Karloff's back - only not as a monster, he plays a mad doctor, an admirer of Frankenstein who escapes with a trusty hunchback (J Carrol Naish, very good) and tries to track down Frankenstein's methods and tries to use it looking for revenge. There's no Frankenstein really here - obviously they decided they'd mined that particular seem dry.The least convincing thing about this film is he happens to stumble upon a freak show containing the remains of Count Dracula (played by John Carradine, despite Lugosi being available - having said that Carradine is OK and probably closer to the description in Stoker's novel), who he gets to work on the revenge caper. Then Carradine disappears half way through the film and he turns to using the Wolf Man and the Monster.
The most touching aspect of the film is the love triangle that forms between the hunchback, a gypsy and Lawrence Talbot (Chaney) - Naish loves the gypsy (who is whipped in one scene), who loves Talbot, who just wants to die. It's all quite emotional.
And the film, for all its silliness, does have that wonderful evocative feel of Universal's horrors: late nights, spooky castle, deserted villages, and it motors along. They really didn't need the Dracula interlude, though - or at least should have used it better, i.e. incorporated it all the way through.
No comments:
Post a Comment