Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Short description
Grave robbers break into the tomb of Lawrence Stewart Talbot, who died four years earlier, and find that he is not as dead as expected. The curse of the werewolf still holds him, and he wants nothing more than to be free of it and die for good. His search for a cure leads him to the home of Dr. Frankenstein, but the doctor is dead, and Larry finds only his creature waiting, frozen and hidden away.
Roy William Neill directed the film, which came between the Sherlock Holmes adventures he made in the same period, after Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon and before Sherlock Holmes in Washington. Curt Siodmak wrote the screenplay, and George Waggner produced for Universal Pictures. Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot, Bela Lugosi appears as the Frankenstein Monster, and the cast includes Patric Knowles, Ilona Massey, Maria Ouspenskaya and Dennis Hoey, part of a credited ensemble of 31. The production had a budget of about 1 million dollars.
The film runs 74 minutes and was released in March 1943 as a horror and science fiction picture. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.4 out of 10 from around 11,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from roughly 230 votes. A critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from 12 reviews places critical response below the audience scores on the whole.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, Lon Chaney Jr. was supposed to play both the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster, but the producers decided that the makeup requirements and schedule would make this impossible. However, Chaney later stated in an interview that he did indeed play both monsters in the film.
- A tribute to the film about the meeting of two legendary horror heroes is paid in Alien vs. Predator, which, in addition to the idea of a meeting of two monsters, uses an episode from the film (in the form of a television broadcast).
- The very first time we see Frankenstein's Monster, it is not Bela Lugosi in makeup, but stuntman Eddie Parker.
- Frankenstein's monster, played by Bela Lugosi, is mute in this film, even though Boris Karloff's monster spoke in the earlier Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Interestingly, Lugosi turned down the role in the original Frankenstein (1931) because he would have no lines. When Lugosi participated in this film, the original script contained dialogue for the Monster, which was later cut.
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