The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) – Review

If you can’t trust a murderous lab assistant named Igor, who can you trust? While Bela Lugosi returns as the troublesome Igor, The Ghost of Frankenstein marks the first time The Wolf Man star Lon Chaney Jr. would step in to fill those over-sized shoes of the Monster, and it is also at this point that the Universal Monsters franchise started to teeter towards self-parody with writers continually painting themselves into and out of corners with each subsequent sequel.

“There’s a curse upon this village, the curse of Frankenstein,” and this would be the opening line of 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein which one must admit is a fair accusation as these angry villagers have a valid argument, not that their torch-bearing mob tactics are entirely blameless but four films in and you have to start sympathizing with the poor slobs who live in this village. And with everyone decrying such things as “The whole countryside shuns the village. Our fields are barren, the inn is empty” it’s no surprise that the eventual solution is to destroy Frankenstein’s castle, but as expected this did not turn out all that well, with the Monster (Lon Chaney Jr.) being released from his sulfuric tomb by the explosions and the surprisingly spry and still alive Ygor (Bela Lugosi) helping the creature flee the ruins to which this dynamic duo then head off to a new village with the hope of revitalizing the Monster’s weakened state.

Maybe waiting for nightfall would have been a better idea.

The reason for this sojourn is that Igor believes that the key to helping the Monster regain his strength lies in finding the second son of Henry Frankenstein, Ludwig Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke), who is a doctor at a clinic that specializes in diseases of the mind, and along with his assistants Dr. Kettering (Barton Yarborough) and Dr. Theodore Bohmer (Lionel Atwill) they hope to cure mental health through brain surgery – get two lobotomies and the third one is free – but while they are pondering medical breakthroughs, Ygor and the Monster wander into town and immediately get into trouble. It’s not like this is something we didn’t see coming.  The Monster witnesses a little girl (Janet Ann Gallow) being bullied by the local children, as kids are known to do, but when he picks her up to aid her in the retrieval of a ball the other kids had tossed onto the roof because you know, they’re little shits.  Eventually, some villagers show up and immediately assume that the Monster is trying to carry off the poor child, then two dead villagers later and the police finally manage to capture the Monster and the creature is set to stand trial.

Law and Order: Special Monsters Unit.

This is where things become a bit silly as we get town prosecutor, Erik Ernst (Ralph Bellamy), going to see Ludwig to ask him if he would examine this giant they have captured, stating that “We have a madman in the jail and I’d like you to come down and examine him” and I’m left wondering how a seven-foot-tall stitched together monster with bolts in his neck can be considered as nothing more than a simple madman. But while the creature is languishing in chains Igor slips over to see Ludwig and demands that he help the Monster regain his strength, and if he refuses, then Ygor would reveal Ludwig’s ancestry to the villagers. And this raises the question “Just how far apart are these places that they wouldn’t have heard about Henry Frankenstein and his murderous abomination?” This threat of Ygor’s becomes moot when the Monster escapes and hightails it over to the clinic, with Ygor in tow, and after murdering Dr. Kettering the creature is subdued by knockout gas and Ludwig decides the best course of action is to destroy the Monster once and for all, that is until the ghost of Henry Frankenstein – portrayed by Cedric Hardwicke who looks nothing like actor Colin Clive – appears and points out that if Ludwig simply replaces the malignant brain with a healthy one, they’d save the Frankenstein name.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of wrinkles to this plan, first, there’s the issue of a whole lot of angry villagers tearing up the countryside looking for the escaped creature, made worse when it sneaks back into town and kidnaps the little girl he had befriended earlier, and then there is the fact that not only is Erik the town’s prosecutor but he is also engaged to Ludwig’s daughter, Elsa Frankenstein (Evelyn Ankers), and this relationship causes a bit of a three-way strain, what with the fact that Ludwig is hiding a murderer in his clinic and pretty much everyone knows it. Add to all this we also have the issue of Igor wanting his brain put inside the Monster’s skull, while Ludwig wants to use the noble brain of the recently murdered Kettering.  Ludwig refuses this preposterous suggestion, the idea of Ygor’s sly criminal mind in the body of an immortal superman is pretty high on the list of insane and dumb things to do, unfortunately, Bohmer is more flexible, especially when Igor says he can rule at his side when they take over the country.

Again, I see nothing wrong with this plan.

Stray Observations:

• As Ludwig is Wolf Frankenstein’s brother shouldn’t this film have been called The Other Son of Frankenstein?
• That Igor is a man who survived a hanging, lived after being shot numerous times by Wolf Frankenstein in the previous film and then survived Castle Frankenstein being blown up around him has me questioning if he is some sort of supernatural being.
• When Ygor drags the Monster out of the ruins he states “The sulphur pit was good for you, it preserved you.” So if they really wanted to revitalize the village economy they should turn the ruins into a health spa.
• The Monster seems to recognize Ludwig at first sight, even though the two have never met, this is as if the creature can simply sense the Frankenstein DNA with Ludwig.
• Ludwig believes the only way to destroy the monster is by dissection, deducing that “He was made limb by limb, organ by organ, he must be unmade in the same way” but wouldn’t cremation be just as effective and a lot faster?
• The plot of this film is almost a case of “Musical Brains” with Ludwig wanting to use the brain of the murdered Kettering, Ygor wanting his own diseased mind put inside the Monster, and the creature itself wanting the brain of the little girl he had befriended.

Is it wrong to want a movie where the Monster has the brain of a five-year-old girl?

How many times can Frankenstein’s monster die? This question becomes problematic at best when a studio is looking at a money-making franchise, with a lucrative box office having more power than even lightning when it comes to resurrecting the dead, but with Boris Karloff no longer interested in reprising the role it was up to the studio to come up with a suitable replacement and with Lon Chaney Jr. just wrapping up filming The Wolf Man it must have seemed like an easy solution to that casting problem, sadly, while Chaney is a large man he was not able to balance the threatening posture or his incredible pathos that Karloff had created with his Monster and so we are left with a pale imitation, that said, we still have Bela Lugosi doing wonderful things with his part of the conniving Ygor, this results in the Monster pretty much becoming a sidekick to Ygor’s criminal mastermind.

The Dynamic Duo of Universal Horror.

The plot of The Ghost of Frankenstein is a bit of a non-sensical mess, with characters’ actions and motivations ranging from the absurd to outright ludicrousness, and while Bela Lugosi is a shining light of acting genius in this outing it’s not quite enough to overcome Lon Chaney Jr. stumbling around the set as he’s nothing more than a pale imitation as to what Karloff had created, even Jack Pierce’s make-up isn’t as good all that great this time out. The rest of the cast are all fairly serviceable, with Evelyn Ankers and Ralph Bellamy basically playing similar roles to what they had just done on The Wolf Man, but with the science fiction elements being beyond ridiculous and the horror aspect non-existent this fourth entry in the franchise is at best a “fun watch” and should not be compared to the first three films, overall, The Ghost of Frankenstein is passable entertainment but it is missing some of that magic.

You can check out my other reviews here: Universal Classic Monsters: A Cinematic World of Horror.