Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
I’m always impressed at just how many Frankenstein movies Universal turned out between 1931 and 1948, and I’m also deeply entertained by the studio’s mix and match approach to making those pictures where its stars were concerned. It might not make for the best cinematic art, but it does make for a lot of fun if you’re a certain kind of classic monster movie fan. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) is the fifth of eight Universal pictures in the Frankenstein family sequence, this time featuring Ilona Massey as the granddaughter of the original monster maker and daughter of the ill-fated Ludwig from the previous entry, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). Bela Lugosi, who had previously played the conniving henchman Ygor, here assumes the role of the monster, which makes more sense if you know that Ygor had schemed to get his own brain implanted into the creature in the 1942 film. Despite the title, however, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is much more a direct sequel to The Wolf Man (1941) than anything else, and its appeal derives mainly from the continuing struggles of unwilling werewolf Larry Talbot, once again played with great sincerity by Lon Chaney, Jr.
Supposedly killed by his own father at the end of The Wolf Man, Larry Talbot is accidentally revived when thieves break into his tomb during a full moon. He winds up in a hospital in Cardiff, where Dr. Mannering (Patric Knowles) takes him for a psychiatric case, but when he escapes and leaves a trail of corpses, Mannering pursues him across Europe. Larry reunites with his old friend, Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya), the mother of the werewolf who originally bit him, and the two of them travel to Vasaria with the hope that Dr. Frankenstein’s scientific discoveries can help Larry finally find peace in death. Instead, they meet Elsa Frankenstein (Ilona Massey), who has no wish to see her family’s horrific legacy continued, even though Dr. Mannering soon becomes fascinated by the experiments that give the monster his power.
It’s both great and tragic to see Larry Talbot back in action in this sequel, which is set four years after the events of The Wolf Man. The original movie seemed to give Larry the death and closure he needed, but of course the werewolf proved too useful a character for the expanded cast of Universal monsters, so Larry is back and now on a perpetual quest to find a way to die. The werewolf’s longing for death becomes something of a trope thanks to Universal’s resurrection of Larry, and it’s put to particularly good use in the 1987 cult classic, Monster Squad, although the afflicted protagonist in An American Werewolf in London (1981) is less eager to embrace his victims’ encouragement to commit suicide. Larry’s everyman quality makes him an especially sympathetic monster because he’s just a normal guy who has been robbed of his humanity and mortality through no fault of his own. Chaney plays Larry with absolute sincerity, and our response to him is enhanced by the gravitas embodied by tiny Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva. She treats him as a substitute for her lost son and does her best to care for him as they search for a way to end his torment. I find the scenes with the two of them very moving, and I wish the picture had given them a few more, especially in the third act.
Outside of the actual story, the most interesting thing about this installment is the way it shuffles players from the previous films into new roles, creating a fascinating sort of multiverse for the observant viewer. Chaney had played the monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein, and apparently there had been a plan to have him play both Larry and the monster in this picture, but instead we have Lugosi switching from the Ygor role to the iconic creature. Lionel Atwill first played Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), but he plays different characters each time in The Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945). Patric Knowles, who played Frank Andrews in The Wolf Man, this time plays Dr. Kettering and once again wins the attention of the leading lady (with Elsa Frankenstein played here by Ilona Massey but previously portrayed in The Ghost of Frankenstein by Evelyn Ankers, who had played the love interest in The Wolf Man!). Dwight Frye, best remembered today as Renfield in the 1931 Dracula but also the original Dr. Frankenstein’s henchman, Fritz, in Frankenstein (1931) and a second lackey, Karl, in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), reappears as a perfectly ordinary villager in Vasaria. Sadly, it would be Frye’s final appearance, for he died of a heart attack in 1943 at the age of 44. While the casting choices were probably just efficient for Universal, they give each installment of the series an eerie sense of déjà vu because we really have seen these faces and situations before, with each new generation of the Frankenstein family playing out a looping arc of terror and tragedy. Over the course of the series, we also get the opportunity to see Boris Karloff’s original take on the monster recreated or revised by Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and, starting with House of Frankenstein, Glenn Strange. While it’s not as flexible a role as something like Dracula, it’s still interesting to see how each successive actor brings a little of his own personal style to the monster, with Lugosi’s version in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man occasionally casting some very devious eye rolls that hint at the malevolent nature of Ygor’s brain still at work in the creature’s skull.
You’ll have no trouble finding other Frankenstein or werewolf movies to watch, but for more from director Roy William Neill, you might try some of his many Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone, or his final film, Black Angel (1946). Screenwriter Curt Siodmak, brother of director Robert Siodmak, penned both The Wolf Man and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which might help to explain its heavy focus on Larry Talbot. For more of the tiny but powerful Maria Ouspenskaya, see her Oscar nominated performances in Dodsworth (1936) and Love Affair (1939), or look for her in The Mortal Storm (1940), The Man I Married (1940), or Dance, Girl, Dance (1940). Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man originated the trend for bringing multiple monsters together in a picture, so in some ways we have it to thank – or blame – for the Dark Universe land at the Epic Universe theme park and modern horror movies like Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and Alien vs. Predator (2004), as well as The Munsters TV series and the short-lived 1980 cartoon show, Drak Pack.
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
