Monster March: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

While watching The Ghost of Frankenstein – the fourth Franken-film in the Universal Classic Monsters franchise – I was reminded of a line from Peter Pan: “All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” As much as the Frankenstein films have pushed the narrative forward, more so than most of the Universal Monsters movies, The Ghost of Frankenstein is the first time that I’ve felt bored by the old familiar tropes; rather than continue to reinvent the monster wheel, Ghost of Frankenstein doubles down on what we’ve already seen.

Following the events of Son of Frankenstein, the village is gripped with fear that Frankenstein’s monster will return, and so they implore the mayor to destroy Castle Frankenstein. Ygor (Bela Lugosi), having miraculously survived the end of the last film, discovers that so too has the Monster (Lon Chaney Jr.), and the pair escape the castle in search of Henry Frankenstein’s other son, Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). With the Monster weakened, Ygor hopes Ludwig will restore his strength and threatens to expose the doctor’s lineage if he does not obey.

 

I’ve compared the recursive nature of Ghost of Frankenstein to the classic line from Peter Pan, but there’s also something to be said for the infomercial quality of the film, which seems to shout to its audience, “But wait, there’s more!” Both Ygor and the Monster met pretty definitive ends in Son of Frankenstein, but Ghost handwaves both of those in order to get the plot going. I’ll grant you that there’s a tolerable level of suspended disbelief in accepting that the Monster outlived his bath in molten sulfur, but even the characters in the film can’t believe that Ygor survived being shot multiple times. Ditto the existence of a secret, second son of Frankenstein; it’s the same gimmick as Son of Frankenstein, just flavored a little differently. 

 

All of which is to say that within ten minutes of Ghost of Frankenstein, I was overcome with a wave of déjà vu – and not in a good, “this is how the genre gets invented” way. Where it’s been fun over the course of Monster March to watch filmmakers figure out the nascent genre (and indeed, talkie motion pictures more generally), it’s becoming increasingly clear that the formula wasn’t invented so much as ossified over the course of the 1940s. Every creative decision in Ghost of Frankenstein seems to be borne out of expectation rather than invention, and the result is something that feels overly familiar. 

 

Consequently (or perhaps as a contributing factor), much of Ghost of Frankenstein is rather low-energy – which may come as a bit of a surprise because the film is arguably the loudest monster movie so far. From the opening frames, the score is banging and crashing, while the film is never a few seconds away from an all-out riot erupting. But all the performances lack the verve that had set the Franken-films apart; even Bela Lugosi seems restrained by the material, though he’s trying as hard as he can to make Ygor as weird as he was in Son of Frankenstein. (Still, no one lurks in a window like Lugosi.) As Ludwig Frankenstein, Sir Cedric Hardwicke is appropriately subdued if a bit too reliant on the stiff upper lip, the kind of performance that might best be described today as “slumming it.”

 

The big headline in Ghost of Frankenstein is that it’s the first Franken-film without Boris Karloff as The Monster, and Lon Chaney Jr. struggles to fill his oversized shoes. While Chaney was captivating as The Wolf Man, his Monster lacks Karloff’s surprising humanity, and his stumbling around the film suggests that his Monster is blind long before the third-act turn in which that affliction actually manifests. (I would have thrown up a spoiler warning, but it’s not even a plot detail that matters, and I would venture to say you’d be as surprised as I was to discover that wasn’t always already the case.) There’s only one moment when Chaney’s Monster is transcendently creepy, though it’s more the fault of the script than the performance. Amid so much kerfuffle about how to restore the Monster’s strength, the monster kidnaps a young girl (shades of the original Frankenstein) and pantomimes to Ludwig that he wants the girl’s brain put inside his head. It’s a moment of genuine horror and an astonishingly dark intimation, especially by 1942’s standards.

 

Of course, it never comes to pass, and the second act concludes with a bizarre half-chase in which the Monster shambles after Ludwig’s daughter as she shelters the youngling from his grasp. The third act then transforms into a shell game in which brains are shuffled about until one lands in the operating room with the anesthetized Monster. To say which brain ends up in the Monster would be a spoiler, so I’ll refrain – but even that moment plays less like the next evolution of the character and more like a sad reduction of the whole affair into a B-movie plot. I shouldn’t be questioning why a 1942 movie misunderstands how blood transfusions work if that movie is sufficiently engaging. I should instead be captivated, enthralled, perhaps even briefly horrified – but sadly The Ghost of Frankenstein lives up to its name, a sad and pale specter of greatness long dead, a mere apparition haunting the franchise. 

The Ghost of Frankenstein is not rated. Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Written by W. Scott Darling and Eric Taylor. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Bellamy, Lionel Atwill, and Evelyn Ankers.  

While we covered it last week for Wolf Man Wednesday, recall that the Frankenstein saga continues into Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. Since this is the last Franken-Friday – and Deep Sea Saturdays concluded last week – all I can do is bid you welcome to Transylvania Tuesday, to see what happens when Frankenstein’s Monster enters the House of Dracula (1945), starring John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Onslow Stevens, and Glenn Strange.

Monster March: Invisible Agent (1942)

Is the Invisible Man series the franchise without a clue? Is it even a franchise at all? Is it fair to consider this a Universal Monsters series? The answer to all three questions is, I think, “Yes.” If we’re thinking about the Universal Classic Monsters as the first cinematic universe, The Invisible Man would be akin to an Iron Man franchise in which Tony Stark’s brother gives the suit away, while an unrelated inventor makes an iron suit, before Tony’s grandson builds his own suit. (Next week, to push the analogy, an entirely unrelated Stark is given the suit by another disconnected inventor.) Can you hinge a franchise on iconography alone?

Frank Griffin (Jon Hall) finds his print shop invaded by Nazis and Japanese agents (Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre) who demand that he turn over the secret formula for invisibility devised by his grandfather, the original Invisible Man. Instead, Frank escapes and signs over the formula to the U.S. government after Pearl Harbor, on one condition – that only Frank be permitted to use the invisibility serum. Frank parachutes into Germany to meet with a German spy (Ilona Massey), who promises she can get Frank a book of German operatives.

 

Maybe I’m just a sucker for (no pun intended) transparently propagandistic WWII films, but there is something infectiously gee-whiz about an invisible American parachuting behind enemy lines to bust up the Axis. In short, I really enjoyed Invisible Agent more than I thought I would, especially given the mileage-may-vary quality of these later Universal Monsters movies. But this movie ticks a lot of boxes for me, almost like an invisible Rocketeer – which readers of this blog should know is a major gold star in my book. There are, for me, few cinematic pleasures more pure than seeing an enthusiastically patriotic American get the better of Nazis who end up defeating themselves through their own hubris. It’s almost like Captain America in Casablanca.

 

As the eponymous invisible agent, Jon Hall is square-jawed and serviceable, the kind of newsreel hero you really don’t see any more. As an Invisible Man, however, Frank Griffin isn’t any sort of monstrous menace; there is no danger that his serum will drive him mad, brushed away by his claim that only he knows the potency of the formula. This deck-clearing moment allows Invisible Agent to be something closer to The Invisible Woman than The Invisible Man, opening the door for this Griffin to slapstick his way through Nazi Germany. He douses goons in hollandaise and sets his own Reichstag fire by igniting the curtains in Nazi HQ. It’s played for laughs and thrills, but there is rarely any danger to or from our invisible agent. 

 

Even his “appearance,” doused in cold cream rather than swathed in bandages, elicits a hearty chuckle. I’ve been repeatedly impressed by the special effects in these Invisible Man movies, proving that they are almost more the star of the franchise than any invisible protagonist him-or-herself. The cold cream gag works, both as a punchline and as a screen trick to see the unseeable, but I was more taken by the sequence directly before, in which Frank Griffin lathers up in the bathtub. We can see his hands covered in soap, and his legs come into view as he scrubs them – truly effective stuff, even if the DVD transfer makes the seams a bit visible. The aforementioned parachute sequence, too, is fairly incredible, as Griffin disrobes mid-air, dropping his clothes as he drops out of sight. 

 

Invisible Agent truly stands out for its villains, though, played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre – two performers who, let’s be honest, are so much better than the fourth Invisible Man film ought to deserve. I’ve been lukewarm on Hardwicke in The Invisible Man Returns and The Ghost of Frankenstein, but those films didn’t quite give him much to do. As Conrad Stauffer, though, Hardwicke sinks his teeth into the clipped disdain and opportunistic deception of a top-ranking Nazi. The performance is an exercise in restraint – less is more – and Hardwicke conjures up the image of a screen villain who’d be just as comfortable in the heightened reality of an Indiana Jones film. Likewise for Peter Lorre, one of my all-time favorite actors. By 1942, Lorre had carved out an odd niche for himself playing Japanese characters, particularly the detective Mr. Moto in an eight-film series. Lorre plays Baron Ikito without the aid of any discomfiting yellowface makeup, though one wonders why this Japanese villain has an Austrian accent. Still, Lorre is at his creepy best in a role that leans into the icky stereotypes of the Japanese as sadistic torturers, and he sends a real chill up your spine in the moments before he erupts into shocking violence.

 

Invisible Agent feels like a one-off in a franchise of one-offs, never quite coming to the level of The Invisible Man and its frantic mad monster. At the same time, though, it never quite feels as though it needs to meet the high bar set by Claude Rains. Instead it’s a flag-waving model of its time, taking the concept of a Universal Classic Monster and doing something sideways with it – and you know I’m always keen on mash-ups and genre-bending. I liked it better than I thought I would, and it’s only too bad that we didn’t get more like this – can you imagine Wolf Man of Berlin or Frankenstein vs. The Axis? (Sidebar: maybe that’s why God invented comic books; cf. The Creature Commandos, etc.)

 

The Invisible Agent is not rated. Directed by Edwin L. Marin. Written by Curtis Siodmak. Starring Jon Hall, Ilona Massey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre, and J. Edward Bromberg. 

Tune in tomorrow for Franken-Friday, with Son of Frankenstein (1939) starring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi.

Next week for See-Thru Thursday, we’ll see – or not, as the case may be – The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), starring Jon Hall. But for bonus invisible shenanigans, Silly Sunday revisits the franchise for Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Arthur Franz.

Monster March: The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

The Invisible Man Returns is something of a misnomer. The eponymous Invisible Man doesn’t actually return in this film; instead, we meet his visible brother, who shares the invisibility serum with a third man. More deceptive, though, is the promise that The Invisible Man Returns will be just as good as The Invisible Man. While the Universal Monsters had a series of winners in Frankenstein sequels, The Invisible Man Returns is a tragic snooze, retreading too much of its predecessor’s ground while squandering the perfectly good Vincent Price.

Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price) is sentenced to death for murdering his brother, despite his vehement protestations of innocence. While his cousin Richard Cobb (Cedric Hardwicke) consoles his fiancée Helen (Nan Grey), Geoffrey receives a visit in prison from Dr. Frank Griffin (John Sutton), the brother of the infamous and invisible Jack Griffin. Frank gives Geoffrey an injection of the same serum that turned Jack invisible, giving Geoffrey time to escape prison – and hopefully, before the serum’s madness kicks in, clear his name.

 

Just about the only place where The Invisible Man Returns transcends the original is, rightly enough, in its special effects. Seven years after the original Invisible Man dazzled us with effects that still hold up, Invisible Man Returns wisely ups the ante with a number of exceptional invisibility sequences, even when we consider the fact that this movie is more than eighty years old. Chiefly, Returns sets a number of its invisible-man shenanigans in broad daylight, including one mesmerizing sequence in which the invisible Geoffrey borrows clothing from a nearby scarecrow. Other shots are a little less technically sophisticated, including moving shrubbery and floating tree branches, but director Joe May also gets a few good kicks in when we glimpse this film’s Invisible Man amid smoke and rain – two conditions Jack Griffin took great care to avoid.

 

Aside from the special effects, the key to any good Invisible Man film is the voice of the titular man. Since we can’t, obviously, see the man, his performance relies so much on the voice alone. Claude Rains was a masterful choice, his precise mannerisms giving way to delightful fits of madness. In Returns, we have an equal auditory treasure in Vincent Price (though, at 29, his voice doesn’t have all the character and flavor you might be expecting). Whether cradling his beloved or toasting his own megalomania, even behind bandages and a heavy dressing gown, Price is fantastically equipped for the part. In short, Price is a hoot, all the more so in a potentially thankless role where he’s unseen until the very final moments of the film.

 

If you feel like you’ve read that sentence before, don’t be alarmed. The ending to The Invisible Man Returns is indeed nearly identical to the ending of The Invisible Man. In fact, a great deal of this sequel bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1933 original. There’s a healthy bit of narrative invention in the addition of a procedural plot in which Geoffrey sets out to prove his innocence, but it also ends up creating the same climax – an all-hands manhunt set in inclement weather. There’s a standout second act set in Richard Cobb’s mansion, a kind of closed-door mystery in which Geoffrey could be anywhere (or nowhere), and as the police go from room to room in search of their invisibly quarry, Cedric Hardwicke gets to slip from sanity into nail-biting paranoia.

 

Unfortunately, though, the successful moments in The Invisible Man Returns are few and far between. Unlike its predecessor, there is never really any doubt that Geoffrey will overcome his madness long enough to identify the real killer. (Indeed, you might even say that the onset of madness helps, as he assumes a kind of master criminal mentality in order to unravel the mystery.) While Geoffrey (and Price) do seem to be having a great deal of fun with their newfound ability, that revelry doesn’t always translate to the audience as it did in the original Invisible Man. Instead, at times the hijinks feel like distractions on the way to solving the murder – which, I might add, it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who among the cast is suspiciously uninterested in the matter of Geoffrey’s innocence.

 

At 81 minutes long, The Invisible Man Returns is a bit too similar to its forbearer, overlong and unable to conceal the acts of light plagiarism. I suppose that I wanted Vincent Price to be more like Claude Rains or even (and more to the point) more like the Vincent Price of the 1960s. We do see some of that in the film, but – appropriately enough – the really good stuff is for the most part out of sight. Geoffrey Radcliffe is, for example, no Dr. Phibes, nor is he even quite Jack Griffin. More importantly, though, The Invisible Man Returns is no Invisible Man. Despite its few moments of fun, anyone can see that. 

The Invisible Man Returns is not rated. Directed by Joe May. Written by Lester Cole, Curt Siodmak, and Joe May. Starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, John Sutton, Cecil Kellaway, and Alan Napier.

Tune in tomorrow for Franken-Friday, with Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Elsa Lanchester.

Next week for See-Thru Thursday, parachute behind enemy lines with the Invisible Agent (1942), starring Jon Hall, Peter Lorre, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.