House of Dracula
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 67 m, 1945
Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Stars Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, et al.

By the end of House of Frankenstein, all of the featured creatures—Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man—were deader than four o’clock, but that didn’t stop the grabby execs at Universal from reuniting them for another big team-up in House of Dracula. Unfortunately, House of Dracula follows the construction of its predecessor, leaving no room for the monsters to get into a battle royal or to join forces in spooking the houseguests or to even compete against one another in a Transylvania Twist contest. (Their stories barely overlap, a problem filmmaker and Universal Horror buff Stephen Sommers would correct over a half-century later in Van Helsing.) Despite John B. Goodman’s eye-catching sets and a gripping Method performance from Onslow Stevens as the picture’s obligatory mad medic, House of Dracula is a dud—a hodgepodge of ill-conceived sketches that feels twice as long as its hour or so running time. Though it was only the studio’s third stab at a creature crossover, Universal jumped the shark (a really big shark—a megalodon) with House of Dracula, making way for straight-up lampoonery (and the franchise’s death knell) in the moderately amusing Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. (Though I still have little patience for those seemingly endless routines in which a p-p-p-panic-stricken Costello tries to convince an incredulous Abbott of the bloodthirsty fiend that’s hiding in the closet.) Returning writer/director Erle C. Kenton can’t be bothered with something as trifling as continuity: In House of Frankenstein, Dracula burned up in the sun and the Wolf Man was put down with a silver bullet, but here they are terrifying little old ladies again with no explanation as to how they cheated the Devil for their “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. There is the briefest of attempts to account for how the Adam of Frankenstein’s labors survived being swallowed up by quicksand in the preceding chapter, but this only raises more questions than it answers. (I’d rather Kenton had stayed ambiguous.) Worse, far too much exposition is relayed through dialogue instead of action, which might be okay if this were a radio show, but, criminently, this is a picture show. Let pictures tell the story, gents.

House of Dracula’s very title is a misnomer: The action takes place in what used to be Frankenstein’s castle, which has since come into the possession of Dr. Franz Edlemann (Stevens). The doc, along with his pretty, hunchbacked assistant, Nina (Jane Adams), spends most of his waking hours in the basement lab (with its myriad Jacob’s ladders) looking for ways in which to cure the world’s monsters of their weird conditions. (Not the most lucrative calling, to be sure, but it’s a noble one, and this guy seems to have plenty of moolah, anyway.) While trying to free Dracula (John Carradine) from his vampirism, Edlemann gets infected by parasites in the count’s blood and mutates into a Mr. Hyde-style wackadoo. (He also becomes inexplicably fixated on revitalizing Frankenstein’s monster.) For the first half of the movie, Stevens (who bears a slight resemblance to Russell Crowe) comes off a bit stiff, but when he’s finally allowed to indulge his crazy side, he steals the show. (Jack Pierce’s make-up for Edlemann’s alter ego suggests Dr. Caligari.) The other monsters aren’t given quite as much to do: Desperate to rid himself of the curse of the pentagram, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr. doing his usual sweaty, hand-wringing shtick) beseeches Edlemann for help, but when the doctor’s remedy—mold spores, of all things—fails to offer immediate relief, Talbot attempts suicide by doing a swan dive off of a cliff. He survives, of course, and falls in love with Edlemann’s nurse, Miliza Morrelle (Martha O’Driscoll). (She isn’t deformed like Nina, so naturally she’s the one that gets to be romanced.) Dracula also has eyes for Miliza (well, her neck, anyway), and this might’ve made for an interesting love triangle if Kenton didn’t have the attention span of a grasshopper. As it is, the sun’s rays do Dracula in before anything really gets started. Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) is afforded even less screen time; he’s lucid just long enough to see the whole shithouse go up in flames. Worse, Talbot changes into the Wolf Man only twice here, and each time he’s reduced to clawing the air and baying at the moon. House of Dracula has all the right stuff (including an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob), but the filmmakers don’t seem to know how to have fun with any of it. A graveyard smash this monster mash ain’t. 

September 23, 2009 

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.