In 1970, my brother Dave and I watched Frankenstein 1970 on “Creature Features.” We just assumed that it was a new movie, whose title referenced the current day. We had no idea it was actually well over a decade old, and that the title (like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or the television program Space: 1999) was referencing a future time. The fact that Frankenstein 1970 was filmed in black and white didn’t tip us off at all, since our family’s black and white television turned even the Batman series into black and white (complete with a weekly taunt projected on our screen).

Anyway, I remember being disappointed because there are almost no scenes of Frankenstein’s monster in the movie. Instead, the monster, such as it is, appears wrapped in bandages for most of the movie. What’s more, the 9-year-old me couldn’t follow the plot that somehow had to do with Nazis. But I recently re-watched this movie, and now I can say that…I still don’t totally follow it. But let’s take this one step at a time.

The Plot: Boris Karloff is back, and he plays the last of the Frankenstein family line. The year is 1970 (which seems irrelevant to the plot, but whatever), and Karloff needs money to buy an atomic reactor to further his great, great, great grandfather’s experiments. So he rents out the Frankenstein Castle to a film crew which is making their own Frankenstein movie. (Our movie actually starts out showing the film crew’s movie being made, which, to be honest, is far more exciting and atmospheric than Frankenstein 1970!)

I should mention also that Karloff’s character (Baron Victor von Frankenstein) was tortured and disfigured by the Nazis for not cooperating with them during World War II. He walks with a bad limp and a (not terribly) disfigured face, but this back story really has no bearing on the plot.

As you might imagine, Baron Frankenstein needs body parts to continue his ancestor’s experiments, so he starts knocking off members of the film crew that have rented his property. Yeah, this is viewed as somewhat suspicious by the police.

So a bunch of people die, and in the end both the monster and its creator die when the atomic reactor explodes. Sure, some other stuff happens along the way, but it’s really not very interesting. And, once again, it doesn’t seem to bear upon the plot.

The Monster:

The monster is played by Mike Lane, a former wrestler who would later put in an appearance as Frankenstein on The Monkees. In the mid-1970s he would play Frank N. Stein on the Saturday morning television show, Monster Squad. Anyway, none of this really matters, because we never actually see Mike Lane behind those bandages. It could have been anyone!

This is why I was such a disappointed 9-year-old: The monster wears bandages throughout the movie. I assume this is because AIP didn’t have the rights to the visage of Universal’s Frankenstein. But other studios (like Hammer) simply developed a different look for the monster. In this movie, it’s as though AIP just didn’t want to expend the effort, so they wrapped their monster in bandages and called it good.

Now, there is a moment at the very end of the film when the monster is dead and the bandages are finally removed to reveal the face of….Boris Karloff! I’m not making this up. We learn that Baron Frankenstein had been making the monster to look like himself and carry on the Frankenstein name, or something like that.

The Atmosphere: I’m sorry, but I never found the whole “atomic age” angle to be especially scary. The long, drawn-out scenes in Frankenstein’s lab feature big, clunky, unrealistic computers with pointlessly flashing lights and such. This is not why one watches a Frankenstein film. Also, the film crew, with their 1950’s hipster slang (or at least, with their movie producers’ version of such slang) is silly and grating. In terms of atmosphere, you’d find more of it on Pluto.

Oh, there’s one more thing in terms of disappointing atmosphere: Baron Frankenstein has a garbage disposer of sorts in his lab where he gets rid of unwanted body parts from his experiments. When the movie was first put together, the sound effect they used when the thing operated was a loud grinding sound. Evidently the censors considered the sound to be too gruesome, so the film as released instead uses the sound of a toilet flushing. I’m not making this up.

General Comments: This is a disappointing movie. Once those brief opening scenes are revealed to be a movie-within-a-movie, we find ourselves let down. And even though Karloff’s performance is good as always, there’s only so much he can do with the dog of a script.

Tomorrow it’s back to Hammer, with their sequel to Curse of Frankenstein. And it’s a good one. You can watch Revenge of Frankenstein here.

Editor’s note: Yesterday I’d pointed you to the wrong link for this film. Here is the correct link. And note that it’s in the public domain, and therefore free!

In the late 1950s, movie producers couldn’t seem to get enough of the hip “teenage” angle for drive-in movies. This led, inevitably, to I Was A Teenage Werewolf, released by American International Pictures in 1957. Improbably, it starred the late Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven). It also turned out to be one of the most successful movies AIP ever released.

So AIP couldn’t resist following it up early the next year with I Was A Teenage Frankenstein. Let’s be clear: This is not great cinema. It’s clearly shlock, low-budget, exploitation fare. And yet, it’s become a cult classic.

I was a Teenage Frankenstein is set in the (then-)current era of the late 1950s. It focuses on the exploits of the Dr. Frankenstein’s great, great (etc) grandson, who follows in his same footsteps. Sadly, it doesn’t really turn over any new ground. (Ha!) It just takes the same basic story, modernizes the scenery, and adds some gross-out footage.

The Plot: It seems that the Dr. Frankenstein’s line of descendants ends with an English doctor who is conducting pretty much the same God-mimicking experiments as the original old man. The only difference is that this new, modern Frankenstein has decided that creating the “perfect” man requires using young bodies…that is, the bodies of teenagers. And conveniently, just as the good doctor is explaining this to us, we hear a horrific car crash just outside his home. Dr. Frankenstein runs out and pilfers the fresh corpse of a teenager from the wreckage as the foundation for his experiment.

Of course, the doctor gets some additional corpses to supply parts that will replace the ones that were damaged in the car crash. And after some gratuitous scenes of limb-severing, he manages to create a creature. Naturally, things don’t go quite as he’d planned, and the police get involved.

As a subplot, the doctor becomes engaged to his pretty young assistant who looks a lot like Lois Lane. Oh, wait: it is Lois Lane. The actress, Phyllis Coats, had played Lois Lane on The Adventures of Superman in 1952. Anyway, you shouldn’t get too attached to her, because Doctor F decides she’s not worth the complication once she learns his secrets.

Much of the plot hinges on the fact that this monster, assembled from teenage bodies, wants to be able to party and play like a normal teenager. The only thing stopping him is his hideously deformed face, presumably as a result of the car crash. This makes for pathos and for some great shock scenes where his mug freaks out some young girl. Eventually Dr. F gives him a face transplant, and you’d think that would make everything great, but the creation is still angry at his creator (he’s a teenager, after all) and things don’t turn out well for either of them.

The Monster: Gary Conway played the monster. Aside from the hideous face he sports for much of the film, he makes for the most buff, studly Frankenstein’s monster you’ve ever seen. It’s a little unsettling, this youthful, vigorous fellow in a tight T-shirt and with the voice of a normal, self-conscious teenager, with a face that looks like it’s spent some time in a Cuisinart.

The Atmosphere: Almost all the scenes take place inside Dr. Frankenstein’s house. Aside from some low-budget “mad scientist laboratory” equipment (flashing lights, operating table), there’s nothing you’d associate with a typical Frankenstein environment. No graveyards, no castles, no angry villagers, no electrical storms.

Instead, the movies tries to scare its viewers with the cheapest of shock scenes involving bloody, severed limbs and even a severed head that resides (for some reason) in a birdcage. The movie also turns several times to stock footage of a crocodile, which supposedly is what Dr. F uses to get rid of excess body parts from his victims.

And then, in what the producers must have thought was a climactic breakthrough at the end of the movie, the film changes from black and white to color to capture the lurid denouement when the monster is electrocuted. (Oh, wait. Should that have been a spoiler alert?)

So, I’d say this movie doesn’t have “atmosphere” so much as it has a desperate, garish style.

Overall Comments: This movie manages to push the envelope (for its day) in gratuitous shock while simultaneously breaking no real new ground with the Frankenstein story. There’s really very little to recommend this film.

Tomorrow: Allied Artists put out a somewhat better Frankenstein film later in the year, and this time Karloff is back! It’s titled Frankenstein 1970. I can’t find it online, though; I got my copy on DVD from the library.

The year 1957 marked the beginning of Hammer Studios’ Frankenstein franchise. Hammer was an old but smallish English studio, dipping its toe in the horror genre with this earnest film shot in a somewhat garish full color. (In fact, this was the first Frankenstein movie ever to be shot in color. ) To avoid a copyright lawsuit from Universal–the studio that had essentially created the cinematic Frankenstein look and story that we all know–Hammer had to give the picture its own look and storyline.

This film pairs two actors that would go on to define Hammer horror: Christopher Lee (who often played Hammer’s Dracula) and Peter Cushing (who generally played Victor Frankenstein). This was the first movie that featured them both. And there’s also Hazel Court, who offers two more distinctions for Hammer’s horror movies…

The Plot: A young Victor Frankenstein assumes the family fortune when his mother dies. He hires a tutor (Paul, who later becomes a colleague and friend) and learns about anatomy and various aspects of medical science. With Paul, Frankenstein embarks on various experiments with animals, and eventually learns the secrets of life. He then decides to move on to creating a human being out of corpse parts. His friend and assistant, Paul, is reluctant, and finally insists on ending the ordeal (after a woman enters the picture). But a creature is created (albeit with a damaged, or “abby-normal,” brain) and then escapes, killing a few people along the way. Ultimately the creature is put down…but Victor receives his comeuppance.

The Monster. The creature is played by an almost-unrecognizable Christopher Lee. With no speaking lines and limited screen time, he clearly plays second fiddle to Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein. The monster has a face that looks like it was sculpted from baked brie, and sports a perpetually confused look on his face. He looks more befuddled than aggressive, and has a very odd, goth coloring. He looks a little like George Harrison after a bad car crash.

The Atmosphere. This is a 19th-century period piece, using Victorian costumes, horse-drawn carriages, lots of wallpaper, and the usual mad-scientist laboratory equipment. And, given it’s a Hammer film, it includes a healthy dose of cleavage. Victor’s wife is played by a bosomy Hazel Court.

In contrast to Universal’s plodding, gothic, and shadowy films done in black and white, the Hammer films had their own distinct style: full, saturated color; sumptuous costumes; gratuitous gore; and scantily-clad damsels.It seemed to be what audiences of the era were looking for, I suppose. But when I watch this film, I can’t help but miss the gnarled oak trees, the wisps of fog, and the stagey feel that characterized Universal’s classic Frankenstein movies.

General Comments: This is a recognizable version of the basic Frankenstein story, with very predictable plot developments telegraphed clearly and painfully. Victor is a heartless cad, the creature is a one-dimensional hulk, and the maid (who is also Victor’s mistress) is unsympathetic. The only person we really root for is Victor’s friend Paul.

Still, Curse of Frankenstein is known by horror fans to have resurrected (if you’ll pardon the expression) the horror genre. It did remarkably well at the box office, and led to a handful of further Frankenstein sequels by Hammer (as well as a raft of Dracula movies, and various other horror entries.) As we’ll see later, Hammer eventually copied its own movie again in 1970.

Tomorrow: In the same year the Curse of Frankenstein was released, American International Pictures (AIP), a fairly schlocky studio, put out I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. With a title like that, you expect little. And, to paraphrase Frank-N-Furter, it’s what you receive…in abundance! It’s available on YouTube for free!

After all the earlier, failed attempts to kill Frankenstein’s monster with floods, fire, boiling sulfur, and suchlike, Abbott and Costello finally did him in. And by that I mean they reduced him to a foil for their comedy routine, which is as thorough a demise as can be imagined. It’s said that the movie essentially emasculated Frankenstein as a horror icon. And the rest of the Universal’s run with its classic monsters henceforth took a comic turn (Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)…)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is actually another another of those multi-monster movies, as it includes not just Frankenstein’s monster but also Dracula, the Wolfman, and (as a gag at the end) the Invisible Man. And notably, this movie uses the actual, famous actors that earlier played the monsters for Universal: Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolfman, Glenn Strange as Frankenstein’s monster, and Bela Lugosi as Dracula. In fact, this is the only time that Lugosi reprised his role as Dracula after the 1931 original. (Of course, Lugosi would portray other vampires along the way.)

So, this should be a winner, right? At least one person thought not. He called it “crap,” and declared “My little girl could write something better than this!” That person was Lou Costello. I’m not making this up. Let’s look at the plot and you’ll see what I mean.

The Plot: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are railroad freight handlers, and they are delivering some large boxes to a wax museum/house of horrors. It turns out the boxes contain a very real Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Long minutes pass while we sit through endless repetitions of the gag of Lou glimpsing the monsters and trying convince a disbelieving Bud of what he saw. We soon learn that Dracula is scheming with a pretty doctor named Sandra to give the monster a new brain from a docile, compliant, dimwitted man, so that Dracula can better manage the brute and get him to do his bidding. And Sandra has found just the donor for the brain: Lou Costello. (Insert riotous humor here). And she’s gone so far as to date Lou in order to lure him into the trap. Meanwhile, Larry Talbot (aka the Wolfman whenever the moon is full) has somehow tracked Dracula from Europe, and tries to warn Bud and Lou. Of course, his efforts are repeatedly confounded as he keeps turning into a werewolf.

A whole bunch of stuff happens along the way, but it’s almost all just setups for a joke or pratfall by Bud and Lou. In the end, the monsters (and the scheming Sandra) are all killed off. Not that the viewer really cares.

The Monster: Frankenstein’s monster is again portrayed by Glenn Strange, who is quickly becoming associated with the role as Karloff has moved on to other things. However, by the time of this movie, Universal (now called “Universal International” due to a merger) was cutting costs and staff. One of the people to go was Jack Pierce, who’d been the makeup artist behind Frankenstein’s monster. Without Pierce to do makeup, Universal instead has Glenn Strange wear a rubber mask over most of his face. It’s less convincing than the careful (but time-consuming) application of makeup.

The Atmosphere: Well, it’s a comedy, so you don’t really expect a lot of creepiness. But between the merry background music, the minimalist sets, Lou’s incessant mugging, and Bud’s cranky, Moe Howard-like grumbling, it’s hard to get in the spooky spirit. Even the monsters are enervated, as they have to slow down their actions to sync with the endless gags involving Abbott and Costello’s cluelessness.

The one standout here, though, is Bela Lugosi. It’s good to see him in the Dracula role. His silky, urbane demeanor clearly is hiding something diabolical, and that’s a little scary, even with Abbott and Costello in the scene. What’s more, Lugosi seems to be enjoying himself, and that’s a little infectious. In fact, the only time during this movie that I cracked a smile was when Lugosi takes an appraising look at Costello and says, with a condescending smirk, “What we need is young blood…and brains.”

Speaking of actors enjoying themselves, there a fun moment when Costello is unwittingly sitting in the lap of Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange). Costello ad libs a dozen lines and tics as he slowly realizes where he is. You can see Strange slightly break character as he tries to suppress a smile.

General Comments: Clearly audience sensibilities have changed since the 1940s, and vaudeville schtick just doesn’t appeal as it once did. But it’s still hard for me to understand why 1940s audiences liked this movie. It’s little more than a clunky and awkward series of set pieces. What’s more, it can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be scary or funny. And in my mind, it accomplishes neither. It’s also a little sad to see Frankenstein’s monster pressed into this demeaning role. It’s the cinematic equivalent of weeknight performances in Branson, MO.

So, with this movie, Universal has essentially given up on Frankenstein. It moves on to other things, and audiences seek different fare. And then, about a decade later, a British studio put out its first color picture, and it unexpectedly revives the Frankenstein genre! We’ll check out Curse of Frankenstein tomorrow! (It’s available on YouTube, for three bucks.)

FRANKELLANEOUS: Loyal reader Brian W. shared information about his Uncle Dick Smith (1922-2014). It seems Uncle Dick was a renowned, talented movie make-up artist. He’s worked on various films that you’ll recognize, including The Godfather and The Exorcist. While he didn’t work on any of the Frankenstein movies, he did have an abiding, professional appreciation for Jack Pierce’s work, and he even tells an anecdote about doing himself up in the Frankenstein makeup and then going out to watch a Frankenstein movie. Brian also sent this link to a wonderful Frankenstein blog called Frankensteinia, that in 2010 featured Uncle Dick’s makeup book.

Well.

This must have been the conversation among Universal execs: “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman did pretty well. What say we add even more monsters for our next picture?” And so was born House of Frankenstein, which was promoted as a five-monster picture: Three of them we know well at this point (Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman, and Dracula), but the other two aren’t exactly monsters (the “Mad Scientist” and the Hunchback). We’ll get to them in a bit.

The big news is that Karloff is back, and he’s deservedly at the center of this movie. But he doesn’t appear as Frankenstein’s monster. Instead, Karloff’s character (Dr. Niemann) is the brother of Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant (presumably Fritz from the first movie, I guess). Niemann learned from this brother many of Dr. Frankenstein’s secrets. And Niemann very much wants to continue Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments himself. So that makes Niemann the “Mad Scientist.” (One wonders why they didn’t just make him another Frankenstein relative.)

John Carradine plays Dracula, which I think was an odd choice. Gaunt, mustachioed, and American, Carradine looks nothing like the popular conception of Dracula. Lon Chaney reprises his role as the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster is played by a then-popular western movie actor named Glenn Strange.

Rounding out the “monsters” is J. Carroll Naish, who plays “Daniel” (surely one of the least likely names for a supposed monster). Daniel happens to be a hunchback, and sure, he does some bad stuff like killing people for his “master,” the Mad Scientist. But Daniel is a sad figure, mocked by the woman he loves and mercilessly worked by Karloff. In fact, in my mind, Daniel is the only sympathetic character in this whole movie. Still, Universal played him up as “The Hunchback” (presumably to trade on the fame of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, who was of course played by Lon Chaney Sr., the father of the man who plays the Wolfman in this film).

The Plot: When the movie opens, Dr. Niemann is in prison with his hunchbacked assistant, Daniel, serving time for stealing bodies and such. But a freak storm allows the two of them to escape, and they set out (as one does) for Frankenstein’s castle. Along the way they encounter a traveling “chamber of horrors,” kill the proprietor, and accidentally bring to life the skeleton of Dracula. There ensues a brief sub-plot focused on Dracula, but he soon dies from exposure to sunlight, and Niemann and Daniel continue on their way journey to Frankenstein’s castle. Seriously: The segment with Dracula feels grafted on as an afterthought, and makes absolutely no contribution to the plot.

When Niemann and Daniel finally arrive at the castle, they discover the bodies of Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman frozen in ice. (Does this sound familiar? Recall that Larry Talbot, aka the Wolfman, had discovered Frankenstein’s monster frozen in ice in the same castle in the earlier movie.) Anyway, there’s a lot of stilted, obligatory exposition by characters to help us understand that the water came from when the villagers blew up the dam in the last movie.

Karloff does what any of us would do upon encountering two unholy, lethal monsters; he ponders a moment and opines, “They may know where the records are! We’ll set them free, and they’ll help us.” So Niemann and Daniel thaw out the bodies. The monster is in some kind of coma, but the wolfman immediately transforms back into Larry Talbot. And Larry’s upset: “Why did you free me from the ice that imprisoned the beast within me?”

We now move to the brain-swapping fiesta: In order to convince Larry to help him find Dr. Frankenstein’s records, Niemann promises that he’ll transplant Larry’s werewolf brain into the monster’s head. (I’m not sure why this would be an improvement, but OK). Conveniently, Daniel wants for his own brain to be transplanted into Larry’s body, because Daniel doesn’t wants to use the new body to attract a gypsy girl that they’ve picked up along the way. Meanwhile, Niemann just wants to revive the monster.

Then things go awry, and all the monsters end up dead. We already know about Dracula, who met his demise the first 25 minutes or so. The gypsy girl, who has fallen for Larry, learns that he’s a werewolf and shoots him with a silver bullet just as he’s killing her. So they’re both now gone. Then Daniel, who loved the gypsy girl and blames Niemann for her death, strangles Niemann, but he’s interrrupted by the monster, who Niemann has just brought to life, and the monster throws Daniel out a window, to his death. The monster then picks up the injured Niemann, and helps to lead him out of the castle just as the villagers, with their torches, storm the castle. But the monster encounters quicksand, and he and Niemann sink to their deaths.

The Monster: Glenn Strange was a prolific actor who almost exclusively did westerns. But for this movie, his 6’5″ frame seemed to fit the bill for Frankenstein’s monster. In fact, legend has it that Strange was working on a western at Universal when the make-up guy, Jack Pierce, made up Strange to look like Frankenstein, just for fun. The result was so good that Strange would later be cast for this movie. It’s said that movie audiences accepted Strange as the monster–certainly better than they accepted Lugosi in that role. And as if to put a fine point on it, when Karloff died in 1969, the Frankenstein photo that accompanied his AP obituary was actually that of Glenn Strange. If you’re interested in learning more about Strange, there’s a good article here.

Anyway, the monster doesn’t come to life in this movie until the final scenes. It’s not a huge role, but it’s an important one, given the movie’s title and, perhaps more importantly, given the ironic twist of having the original monster (Karloff) meeting his demise alongside the new one (Strange). Strange, by the way, would go on to play the monster in several more Universal films.

The Atmosphere: I really liked the feel of this movie (though the plot stunk). Although the hodgepodge of scenes really don’t hang together, each one is a gloomy, atmospheric set-piece. The castle interiors, the barren countryside shots, the dank prison, the creepy traveling chamber of horrors, the usual Universal mad-scientist’s laboratory, even the Gypsy camp. Every scene has that brooding, other-worldly quality that makes you feel uneasy, even while you’re scoffing at the outlandish dialogue.

General Comments: In many ways, this is a silly and pointless story. There’s no real story arc (or perhaps there are too many competing subplots). You really don’t care much about the fate of most of the principals, and there’s very little in the way of scary scenes. As noted above, the atmosphere is thick and well-done, but it’s not enough to carry a film for an hour and a half. Still, it’s almost worth it to watch Karloff at work again. Even when he plays a mad scientist, his believable earnestness and captivating charm show through.

FRANKENFUNNIES: We’ve received another Frankenstein-related cartoon, this one from loyal reader Jonathan C. The connection to Frankenstein, though, is not obvious. See if you can divine the link:

Tomorrow: You’ll look back on today’s film as high art when you experience Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. (That will be the last of the Universal films that we review, by the way.) You can watch it on YouTube. At the very least, check out this trailer.