I needed a break, so I settled in with five of the original Universal movies about Frankenstein, plus a book about one of my favorite artists, Honore Daumier.

MOVIE 99

House of Frankenstein
(Erle C. Kenton, 1944, b&w, 71 m.)

What a deal. In one package, called "The Monster Legacy Collection," (Cover of the collection is shown here.) you get five Frankenstein movies for $26! (Universal offers two other sets like this, for Dracula and The Wolfman.)

The most interesting feature of House of Frankenstein is that Boris Karloff is back -- this time as an egomaniac doctor himself, but almost more distinguished and dangerous than deranged. The story includes Frankenstein's Monster plus Count Dracula plus the Wolfman plus a hunchback and a gypsy girl. Almost everybody but Abbott & Costello and C3PO.

The story is just ridiculous. John Carradine as Dracula simply disappears after about 15 minutes. Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman have been frozen and preserved together in a "glacial ice cavern" under the castle. Still, one part of the plot has charm: the hunchback (J. Carrol Naish) gets jealous of the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) because the gypsy girl (Elena Verdugo) likes him. Like 7th grade. The Wolfman and the hunchback both keep begging the mad doctor to kill them quick and rehabilitate them with better body parts! Clearly, most of the people involved in this movie could use a new brain.

MOVIE 98

The Ghost of Frankenstein
(Erle C. Kenton, 1942, b&w, 68 m.)

The fun stops here. Boris Karloff as the Monster is finally gone, impersonated here for the first time by Lon Chaney Jr. Everybody merely goes through the motions. This time, with the first Dr. Frankenstein dead and the son of Frankenstein dead, too, we get - the other son of Frankenstein. Plus Ralph Bellamy as a local prosecutor with nothing to do - and apparently wearing the same jacket Basil Rathbone wore in Son of Frankenstein. They probably spent all the budget on the not-just-cardboard set and the one or two goodlooking dresses worn by the buxom daughter of the “other son of Frankenstein.” Oh, well. A "ghost" actually appears, too, just in one scene, unnecessarily, which takes care of the title. A few of the original actors, all killed in earlier movies, are back as different characters. So the whole movie is about the undead in that way, too. Zombies, zombies everywhere. You could skip this one.

MOVIE 97

Son of Frankenstein
(Rowland V. Lee, 1939, b&w, 99 m.)

Absolutely fascinating. I almost skipped this movie, which I had never seen, but decided, after all, to work my way through the "basic" set. The experience was a pleasant surprise for a good half a dozen reasons.

Start with Basil Rathbone as Wolf von Frankenstein, the son of the original Dr. Frankenstein. He plays the role straight, as a proud son, angry at his father's humiliation, and is almost completely believable for most of the movie. Second, the sets are beyond bizarre, like Piranesi etchings brought to some kind of Art Nouveau polish. The dining room, for example, which may be bigger than your whole house, has four huge swooping curves in the ceiling for no apparent reason. The sets will make you think ahead to Citizen Kane, Night of the Hunter and Psycho, at least - surely, Hitchcock watched this movie very well. Then, we come to Bela Lugosi as crazy Ygor, hanged but not dead - amazingly ugly and effective. Next, the witty Inspector Krogh, played by Lionel Atwill, presents the first of the now-notorious one-armed Teutonic military men who have inhabited satire ever since.

Superb touches include cute little grandson Frankenstein helping the Monster up a ladder, one-armed Krogh sticking darts on his prosthetic arm, and maybe best of all, grinning Ygor, eyes flashing, playing some impossible horn pipe and looking like Pan!

A half-step from utter campiness in scene after scene, this movie is as good a third-in-a-series as anybody deserves. I'd rank it with the third Indiana Jones for sheer fun.

Even the weak ending, instead of being a letdown, suddenly had me thinking about Terminator 2! I'm telling you - watch this movie, if you haven't already.

MOVIE 96

Bride of Frankenstein
(James Whale, 1935, b&w, 75 m.)

Widely considered the best of the bunch by film buffs. I like the original better, but this movie is definitely a kick. The sets get even crazier and so do the doctors, two of them this time, and Dr. Pretorius is way more fun than old "It's-alive-It's-alive." In one outrageous scene, Pretorius is having a pleasant little sandwich-and-wine picnic -- on top of a coffin in a dark underground mausoleum -- when the Monster sneaks up from behind. Pretorius looks up and calmly says, "Oh. I thought I was alone."

The humor of the script is legendary but the ultimate attraction of the movie is Elsa Lanchester as the Bride herself, who is impossibly tall, moves her head like a bird of prey, and possesses the undisputed coolest hairdo in all of history. (Who could compete? Elvis? Louis XIV of France? Medusa? A shaved head is cheating.)

The great moment comes when the Monster looks into the eyes of his Bride and she -- screams. Wow. All the guy wants is somebody like him to be his friend. But good luck when, as the script says, electricity is his mother! (Which reminds me, I like to think that the monster and the name somehow trace back to Ben Franklin. I don't know anybody else who thinks so, but I'm confident that some evidence will turn up eventually.)

MOVIE 95

Frankenstein
(James Whale, 1931, b&w, 70 m.)

Always a pleasure. This movie came out right after Bela Lugosi's Dracula in the same year, based on the time-honored Hollywood formula: If they liked one of this kind, let's make all we can until they complain. The script is just hopeless. Even so, the movie is an unquestioned landmark, a classic, a masterpiece and an apparently endless influence in daily life.

The two keys to the movie are the Monster and the setting. Boris Karloff famously re-made Mary Shelley's monster into a new man, courtesy of Jack Pierce's makeup. Shelley's monster had yellow skin and black fingernails and proved to be talkative and philosophical. Karloff's bleached-out monster somehow became an American hero who could cry silently or rip out your arm, and all he was likely to say was "Rrrrrr!"

The sets are equally interesting and mostly asymmetrical. The bizarre stairways, the crazy-quilt floor patterns, the impossible Swiss-German-English locales, the wacky science equipment, the tree-poles in the no-leaf forest, all leave viewers gaping. And sometimes thoughtful. Those raggedy windmills, for example, could they be quixotic reminders that the daydreams of human control always turn into ridiculous nightmares?

Nick Otten is assistant director in the Theater Program at Clayton High School and adjunct professor in the graduate Communications MAT Program at Webster University. He consumes vast quantities of books and movies. In his description of Nick's List, he says,  "For every single work, I’ll quickly post a brief commentary — each week, at least 1 book and 2 movies, usually more. Maybe a paragraph, maybe a page. Sometimes, not often, I may go crazy and write some kind of extra, a page or so, on some movie or pair of movies or some genre, actor, or something else, or how one book relates to another or a movie or you or me or us. Such stuff will be just one click away, guaranteed." If you want to reach Nick, rather than comment on the articles, contact Beacon features and commentary editor Donna Korando.

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