the figure of Dracula was treated similarly in that after Tod Browning’s original, the sequels to the film involved the character’s daughter and son before presenting the paterfamilias alongside other social menaces in Kenton’s House of Frankenstein.) And if you didn’t feel ripped off enough, the climax depicting the demise of the Frankenstein Monster was spliced from Kenton’s very own The Ghost of Frankenstein.
-Egregious Gurnow
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