House of Dracula (1945)

Film: House of Dracula (1945)

Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Onslow Stevens, John Carradine, Martha O'Driscoll, Jane Adams, Glenn Strange

Director: Erle C. Kenton

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

On Tuesday, we had the first of a trio of monster mashups (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), where some of Universal's most famous monsters began interacting with each other.  Today, we get something of a conclusion to that series.  While the traditional movie monsters of Dracula, the Wolf Man, & Frankenstein would show up in future films (specifically the horror comedies starring Abbott & Costello), and obviously would be revived in countless later decades, this is kind of the end of the road for these characters in the traditional sense within the Universal canon.  Going forward, either they were played for laughs, or they aren't really in the traditional first-run of the Universal canon.  We're not done with Universal monsters yet this month, and we'll need to do one more season for me to fully have seen all of these movies (my hope is that I'll get this fully off the bucket list next October), but this is a bit of an end of an era, particularly for the creature that started this series, Frankenstein (as I've now seen all seven of his original horror films).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film initially is entirely about Dracula (Carradine), who is meeting with Dr. Franz Edelmann (Stevens), supposedly trying to find a cure for his vampirism.  Dr. Edelmann is assisted by two women, the beautiful Milizia (O'Driscoll), and Nina (Adams), who has a hunchback (thus throwing in a Lon Chaney Sr. era "monster" into this mix though to modern audiences this doesn't register in the same way it would've in the 1940's).  Dr. Edelmann must get good monster ratings on Angie's List, as soon Larry Talbot (aka the Wolf Man, aka Lon Chaney, Jr.) shows up at his door, also wanting to cure his condition.  Edelmann does know what he's talking about, initially giving Dracula blood & having this seemingly work, but Dracula falls victim to his own lusts when he can't resist seducing Milizia, and Dr. Edelmann kills Dracula to protect her.  Afterward, though, Dr. Edelmann goes mad as he starts to turn into some kind of monster due to Dracula's blood, and while he is able to cure the Wolf Man before he does, in the end a cured Larry Talbot kills Dr. Edelmann, who in his madness is trying to revive the Frankenstein monster (Strange), and buries the monster in yet another exploding castle, with poor Nina inside.

The movie really should've been called Dracula Meets the Wolf Man, as Frankenstein is pretty much an afterthought here (it's worth remembering that though Boris Karloff starred in the best-remembered Frankenstein pictures, Strange played the role just as many times), only showing up midway through the movie.  The film itself is fascinating in a different way (not just because it basically dismisses the most popular monster in the franchise) but because if this is seen as an ending for the series, the Wolf Man gets a genuinely happy ending to his story.  Larry Talbot is cured in this movie, something that doesn't happen in the other pictures, and while Chaney would return to the role in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, that kind of took place in a different universe, and so if you are a "canon" person, Talbot gets a happy ending, even if Dracula & the Frankenstein Monster once again are killed at the end of this picture.

This is the only interesting part of House of Dracula, though.  I honestly should give this one-star, as it's not well-constructed, and in particular Carradine's Dracula is badly written, as if the writers don't know what to do with a man who is actually evil, and not just so by circumstance (the irony of his being the weak link is that based on other roles Carradine is by far the best actor on this cast sheet).  The mad doctor angle is played for more fears than we've seen in the past, but Edelmann's character feels off, and not interesting enough for you to not want to know more about the monsters.  However, I had a good time-I'm learning that this is one of those rare guilty pleasures for me that I'm willing to look past the flaws, and so I'm going to go with 2-stars here.  As I said, we are not done with the Universal monster movies quite yet, but this will be the last of the more horror-minded Frankenstein, Dracula, & Wolf Man pictures we're watching this month, so if you have enjoyed our takes, bring your thoughts about these monsters to the comments!

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death