It's true that this is a better sequel to "The Wolf Man" (in fact I like the first twenty-five minutes of this movie more that "The Wolf Man."), but it's a better Frankenstein film than "House of Frankenstein" or "House of Dracula" because the Monster has more to do here, and it's better than "Ghost of Frankenstein" just because it's more fun. Poor Bela Lugosi gets ripped all the time for what a terrible job he did as the Monster in this one, but in fairness his role was severely edited. The monster originally could talk and was blind, but the producers felt Lugosi's voice coming from the Monster was more funny than frightening, and his dialogue wasn't all that great anyway, so out it all went. It's for this reason that the monster acts so strangely in the final cut, and the Monster was supposed to be sick anyway. It was a mistake to cast the too old Lugosi as the Monster, but don't blame Bela -- he probably did the best he could, but we'll never know. I also think it was a mistake to cast Lon Chaney Jr. as the Monster in "Ghost." Both he and Lugosi were too round-faced to take over from Karloff. And the ending of "Ghost" was one of the biggest blunders in the entire series. But this film manages to survive all the mistakes and still be very entertaining. I've probably seen it fifty times in my life, and I can always watch it again.
Review of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
