This neat promotional "newspaper," created by the Columbia Tristar Marketing Group, was circulated before Silent Hill hit the movie theaters. Maybe I should have read it before seeing the movie.
See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.
Zombos Says: Good (in spite of itself)
There is a lot to dislike about Season of the Witch. For one, the disenchanted knights awol from the Crusades, Felson and Behmen (Ron Perlman and Nicolas Cage), left their acting bleeding on the battlefield. I like Cage and Perlman. They are capable of much better.
Then there is the flippantly modern dialog, which grates against the grittiness of Medieval grime and Black Death Plague. Felson and Behmen might as well have been taxi drivers picking up fares in Wormwood Forest the way they banter. I don’t know when English language contractions first took hold, but given my understanding of the Dark Ages, their speech oft vexed my ears. Not that I expected Shakespearean diction, mind you, but I question director Dominic Sena’s undermining of his historical illusion in this way. Thankfully he didn’t add a thumping rock score.
For more dislikes I’ll add: the superfluous voice-over ruining the mood of the ending long shot; the Devil’s wimpy voice (both of them, oddly enough), and the dead monks scampering across the walls–so J-Horror yesterday, you know what I mean?–were enough to make me write ill about them.
And so I have.
But Season of the Witch is still a good movie in spite of itself. It just doesn’t try hard enough (aka poor choices made in production). It hurries past its subtexts like the opening montage of battles hurries us through the long years of Crusading in just a few moments, and leaves us accepting it all at face value.
A peaches and cream complexioned young woman (Claire Foy) is accused of witchcraft and blamed for causing the plague. The church desperately needs to transport her to a monastery whose monks possess the only copy of The Greater Key of Solomon (though I believe it’s referred to as The Book of Solomon in the movie). The book contains the incantation to de-witchify her and stop the plague. Felson and Behmen are coerced into doing the transporting, though they have their doubts she’s a witch and distrust the priest (Stephen Campbell Moore) accompanying them. They also need to pass through gloomy and doomy Wormwood Forest, fraught with perils, to get there.
Now let the terror begin, or the uncertainty of the truth ignite conflict within the group, or the lost faith of both knights rekindle. Although all three of these elements fitfully glimmer they never infect the dramatis personae enough to deepen the drama or tie our emotions to it.
The uninspired and budget-limited computer-generated imagery, and the overly done Elephant Man-styled special effects makeup for plague victims–while attention to basic detail is missing–is a distraction. Look closely at Cardinal D’Ambroise’s (Christopher Lee) forehead covered in large, bubbling cysts. You will see the ambitious rubber piece droop as he talks. Look at everyone speaking and you will see perfect white teeth (except for the Cardinal).
There is a wonderfully gruesome but telling depiction of bloodletting conducted by the plague doctors as they attend to the Cardinal. Bloody rags and bowls of blood are everywhere as the group of beak doctors, dressed in their weird accouterments, go about their useless treatment. There is an energetic, Hammeresque opening teaser involving three accused witches hanged from a bridge. It not only sets up what follows but twists our perception of what we think should follow.
More of the mood, depth, and grain found in these two scenes needed to spread across the rest of the movie.
Zombos Says: Excellent
While other directors choose to infuriate and nauseate their audiences with outrageous human centipedes, Darren Aronofsky goes to the ballet instead to unleash Black Swan, a movie that releases the repressed demon within through restrained gore and unrestrained pirouettes.
Natalie Portman plays the emotionally crippled Nina Sayers, a New York City ballerina whose repressed sensuality and domineering mother (Barbara Hershey) keep Nina’s bedroom crowded with pink, stuffed animals, and her social life as busy as the one the little dancing ballerina in her music box has.
When offered the chance to play the dual role of the White and Black Swans in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, Nina’s descent into madness, and ascent into freedom, begins. Goading her on is her director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), who, like the evil sorceror, Von Rothbart, wants to control her passion. It is this transition from White Swan, which Nina dances flawlessly, to Black Swan, which requires her to unleash a sensual side long repressed that makes Black Swan almost like watching Carrie‘s Carrie White dressed in a tutu. It is an engrossing and jarring farandole macabre, one filled with horrific moments for Nina and us as her mind splinters into paranoia and hallucination, and feeds on its fears.
Much of Black Swan is filmed in uncomfortably unsteady and confining closeups. Rarely do we see beyond what Nina sees or imagines. Like the mechanical ballerina confined to her music box, Nina’s world is confined to her apartment, her bedroom, and the ballet hall where she brutalizes her body with constant practice. A real or imagined rivalry between her and Lily (Mila Kunis), an unbridled ballerina whose sensuality makes her a natural to dance the role of the Black Swan, erupts into more self-torture for Nina. Her obsessive compulsive behaviors grow into waking nightmares. In a scene reminiscent of the nasty face peeling in Poltergeist, Nina picks at a scab until the blood flows red. Her self-scratching leaves bloody tears she’s not conscious of making. Her paranoia leads to a smashed and bloody dressing room mirror.
Aronofsky doles out gore to emphasize the physical punishment Nina is going through, and lavishes it on in one queeze-inducing hallucination: a closeup of a cracked and bloody toenail; skin-peeling; blood flowing from under a door. I wonder how the older audience in the theater felt (I was in Florida when I saw Black Swan) seeing these common horror movie images in a movie marketed as a drama and thriller?
Black Swan is a triumph of technique, tension, and metamorphosis as Nina becomes the Black Swan. And it is a horror movie. Make no mistake about that.
Okay, I give up. There's a heck of a funny caption in this scene from RKO's Bedlam. But I can't think of it. Help! Leave your funny caption for this funny picture in the comments section. You can click it for a bigger laugh–I mean, picture.
Picture provided by Professor Kinema.
Horror movies are fun. I don't deny that. And I argue that they have their place in society–they show the evil that resides in the human heart and our desperate need both for God and for a savior. Since all films, all stories are, in effect, instruction manuals on how to live within this world, horror films must not operate by a different set of rules. When films give bad life-lessons, they should be called out for what they are: just plain wrong. (Scot Nehring, Godzilla is Dead: The New Brand of Japanese Horror Films)
In Scott Nehring's January Movies and Culture Report, the article Godzilla is Dead: The New Brand of Japanese Horror Films takes on torture porn and the dominance of nihilism in modern horror movies, or as he calls them, troubling productions. I agree with his reasoning but disagree with his conclusions and how he views horror through his Christian lens: distortion comes from using that lens.
To be fair, I will describe the lens I use before dissenting. I'm not a Christian, but I grew up Catholic (in body, not spirit). I don't attend mass, do not fear nor worship God, and, mostly, find all organized religions (sorry Wiccans, you too) a pain in the sacrosanct. Every religion has its doctrines, its rules of belief, and its rewards and punishments (payable now or later). All of these things confound the spiritual journey, more than enlightening it, with their stress on diety worship over basic principles of morality and humanity.
Do I believe in God? Certainly. Is this a paradox? Hardly.
Prime Mover, doting omnipotent Father (or Mother), Heaven's Landlord, whatever you believe the nature of God to be it is just that, a belief. No proof of purchase necessary, although, Lord knows, there are many who must prove their beliefs well until Hell freezes over. I believe because it's difficult for me to watch the Wu Li Masters dancing while the stars shimmer overhead, and not wonder at the precise syncopation of their feet staying in step to the melody of the universe. So for me, you might say God's the drummer with an endless repertoire that keeps the party swinging. Whether or not you also hear those drums will not brighten or spoil my day; my ears, my eyes, you know? My lens.
For the rest of us, God can be the Boss, the Governator, the Worshippee, the Savior, the Judge and Jury, the Blamer, the Excuse, the Accuser, the Censor, the Pillory, and so much less or so much more. Do I really need to continue? You already know what God means to you. And I'll wager you ignore the rest, too. We all do to some extent. Ignorance is blissfully conducive to self-serving reasoning. Or faith.
The projection of nihilism onto the human heart has the same coarsening results as the visual impact of extreme violence. Films are modern myths, stories that teach us about our lives and our universe. When our stories teach that our universe is without design, without purpose, that life itself is a meaningless effort, the lesson harms the audience.
Nehring's God is a governing and guiding force, acting like a moral DMZ lying between damnation and salvation. Believe in God and the dictums of his religion, and you'll be saved; don't believe and you'll accelerate all of us going to Hell in a handbasket. Therefore nihilism, the Ubermensch's tough-luck world, doesn't fit into this ideology. To believe in God means all causes and effects happen for a reason, and behaving according to God's will–though that will changes with each religion– is beneficial for everyone. Not believing in God means–to use a horror fan's vernacular–Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth will eat your gonads for breakfast whenever they feel like it (unless it's Derleth's Cthulhu, of course: then it's pancakes and maple syrup for all, instead).
Nehring zeroes in on Japanese horror movies and their nihilistic direness: God does not exist in Juon or Ringu. "In these films there is a complete–and I mean absolute and total lack of moral structure. These stories exhibit a world devoid of God, and that is the reason these films are so effective."
I agree and disagree with his assessment.
These films do not totally lack a moral structure (especially Juon), but they are very effective because God is not the focus: plain old people are the focus and their actions contribute to the "curse [that] supersedes God and, therefore, eliminates all hope." To say there is no moral structure implicit in Juon and Ringu just because it isn't God-driven morality is sophisistic and dead wrong. Contrary to Nehring's summation, good and evil do exist in these films, but I'll admit not in equal measure, and without deity-based good and evil. People in these movies weight the balance either way by their actions or failures to act. To me, that's a clear moral message delivered without needless pontifications. You reap what you sow, right?
To say that horror films must not act by a "different set of rules" because all films are "instruction manuals" is a quaint notion for his argument, but hardly sustainable in practice. These Japanese horror movies do not give bad life-lessons: people in the real world are a whole lot better at doing this than these movies can ever pretend to be. Horror movies have always reflected the times they appear in. And studios have always taken advantage of those times to push the boundaries of what is shown onscreen. Take a good look at our world, then go watch Hostel. It's depraved and dirty and victimizing. Now am I talking about Hostel or Wall Street or pick a war, any war? Or maybe all of these?
Contrary to Nehring's Christian lens, not all films are modern myths, teachable moments, or self-help manuals, nor do they need to be. Sometimes they transcend our expectations, sometimes not. Sometimes they horrify us because the Devil is winning, sometimes they terrify us even more because He and God are not even in the game. Take it or leave it, it's just us and what we do, no Heavenly prizes or Hellish punishments to be had. That's what these movies are telling us.
Now that's a really scary moral lesson if ever there was one.
Syfy’s reality television shows, other than Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International, haven’t grabbed my attention much. Mad Mad House almost did and Scare Tactics came close, but they couldn’t hold it beyond the first few episodes.
Now comes Face-Off, pitting makeup artist against makeup artist in a full-body, fantastic makeover knockdown. Special effects makeup is what I’d be doing full-time if I weren’t all thumbs and had a tin eye to boot. Sigh.
Making a contest out of it, where twelve aspiring makeup artists compete for 100,000 dollars in prize money and a year’s worth of makeup supplies sounds promising. Add guest judges like Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th), revolutionary body painter Filippo Ioco, Greg Nicotero (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and Michael Westmore (Star Trek: The Next Generation) on top of the regular judges, Ve Neill (Pirates of the Caribbean, Edward Scissorhands), Glenn Hetrick (Heroes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files), and Patrick Tatopoulos (Underworld, Independence Day, Resident Evil: Extinction), well then, you’ve grabbed my full attention.
Face-Off airs January 26th on Syfy.
For their first spotlight elimination challenge, the contestants are tasked to imagine an entirely new species, a human/animal hybrid, based on one of three exotic animals that are brought into their workspace lab–a beetle, an ostrich or an elephant. The contestants must work in teams of two to execute their creative visions, utilizing specialized skills including molding, sculpting, prosthetics and an involved application process on live models. Future elimination challenges include application of full body make-up to nude subjects, conceptualizing a creature that would inhabit a newly discovered planet, creating an original horror villain, and transforming a “bride” into a “groom” and a “groom” into a “bride.”
Zombos Says: Fair
The cover of Asylum Press' Eeek!, Volume 1, is the most exciting page in this largely vacuous collection of the first 4 issues of Jason Paulos' retro-stylized horror comic book series. Luckily, for those of us who grew up on the gaudy and gnarly visuals and storylines of 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s horror comics and magazines, this volume is neither a representative homage or attentive aping of those delightfully unsavory and sardonically witty nightmares delivered each month to the local drugstore and luncheonette: a blessing to every kid and a bane to every parent.
Out of 16 stories drawn, and mostly written, by Jason Paulos, with additional scripting by Daren White and Bodine Amerikah, Just Desserts, Colour Me Evil, Head Trip, Thrill Killer, and Six Digit Disaster (Daren White), read as complete stories. What do I mean by a complete story? That's simple: it's a story with a beginning, middle, and ending that ties it all together, for the better or worse of its characters. Incomplete stories peter out like a dud firecracker that fizzles instead of blowing up, or muddles the flow of actions and reactions into a tangle, like sloppy editing in a movie creates confusion. This volume has too many duds with tangles.
The remaining tangled 11 stories are either too long, with a lackluster or incoherent payoff: Easy Prey; Witness to Evil; Deadline of Death; Like Mother, Like Son; Death Wears Hotpants; or too short and whimper to an ending hardly worth the effort: Stuffed; Lights, Camera, Murder!; What's Down In the Basement Horace Greeley? Typos here and there pour additional salt into this bleeding mess.
Paulos' artwork is clever and much better than his writing, although he seems to have a limited bag of panel tricks at his disposal to vary his style across stories. Just Desserts comes closest to that delicious sense of moldy candy and grisly surprise often found in retro-horror fare, both in story and especially how he handles its buildup, panel by panel. Head Trip provides an unsettling one for us as well as its main victim with its stylish acid trip funky bordering around scenes and its record-playing Music of Erich Zann dynamic. The Undertaker and Cryptoe: Death Can be Fatal is a zany romp of Bernie Wrightsonesque mayhem until the unimaginative punchline ending kills the fun.
In these types of stories, Paulos' male and female characters look similar, but he still manages to add enough characterization to faces and bodily motions to provide that off-kilter, sourly whimsical look of 1950s and 1970s horror. (Bernie Wrightson excels at it.)
Thirteen pages of Asylum adverts, an unnecessary gallery of hodgepodge art, and a welcome full-color set of Eeek! covers pad out the remaining pages. The numerous glowing promotional quotes on the back of the book fooled me into picking this one up without paging through it first. My first new year's resolution is to ignore them from now on. You should, too. There is a glimmer of wonderful here, but only a glimmer.
Zombos Says: Very Good
Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi would have been very happy.
Monsterverse's Bela Lugosi's Tales From the Grave, issue one, is campy, slick, and skillfully old-fashioned. It also has eye-pleasing artwork, coloration, and perhaps a tad too much verbosity to tell some of its stories (but not as much as the EC Horror Comic Books did); except for A Strangely Isolated Place, which tells its story in a splendidly macabre dance between art and sparse words.
Then again, it's this preponderance of words, neatly arranged within panels, which gives Tales From the Grave its nostalgic tone, seeping with the ill humours of acid-browning Warren magazines like Creepy and Eerie.
Quirky and short art stories, which include John Cassaday's humorous, black and white cartoon experiment gone haywire, and Joe Friere's Twisted ToyFare Theatre-styled (with a Pete Von Sholly bent) The Further Adventures of Dr. Vornoff and Lobo, take measured chances while providing a stylistic variety.
Rob E. Brown's Mark of the Zombie, a sepia-toned extravagance of Haitian Voodoo and putrefying zombies looks like a Ripley's Believe It or Not excerpt, but reads like a graphic novel. Unpleasant Side Effects, the lead off story drawn by Kerry Gammill and scripted by Sam F. Park, is a fun throwback reminiscent of DC's The Witching Hour, and Marvel's Tower of Shadows. Once again a mad scientist does his thing, but there's a happy ending–sort of.
Nosferina and Bela, with a small assist from Hugo the hideous, introduce the stories, although Bela steps in here and there, especially in the last story, Midnight Museum. Think wax museum and you'll have an inkling of what he's up to. Gary D. Rhodes intertwines the Lugosi and Dracula mystique in a two-page article to bring the curtain down on issue one.
Monsterverse does a remarkable job in capturing the sinister, but strangely approachable, essence that makes Bela Lugosi an icon for horror's golden age and beyond. Bela Lugosi's Tales From the Grave is everything Dark Horse's Creepy should be.
Dark Horse, you've been served.
And more from Professor Kinema’s archives: this time it’s The Uncanny Mr. Sardonicus. I can’t read what else it says, but it looks rather cool, so here it is.
Professor Kinema once again opens his files to share the following publicity material from 1959, for Columbia’s The Tingler…!
Just received my first Christmas Card! It comes from Penny Dreadful and the Shilling Shockers Gang at NBTV95. Looks like Santa has his hands full. Between you and me, it also looks like getting on the naughty list can be more fun. Love the antlers, Garou.
Zombos Says: Good
Haven’t we tried before to get rid of the Monster by force? We burned down the sanitarium and yet we didn’t destroy Frankenstein’s fiendish creation. We must be more clever this time. Let’s use our brains for once. (Mayor of Vesaria in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man)
Frankenstein’s creation has changed; both spiritually and physically, he behaves differently from when he first reaches upward toward the sunlight streaming in from the skylight his creator, Henry Frankenstein, briefly opens in Frankenstein. But was the Monster simply reacting to the light or reaching toward understanding it? And was Henry’s abrupt closing of the skylight a sign of his reluctance to foster that understanding, to renege on his new role of being a parent?
These are questions no longer asked in The Ghost of Frankenstein, and they are expediently ignored in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. By removing God and Henry’s fatherly responsibilities from the equation summing Monster and soul, and by removing the mysterious cosmic spark of life present in the lightning, Universal’s script writers could churn out simpler stories of mayhem, brain-swapping, and spook show dramatics unencumbered by philosophical and social musings. Like the Monster’s soul, the spirit of the series had fled, to be replaced by rote movements deprived of deeper motivations, slickly paced on Universal’s production treadmill so as not to even break a sweat.
But if you look closely at this treadmill you will see a glimmer of something new. Accidentally born out of necessity, perhaps, but still important to take note of. It’s the beginning of what would become the essence of the 1950s sci-horror cycle, when science anomaly, outer space threat, and the well-intentioned but catastrophic effects of laboratory discoveries all move to the forefront of our fears, replacing the Gothic darkness and musty passageways of folklore. It is the cross of faith giving way to belief in the crucible of technology. Holy vestments previously used as defense against evil are replaced by the white lab coat and practical instruments used for experimentation, analysis, and resolution.
Vampirism?
It’s a malady of the bloodstream—science will cure it.
Frankenstein’s creation?
It’s a botched surgical operation—proper medical procedure and simple electricity will correct it.
Lycanthropy?
It’s a mental disorder—a pressure on the brain that psychological intervention and medical skill will provide palliation for it.
Wielding this newfound confidence and superiority of scientific method over any natural or unnatural adversity is the self-assured scientist. He (and rarely, she) assumes the high status once held by the priest, to sermonize a new religion more palatable for the atomic age about to flourish; and more reassuring in the face of its abuse in an age of global conflict.
Blame it on a) the spiritual disenfranchisement brought on by the conflict of a second World War, or b) a society becoming more distrustful and less naive, or c) a loss of faith in God’s handiwork because of both a and b.
Regardless of the reasons, the once frightening monsters of horror were becoming more understandable, more rational in cause and effect and, therefore, less threatening, rendering them weaker in their abilities to terrorize. To compensate for this power drain, Universal mustered the monster rally: if one monster isn’t scary enough, two or more will do the trick!
Maybe.
In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the self-assured scientist’s role is played by Dr. Frank Mannering (Patrick Knowles), and the precise point at which out with the old and in with the new takes place occurs when Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) wakes up in Queen’s Hospital in Cardiff, after surgery to repair the head injury incurred from the bludgeoning his father, Sir John Talbot, delivered in The Wolf Man.
Before this, the rebirth of Larry Talbot’s cursed existence in Llanwelly Cemetery, under a full moon, contradicts an older age of superstition, when the precious metal silver could end a werewolf curse with certainty, and bring peaceful death to its tormented victim. But not now and no longer, even here in this horror staple of windswept tombstones, moldy earth, and decaying corpses. The curse is not ended and Talbot is not killed by the pounding his feral noggin received with the silver-headed cane. To the dismay of the grave robbers who dared open his tomb, and the awakening Larry Talbot, the creeping moonlight revives the Wolf Man to hunt the streets and woodlands once again.
Come one and all and sing a song
Faro-la, faro-li!
For life is short, but death is long
Faro-la, faro-li!
There’ll be no music in the tomb
So sing with joy and down with gloom
Tonight the new wine is in bloom
Faro-la, faro-li! (Song of the New Wine, sung by Adia Kuznetzoff, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man)
Once Roy William Neal (The Scarlet Claw) directs the moonlight to creep across the floor in Talbot’s tomb and then again in his room in Queen’s Hospital, Jack Pierce’s man to wolf transformation begins. Talbot explains he’s cursed, but the doctor believes him to be delusional. Biting through his straitjacket during a moonlit night, Talbot hoofs it to Maleva the old Gypsy woman for help. But Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) is of the old world and therefore powerless in this new age of medicine and science Talbot has awakened in. She tells him only Doctor Frankenstein may possess the knowledge to help and soon they are off to Vasaria to find the doctor.
What happened to the charm she gave him in The Wolf Man, to keep him from turning into a wolf? Why doesn’t she make another one?
Once again, Universal’s timeless, placeless horror qualities—ones convenient for the scriptwriters, but hell on continuity—eschew motor vehicles for horse drawn wagons and muddle locations, again, for Frankenstein’s laboratory.
Although Ludwig Frankenstein supplied the surgical skill in the previous Ghost of Frankenstein, his manor house and laboratory were destroyed by fire. The watchtower and laboratory shown here are similar to the ones Henry Frankenstein used in Frankenstein. Go figure. At least one quality, the ever ready torch-bearing mob (where DO they get those torches?), does change: the villagers carry lanterns instead. Not as exciting as burning clubs held aloft, but definitely more economical and manageable on set.
Another necessity has the Monster buried under or in something, waiting to be found and released in each movie. A rebirth, it seems, which occurs again and again: in Frankenstein, the cadaver for the Monster is unburied from a fresh grave; in Bride of Frankenstein, the Monster, buried beneath the burned-out windmill, is unwittingly freed; in Son of Frankenstein, after being buried in the rubble of the destroyed watchtower, the Monster is unearthed by Ygor; in Ghost of Frankenstein, Ygor digs out his only friend from the dried sulfur pit; in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Talbot stumbles onto the Monster, frozen in a block of ice, buried under the charred remains of Ludwig’s manor house and sanitarium.
Or is it the watchtower?
Audiences didn’t seem to care or notice how Frankenstein’s laboratory and monster-energizing equipment kept changing locale.
Talbot, who always manages to dress the part of the Wolf Man (same neat dark shirt, same neat dark (and pressed) slacks), after being chased into the ruins regains consciousness in his human form after falling into a catacomb filled with ice, frost, and burned timbers—a poetically eerie scene that exemplifies the Universal Horror mystique. He frees the Monster (Important! Don’t forget Ygor’s brain was transplanted into the Monster’s cranium at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein), and the two of them chat up a storm over a brisk fire. Ygor, now in the Monster’s body, tells Talbot about his tribulations in trying to reach his goal of ruling the world.
Wait. That’s wrong. That’s not what happened in the movie.
The Monster’s lengthy speech, which explains the odd mannerism Lugosi had of holding his arms stiffly in front of him as he stumbles around because of near blindness due to blood type incompatibility (it happened at the end of The Ghost of Frankenstein), was cut.
In fact, all of Lugosi’s speaking parts were cut. They were removed because preview audiences giggled at the Monster speaking in Lugosi’s heavily-accented voice. At least this is the reason often cited by movie historians, repeating the explanation given by Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man’s scriptwriter Curt Siodmak.
But is it entirely true?
The important continuity support needed to make sure the audience remembered the Monster was now Ygor, whose brain was plopped into the Monster’s cranium in Ghost of Frankenstein, no longer existed. There was no chance Lugosi would give a convincing performance because Siodmak’s dialog, and Neal’s efficient but standard direction of the Monster’s talking scenes, highlights the Monster speaking, not Ygor as the Monster speaking. Without this understanding, Ygor’s voice, spoken by the Monster, appears incongruous.
One effective continuity builder Siodmak and Neal could have used would have been a flashback showing Ghost of Frankenstein’s climax to reestablish Ygor’s presence in the Monster’s body. Dialog exchanges between Talbot and the Monster could also have been written with more regard for Lugosi’s unique speech patterns (less dialog for him), and more carefully chosen words when he did speak. Talbot also shouldn’t be calling the Monster “dumb” as he does in the original script, and the Monster begging for help is out of character even for Ygor.
“Don’t leave me–don’t go! I’m weak…They’ll catch me and bury me alive!” (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Universal Moviescript Series, Classic Horror Movies, Volume 5)
While it’s easy to assay Lugosi’s role as inadequate, he received little help from the script and the subsequent revisions to the movie to be successful.
After the Journal of Life and Death (or How I Did It if you’re a Young Frankenstein fan) is found with Baroness Frankenstein’s (Ilona Massey) help, Dr. Mannering, who’s been tracking Talbot all over Europe, discovers that changing the plus and minus poles on Frankenstein’s equipment can either strengthen or deplete electrical energy. Mannering, falling under the Frankenstein curse of hubris (or perhaps simple curiosity), decides to power up the Monster while draining the life out of Talbot to end his werewolf curse.
Oddly, Mannering decides to do this during a full moon.
Cue the slugfest between a rejuvenated Monster/Ygor and the Wolf Man and the destruction—again—of the laboratory. No mention is made of Maleva’s whereabouts after everything blows up, but being Old World anyway, she’s no longer needed to prop up the supernatural aspects of the franchise since they were no longer needed. (Her unexplained absence later in the film was due to an on set injury. I guess they thought no one would notice.)
, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man remains an energetic and enjoyable excursion to Universal’s quintessentially obscure world of mad science and monsters. And we even get to see Dwight Frye one last time.
Both the Wolf Man and the Monster wind up frozen in ice under the flooded ruins of Castle Frankenstein, waiting to be freed in House of Frankenstein. Like the Monster, the ubiquitous laboratory equipment is just as immortal, and those neck bolts beckon for yet another round of mad science.
Time for the mad scientist to make a house call.