Universal Pictures released House of Frankenstein on 1 December 1944. Or not. Some sources say they released it at select theaters starting 15 December 1944 with its wide release not coming until February of 1945. But just a year later, Universal released the follow-up, House of Dracula, on 7 December.
I’m not terribly fond of either film. But when I was younger, I hated them. They just didn’t live up to the original films. But if you watch them with fresh eyes, you see that they are extremely well-made. The acting is fantastic. The sets are glorious. The camera work is modern and engaging. So what’s the problem?
The stories. They are just kind of boring. But don’t blame the writers. What more is there to do with Dracula? The Wolf Man was so uninteresting, it only had a single film by itself. And Frankenstein’s monster? There isn’t a lot to do with that character. Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein only worked because of Lugosi‘s evil Ygor.
But writers could have done something creative with each of these properties. The biggest problem is combining them. Dracula and Frankenstein exist in different worlds. And throwing in the Wolf Man to whine his way through yet another film makes matters so much worse!
It is thus kind of strange that neither of these films is hard to watch. House of Frankenstein works pretty well. Karloff steals a traveling horror show, which is a wonderful meta-comment on what Universal is doing here. And the film is divided neatly in two, with both halves working as complete films. And at 70 minutes, it is never boring.
House of Dracula is almost a remake of its predecessor. A different mad scientist supposedly helps Dracula and the Wolf Man but is really only obsessed with Frankenstein’s monster. It does annoyingly bring back Dracula despite clearly being destroyed in the previous film due to a very bad sunbathing incident. But it also includes a hunchbacked female nurse, so that kind of makes up for it.
Let’s celebrate the day by watching both films. First House of Frankenstein:
And then House of Dracula:
House of Frankenstein (1944) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.
