Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. What do we have for you here today? Oh, it's a spooky one from last year. It originally published 10-10-2025. Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. This one's a lot of fun. Universal horror monster mash here. Got a pretty great Frankenstein. Pretty great werewolf. This one's a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it. So let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

And this is Joe McCormick.

In this October episode of Weird House Cinema, we return once more to the classic universal horror pictures of yesteryear. And I picked this one in large part because It played here in Atlanta at the Plaza Theater as part of the Silver Screen Spook Show. And I'm a sucker for the chance to see a gorgeous-looking black-and-white horror film in a historic theater that likely showed this movie back in 1943. It's hard to get exact. I think you'd have to go in and look at newspaper clippings and so forth to figure out what exactly played there. But given that this was a major release and a popular film, there's a very good chance that it played at that particular theater back in the day.

If I had a time machine. Yeah. To see the either excitement or disappointment on the children's faces when we get to the closing credits. That's true.

I mean, the children who are wanting the monster mash that this movie offers up, they're going to have to wait a little bit. There's not a lot of mashing at first.

So do we say what the movie is yet? It's 1943's Frankenstein meets The Wolfman, one of the great later universal horror sequels.

Yes, yes. And note, it is Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. You know, it's not versus the Wolfman, battles the Wolfman. They meet. They're setting them up with each other. It's kind of like a My Dinner with Andre sort of situation, at least that's what it would seem to imply. So, yeah, to be clear, this is not generally considered among the best Universal Studios monster pictures. But it is, I believe, the first major film in which a monster from one movie meets, fights, or teams up with the monster from another film. this sort of monster mash has become just a staple of monster films. And this is where the tradition seems to kick off. Like, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman shambles so that Mothra versus Godzilla can run later on.

Yeah, yeah. Or Freddy versus Jason, for that matter. I mean, it started a long tradition, and this does seem to be the first big one. So... Yeah, my opinion is that while this movie is not the best of the best for Universal, it does not rise to the level of the really exquisite Frank sequels like Bride and Son, which are both great. If you think about it as something like a late Universal B movie, it's a pretty excellent example. And I love the atmosphere and the use of eerie sets. Particularly, there's one at the beginning that's like this windswept cemetery in the opening grave robbing scene i also really love the model and miniature work with the castle at the end and the you know the blowing up of the dam and the flood and all

that uh i i love lon chaney jr's tortured performance it's big and emotional and sometimes funny and and often uh you know quite empathic and the monster mash stuff the fight at the end while quite brief is a treat.

Yeah yeah i agree i look forward to discussing that sequence Um, so yeah, it, it is a lot of fun. Like we were talking about this off mic. Uh, I, I rewatched, or actually for me, I watched for the first time in full the Wolfman in preparation for this. Cause I don't think I'd ever watched the entire picture.

And while the Wolfman, the immediate predecessor, one of the two immediate predecessors to this film, while, while it is definitely the better movie, um, I don't think it would have been as fun a picture to talk about here on weird house cinema.

I agree. I mean, this confirms a, trend we have observed many times in the past, which is that the quality of a Weird House episode doesn't necessarily relate to the quality of the film. Some are just great to talk about whether or not they're actually all that good. But this movie is not bad. It's just the ways in which it's good are more limited.

Yeah. The critical reception was lukewarm. I'm to understand that it was a successful movie, though, from a business standpoint. And it certainly inspired people. You know, just the idea alone of Wolfman meeting Frankenstein, you know, it unleashes the gate for all of these monster matches to come. And I've read, I've actually mentioned this on the show before, but Spanish horror movie icon Paul Nashie was particularly inspired by this motion picture. Saw it at a young age, and it inspired him to eventually become all of the universal monsters himself. Because, yes, he did at some point or another play a version of all of the main universal monsters, with the exception of the Gill Man. I don't think Paul Massey ever played a Gill Man, but

everybody else, he definitely got in there and played. All the big gothic characters, for sure.

Yeah, we saw, of course, he created a full universal monster mash of his own in Assignment Terror. I think that was maybe not the only time he even did that in the era. And then there's another later... career one in a in a sleazy or nashy movie called howl of the devil which is essentially a slasher film but it involves a child imagining encounters with his deceased father who was a movie star and played all of the universal monsters so he gets to appear in ghostly form in the monster makeup of every one of them.

So even at a point where Spanish cinema especially was turning away from gothic horror and embracing slashers, he still managed to shoehorn gothic universal inspired horror into the picture anyway.

Yes, yes. All right.

So this is generally considered part of the universal monsters timeline, the universal Frankenstein timeline. So I figured it might make sense to just break down where we are with this picture in the sequence of films. Okay. Okay, so first of all, there came 1931's Frankenstein, James Whale, classic picture.

Yep.

And then came 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, arguably the best of the whole series, and this is one that we covered on Weird House Cinema several years back.

I would say beyond arguably for me. It's not just the best of the series, it's the best Universal monster movie ever made. It's like, you can't top it. Yeah. But one of the closest runners up, I think, is actually the next one in the series, Son of Frankenstein from 39, which is I saw for the first time when we were getting ready to cover it on the show.

And I thought was way better than I would have expected. So much better than really it had any right to be.

That's right. We talked about this film last year, and I think it just reran this Monday of this week. But yeah, this is the film that introduced Bela Lugosi's Igor character.

Wonderful.

Yeah, which is a wonderful plotting character that becomes increasingly important before he's forgotten. So more on him in just a minute. OK, so that was that was 39. Then came 1941's The Wolfman, which which we which we just alluded to. That, of course, starred Lon Chaney Jr. He's going to reprise that role in this picture. This movie was a big hit. And again, is a solid, moody werewolf story that is set in Cardiff. Yeah.

Now, at this point, there's no interaction whatsoever between the Frankenstein universe and the Wolfman universe. The first Wolfman movie is a standalone film. We're just mentioning it as one of the multiple streams that feeds into Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. Yeah.

I mean, nowadays we kind of know the trope, right? That you start doing the crossovers once you run out of things to do. And they had not quite run out of things to do, certainly with Frankenstein, just yet. Because in 42, they put out The Ghost of Frankenstein. This is not one I have seen in full, but I went ahead and pulled up the ending and watched it prior to coming in here, and I read about the plot. Basically, this film continues the Son of Frankenstein plot line, where we get another Dr. Frankenstein in the mix.

He's a brother or something?

Yeah, something like that. We have the monster again. confusingly, this time the monster is played by Lon Chaney Jr., who is just coming off of playing the Wolfman. And we had Bela Lugosi once more as Igor. And in this picture, there's like a plot to put a new brain in the monster. And Igor, who of course is suffering from various health problems at this point, manages plots to get his own brain put in the monster. So in the final moments of the film, The monster speaks in Bela Lugosi's voice and is talking about how he's going to seek vengeance on all his enemies and so forth.

But there's been some sort of a mishap. The blood, he didn't factor in the blood of the host and so forth. And so the monster is blind and the heroes are able to overcome the monster and the monster burns up in the castle. Or so we thought.

Okay.

Because then comes today's film, 1943's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. This is a movie that comes in and serves as a sequel of sorts to the previous two films. Though it's a lot easier, I would argue, to pick up the pieces of the ghost of Frankenstein than it is to pick up the pieces of the Wolfman. Because the Wolfman comes to.

A pretty.

Satisfying moment. gloomy close with, in a way, superstition triumphing over logic. And we have the character of Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, beaten to death with a silver cane by his own father. It's done. It's like Highlander 1 done at that point. But as with Highlander 1, Sometimes you just got to make a sequel and you've got to just find a way to make it work on the page.

This film today fits more comfortably as a Frankenstein sequel than it does as a Wolfman sequel. And you can especially tell that because of all the ways that it ignores elements of the Wolfman lore and like retcons things from the previous Wolfman film. And we'll talk about that more as we go on. But yeah, it works more as a Frankenstein sequel. But then confusingly, we don't get to the Frankenstein stuff until halfway through the movie.

Yeah, I think we have to put in a lot more legwork to bring the Wolfman back to life. And then the Wolfman is Larry Talbot. And even though he's dealing with miraculous or infernal resurrection here, he's still the most relatable human character in the picture. And therefore, we spend a lot of time with him. All right, the Frankenstein series would go three more films after this. House of Frankenstein in 44, House of Dracula in 45. Let's get Dracula into the mix on all this, right?

Sure, yeah.

People were paying for it. And then finally, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein in 48, which kind of finishes things out on an obvious, obviously comedic level. Bella's in that as well. I believe that's his last performance as Dracula. I've never actually watched it, but I'm to understand, like, you know, Bella gives it his all, and he doesn't, you know, doesn't... Give in to the hamminess of it.

He plays it straight.

I've considered checking out House of Frankenstein for Weird House before. I haven't gotten there yet, but I'm sure I'll watch it at some point.

Maybe we'll get to it next October.

Okay. So I was thinking about how some interesting themes are brought to light by the overlap of the two characters in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Something Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman have in common as distinct from the other universal monsters is is that they are the two monsters who both evoke pity. Both of them are dangerous. They're violent and they kill, but neither one is consciously malicious.

Larry Talbot, the character who becomes a werewolf in The Wolfman, is depicted as not in control of his actions when he transforms into the beast. So he wolfs out and then he later awakens in the morning to learn what he has done. and is filled with horror and remorse, but he has like no ability to stop it or control it.

Yeah. And Larry Talbot is portrayed in both films as basically a likable guy, you know, a really kind of a, an everyday guy because, um, ultimately, um, you know, we have a character actor playing the role. Uh, you know, he doesn't have that kind of like sharp jawed leading man vibe that, uh, various other leads have he feels very relatable and people like him the ladies like him he's he's easy going you know and uh except for the fact that he does turn into a murderous monster on a full moon.

Yeah but it's not by his choice right uh though i do recall in the original wolfman is something about he's like really really uh trying to date a lady who's already engaged but something like that uh but you know that maybe that's a more minor uh character flaw here And so that's Larry Talbot, very sympathetic, you know, pitiable character, even though he's a monster, it's not his fault. Meanwhile, Frankenstein's creature is, it seems very much also not his fault.

He is reanimated against his own will, as he says at the end of Bride of Frankenstein, we belong dead. Like he recognizes that he should not be. And he comes into the world as an innocent, only harming people at first by accident and then later out of desperation and rage after being persecuted. And so you could contrast this with the other universal horror villains of the era, such as Dracula, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, which are all much more vicious and devilish. I think it's an interesting choice that the first ever Monster Mash film decided to combine the two monsters that don't want to be monsters and would live in peace if they could.

Yeah, that's a great point. Even when you list Dracula, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man, like, the invisible man is kind of the most evil. Oh yeah.

Like it's a megalomaniac.

Yeah.

I mean, at least Dracula and the mummy, they have undead status. Like they're not completely human anymore, but the invisible man is just a man who has made himself invisible. And, uh, and, and I mean, that's, I think that that's ultimately is part of why he's so fascinating. It's the whole idea. Like if, if I were invisible as well, would I become, If I had some sort of a power that was brought upon me, would it change me like this as well?

Yeah, that one asks the question, what would you do if you could get away with anything?

But again, this movie is also interesting in just how forced the whole concept basically is. Because both titular monsters had effectively been killed off in their previous film. The movie has to first really put in the work to not only bring one of them back to life, but bring them both back to life. Get them in the same place at the same time. Arrange the plot so that they have to meet. They have to essentially work together.

And the plot entails the resurrection of one monster to kill the other, essentially. And as we'll discuss by the end of the film, you'll be wondering what really came of any of this.

Yeah, by the end of the film, I was very fuzzy on what exactly the mechanics were. Why are they training the energies from one monster? What exactly is the Doctor trying to do? We know there's what he says he's going to do, but then it's clear that his actual intentions are different. And I think it's never made clear really what they are, certainly with regard to Talbot.

We do get an idea of what he wants to do with regard to the monster. Right. Yeah.

And as we'll discuss, even though it is cinematically treated as a victory at the end, I really have some serious questions about whether there was any victory at all. But we'll come back to all that.

Also, one thing I just have to mention at the top here is the main character of the Wolfman in this movie, his name is Larry Talbot. I think it's almost certain that at least once in this episode, I'm going to accidentally call him Lyle Talbot, which is the name of a prolific mid-20th century American actor. The reason I would say Lyle Talbot is that I'm aware of him because he ended up repeatedly collaborating with Ed Wood by virtue of the fact that Talbot by his own admission never once in his entire career turned down a job offer so if you've got a movie.

He'll be in it all right joe uh do you have an elevator pitch for this one it.

Is can't medical science find a way to kill me like what's a guy got to do to get dead around here.

All right let's listen to some of that trailer audio but he doesn't understand there's a curse upon me I'd change into a wolf.

Frank! Frank!

Listen to me, Frank. I saw my father become obsessed by his power. He died a horrible death.

There's no need for us all to storm after her.

She'll come in if I ask her.

Why should we treat her so fancy?

She's a Frankenstein! Frank!

All right. If you want to go watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, well, it's widely available wherever you get your Universal Studios monster movies. You want to watch them streaming. You want to watch them on Blu-ray, on DVD, VHS, Laserdisc. what have you, there is a way out there. This one has been released so many times in so many different formats. All right, let's get into the people behind the picture here, starting with the director. This one was directed by Roy William Neal. He lived 1887 through 1946, Irish-born American film director, best remembered for this film, as well as a whole bunch of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies.

He directed, I think, most of them, like 11 films from 1943 through 1946. His other movies include 1934's Black Moon, starring Fay Wray, 1934's The Ninth Guest, and 1935's The Black Room, starring Boris Karloff.

Black Moon and The Black Room?

Yeah, that's right. I don't think these films are at all related, but he did direct both of them. I think Black Moon is like a voodoo picture. All right. And the screenplay on this one is once more the work of Kurt Siadnik, who lived 1902 through the year 2000. We discussed him previously on Weird House as he wrote the screenplay for 1946's The Beast with Five Fingers, as well as another movie.

Oh, Creature with the Atom Brain.

That's right. So Siadmek was a German-born novelist, and director who left Germany for first first for the United Kingdom and then for the United States due to concerns over rising anti-semitism under the Nazis his German output was already pretty successful prior to this including a sci-fi film that I haven't seen but it involves a sort of an aircraft carrier base and titled FP1 Doesn't Answer. And he did British war thrillers and some comedies, and then he struck it big with his 1941 screenplay for The Invisible Man Returns and his original screenplay for 41's The Wolfman.

He went on to write tons of screenplays, let's say including this one, also a 1943 film titled.

Oh, I didn't realize what you were getting at for a second. I walked with a zombie. That's right. So Rocky went in on two songs for two C. Audmech scripts.

That's right.

I mean, this guy was prolific. Son of Dracula in 43, House of Frankenstein in 44, and many more. He also wrote the 1942 sci-fi novel Donovan's Brain, which has been adapted three different times as The Lady and the Monster in 44, Donovan's Brain in 53, and The Brain in 62. Now, I found it notable that multiple films based on his work or screenplays that he wrote for motion pictures concern mind or brain transference. Most famously, Donovan's Brain and its various adaptations, but also 1940's Black Friday, which, by the way, stars Karloff and Lugosi, and I think is otherwise like a crime thriller, but it has brain or mind transference in it. And then a 1970 film titled Hauser's Memory.

And The really interesting part about Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman is that you wouldn't be able to guess this from watching the film, but this movie was also supposed to feature a mind or brain transference plot as well.

Between who? Between Frankenstein and the Wolfman or somebody else?

No, no, no. So this would not be original to this picture, but it's picking up the pieces from the end of 1942's The Ghost of Frankenstein, in which, again, Lugosi's Igor... manages to get his own brain transplanted into the body of the monster, again, played in that film by Lon Chaney Jr., before the castle gets burned up.

So in this film, the monster, who will now be played by Lugosi, originally had dialogue spoken by Lugosi, because it's not just Frankenstein's monster. It is supposed to be Igor's brain in the monster's body. And so he was blind. That's why In this film, we'll see Frankenstein's monster walking with arms outstretched, which became kind of like a cartoon stereotype or trope of Frankenstein's monster. And that's where it comes from, this film. But you wouldn't know this from the film because they don't mention the blindness. They certainly don't mention the Igor's brain plot. Like that's just completely removed along with all of Lugosi's dialogue.

That would make sense. And That would also kind of spoil some of the themes I was talking about if they had stuck with the Igor's brain thing, though I guess you could still assume that. They just don't discuss it in this movie. So I was talking about how Frankenstein is essentially an innocent, but Igor is not an innocent.

Igor is a malicious, sadistic killer. In fact, it's part of his character in Son of Frankenstein. that he was already once hanged for his crimes but survived the hanging, putting him in a kind of legal limbo where he couldn't be punished again. Yeah.

You know, obviously we're speculating here about a version of this film that didn't survive. But I don't know, maybe Igor is more to be pitied in this film because he's kind of like really written himself into a corner here. And it's like, oh, well, I'm stuck in the body of a blind monster that apparently can't die either.

But as you said, apart from the fact that the monster in this film is being played by Bela Lugosi, there's nothing about it that would indicate it as Igor. Like he never identifies with Igor and the characters don't discuss this.

Yeah.

You've got to have, you have to have read about that or heard about that somewhere else. It is not, it is not a part of the picture experience here.

Okay. All right.

Lon Chaney Jr.

Once more. Yeah.

Plays Lawrence Talbot, the wolf man. Lon Chaney Jr. lived 1906 through 1973. Second generation horror film icon, son of the legendary Lon Chaney. Uh, Lon Chaney himself lived 1883 through 1930. Um, the man of a thousand faces, right? Uh, across four decades of cinema, Lon Chaney Jr. 's role, uh, as Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, easily his most famous role and one that in many ways just ends up defining his career. Um, In many ways, you could even argue, I would say, that Lon Chaney Jr. becomes more famous than his father. I mean, he is the guy mentioned in Werewolves of London, after all. And he is one of the key... He's on the Mount Rushmore of universal monsters.

He is the wolfman, now and forever.

That's right. It is not a woo, I saw Lon Chaney Sr. walking with the Queen.

Yeah. Not to take anything away from Lon Chaney Sr. 's career, obviously, a very important figure in his own era. But I would say overall, more people are going to be familiar with Lon Chaney Jr. So he apparently had a pretty rough childhood. He was discouraged from entering show business by his father and instead went into business, only to begin his own acting career after his father's death from throat cancer. At first, he acted under his own name, steadily got larger parts in serials and action movies. He also did stunt work to pay the bills. And after some bigger independent roles in the mid-30s, Ultimately, Universal Studios signs him and they they say, hey, you know, we're going to sign into this contract and put you in

some movies. But what about we what about let's go ahead and call you Lon Chaney Jr. Because that is that is not his birth name. Birth name actually Crichton Toll Chaney. And so his earlier appearances, he's billed as such. But Universal's like, nope, you're the son of Lon Chaney. You're Lon Chaney Jr. OK, so at this point, he begins appearing in all manner of films and He even plays Lenny in a 1939 adaptation of Mice and Men.

But he didn't actually act in a horror film until 1941, when he appeared in Man-Made Monster and, of course, The Wolfman. And this film's The Wolfman success and legendary status, this propels him into horror icon territory pretty quickly, with subsequent horror films including, well, The Ghost of Frankenstein, which we've mentioned, in which he plays the monster. 1942's The Mummy's Tomb, in which he plays the mummy. Then he's back for Frankenstein Meets Wolfman. Then he's in Son of Dracula in 43, playing Count Alucard, who I guess is Dracula Jr.

He does not have vampire energy.

He doesn't. He really has a great, like I say, I watched part of Ghost of Frankenstein, and he has a great Frankenstein's monster face. You know, he's a big guy.

Yeah.

And so, you know, he really embodies the monster rather well. As we'll discuss, I think a lot, he embodies the monster well. far better than Bela Lugosi. Let's see, he played more mummies in two 1944 movies, The Mummy's Ghost and The Mummy's Curse. Let's see, 44's House of Frankenstein is Larry Talbot once more. 45's House of Dracula, Talbot again.

And then he's also in 48's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I think he's just billed as the Wolfman in that, but I guess it's less important who the Wolfman is. And of course, that's the final movie in the classic Universal Frankenstein series. And from here, the list goes on, but a few notable horror entries to mention include 1959's The Alligator People.

Oh, Alligator Persons in the Bog and Fog.

Yeah, yeah, another Rocky Erickson reference. Another one is 1963's The Haunted Palace.

Oh, I've got that one on disc, but I haven't watched it yet. Is Corman Poe, is Vincent Price in that one?

He is, yes. He plays Charles Dexter Ward. This is the one that is, they're giving it the Poe treatment, Call it Edgar Allen Poe's The Haunted Palace, but it's actually, to some extent, based on an H.P.

Lovecraft story. That's funny.

Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Yeah.

Let's see. Then there's 67's Hillbillies in a Haunted House, which I think I watched a Rift version of that. And, ooh, 1967's Spider Baby. If you haven't seen this one, this is a great proto-Texas Chainsaw Massacre film directed by Jack Hill. He plays the patriarch of a killer hillbilly family. But with some interesting twists, basically like their two daughters in particular, one of which likes to play spider.

Oh, I haven't seen that one. It's good.

I recommend it. I think I watched that one on Criterion Channel. His other films of note, just to pull out another couple. These are non horror films, but he was in 1952's High Noon and also 1958's The Defiant Ones. So again, this is a ridiculous movie in so many ways, but Lon Chaney Jr. 's performance as Larry Talbot, tragic, cursed werewolf turned wandering, immortal, seeking death, is easily the most commanding performance in the picture. And it gives us, weirdly, the most relatable character, despite his very unrelatable circumstances. Again, clearly a gifted character actor, charismatic and relatable. And we get to see him employ all of his talents in a lead role here quite nicely.

Yeah. Yeah. Despite the fact that, as you say, his main character struggle is, oh, I can't get death in me. But he he is really good in the role. And I can't remember if we if you already mentioned this, I apologize. But I think it is strange that I was reading he was originally when they're planning to make this movie. They were originally going to have him play both roles, Frankenstein's monster. and the wolf man. And then they were like, eh, no, that would be too difficult.

So maybe he'll just play Frankenstein's monster because he had done that also in Ghost of Frankenstein. And then they were like, no, he'll just be the wolf man. So this was like the third option for who Lon Chaney Jr. would be in the film. I think it's the right choice, though.

Yeah. I mean, you can't have I mean, he's the only guy who can play Larry Talbot. So it had to be. Now, if he played the monster as well, I mean, that could work. But again, setting up this film, the whole idea was that the monster would speak with Bela Lugosi's voice.

So.

What if the monster was played by Bela Lugosi? Like, on paper, that makes sense.

Oh, should we talk about Bela Lugosi now?

Yeah, we're already talking about him. Let's talk about Bela. So, yeah, Bela Lugosi. We've talked about him multiple times on the show already, with 1882 through 1956. Here playing the role, or a version of it, that he allegedly passed on back in 1931. I'm not sure if there's 100% certainty on any of this, you know, about Film myth-making goes, and one person says one thing, one says the other.

But the story generally goes that riding high on the success of Dracula, he wanted the part of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, for himself. And he didn't want to play a mute monster as the monster appeared in the script at that time. And so it just didn't come together.

So when you say Frankenstein, he wanted to play the doctor, the creator. Okay, yes. But that didn't happen either.

I think at the time, the story is that he considered the monster part beneath his abilities.

You know, I adore Bela Lugosi, but somehow I think this is one of the weakest performances of his that I've seen. Something about, he seems to have not found his rhythm or ever landed on the right posture as the Frankenstein monster here. And this really makes me appreciate all the more how extraordinary Boris Karloff's performance is. Karloff in the role is not, to quote the film Ed Wood, all grunting and makeup. He's bringing a lot to the performance and you really appreciate it when you see somebody else, even somebody as wonderful of an actor as Bela Lugosi, try to do the role and I think sort of fail.

Worth flagging again, however, that despite his turn as the monster being a low point I think Bella still did play one of the best villains ever in the Frankenstein universe. I mean, there's actually a lot of great competition because you got Septimus Pretorius in Bri. That's an all-time great villain.

But right up there with Septimus Pretorius is Bela Lugosi as Igor in Son of Frankenstein. Again, one of my favorite Universal films and my favorite role in that film.

Yeah, I agree with all that. Granted, again, we don't get to see the performance of And the character here, as it was originally intended, the Igor monster. But yeah, Lugosi's monster just always feels awkward to me in this picture. It's just nothing. It just doesn't click for me for some reason.

Yeah, he does have some great moments in close up on his face.

That is true. Yeah, I'll give him that.

But the but the the full physicality of the performance doesn't quite work.

All right, let's look at some of the, we've covered the big hitters here. Let's talk about some of the supporting human roles here. So we do have a descendant of Frankenstein showing back up. And this is the character Baroness Elsa Frankenstein. And she is played by Ilona Massey, who lived 1910 through 1974. Hungarian-American film stage and radio performer, best remembered for this film, it would seem, her only true horror movie, but she also starred in 1942's Invisible Agent.

This was a comedy thriller in which the invisible man's grandson battles Nazis. Peter Lorre co-starred in it, but that alone has not been enough to get me to watch it just yet.

That is an interesting premise.

Yeah, I don't know. It's like, yeah, I don't know. I'm horror comedies of this era. I'm, I'm wary of.

It's not her fault. I would blame it more on the writing, but I would say her presence in this film is largely curious. She is often kind of standing around in a scene where, uh, you would think she would be having more of a reaction to what's going on, but she doesn't.

Yeah. I feel like, especially since she is the Frankenstein character in this picture, uh, I, I wanted her to be more involved in everything. Um, I guess she feels a little more passive than she could have been. Like she's not strapping on the goggles herself, if I remember correctly.

I mean, she does go at the end and like sort of short circuit all the machinery in the lab. But yeah, that's basically the one moment like that.

Otherwise, her role in this movie seems to be just to light up the screen as a porcelain starlet. Like she's always wearing like white and she has like basically white hair, super white skin. So she, amid all the gloom and the grayness, it really feels like she almost has like an angelic presence, despite being a Frankenstein. And yeah, she also, another important role she has is to be physically carried around like an unconscious bride by the monster at one point. This is teased on the poster. And for once, we actually get it in the film. As we've discussed many times, there's so many movies Where the poster art features the monster carrying a woman around and it doesn't actually happen. Here we get it. Monster bridal

carry certified.

That is true. True advertising in this case. Also, this character does indirectly contribute one of the most unintentionally funny moments of the movie. And it's when Lon Chaney Jr. is digging through the burned remnants of the ruined Frankenstein castle. And he identifies a new lead in his detective work by finding the glamour photo of Ilona Massey autographed as like Elsa Frankenstein to my father. But it's like a Hollywood photo. She's like posing in a sequined dress. All right.

Let's see. Other supporting characters. We have Patrick Knowles playing Dr. Frank Mannering. He's more than supporting. He's an important character.

Major in terms of plot developments, but also feels very much like a rando who wandered into the story. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, in a way, shouldn't the Baroness be doing all the things that he's doing?

Yeah.

I feel like she would if she were a male character. Yeah. But they were just switching it up and they're like, oh, well, the female character can't actually be the mad scientist.

It would have been a lot better if she had been. That could have worked. But instead, no, we have this character. Like, oh, remember this random guy who didn't really make an impression from the first act? He's going to do some mad science now. Yeah.

So the actor here, he lived 1911 through 1995. He'd previously appeared in The Wolfman, though in a different role. He also played Will Scarlet in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood. So he was a certified swashbuckler. His other credits include 1941's How Green Was My Valley. 1942 is The Strange Case of Dr.

R.X.

Prescription.

Okay.

And then 1973 is Terror in the Wax Museum.

Okay. He's very smooth in this film. Do you notice how smooth his skin is? Extreme baby face.

That's true. That's true. Let's see. Lionel Atwell is back in this one. He's in a number of these universal horror movies. This time in a more reduced role. He played the inspector in Son of Frankenstein, you know, with the, he had the artificial arm and got to really eat up fairly ample screen time and had some great scenes. Here, he plays the mayor. So he has much less to do, but by God, Lionel Atwell is going to act his heart out in any scene you get him in. So he really chews it up. And there are a few scenes where he's standing amid other villagers kind of looking up at things occurring, like castles exploding and whatnot. And he's the most animated of the bunch.

Oh, yes. Which is also in contrast to the way this character is written, who's just the calming voice of reason as other goings on are happening. Like, he'll literally be in scenes where he's standing there as other characters are discussing the planning of a terrorist plot. And he's just like, oh, you don't mean any of what you're saying.

And then he walks away.

Yeah.

But he, yeah, he was in a bunch of these old films and was in numerous things. Frankenstein movies. In fact, he was in Ghost of Frankenstein previously. I believe I could be mistaken here, but I think he is the doctor that ends up betraying Frankenstein by helping Igor put his brain in the monster.

Oh, yeah. Well, I would like to see Lionel Atwell do more villain role. So I'm going to have to check out Ghost next. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm very interested based on all of the crazy choices it seems to make.

Yeah.

All right, let's see. We also have another returning player from the Universal Horror franchise. Dwight Frye is back. Dwight Frye, you'll remember, played Renfield opposite Lugosi in Dracula and pops up in bits, sometimes almost invisible roles in other pictures. Here he plays a character named Rudy, who's just kind of one of the vocal townspeople, right?

Yeah, he's a villager. It feels almost like a cameo. He's only got a few lines.

But when he does speak, though, he has that That signature Dwight Frye kind of live wire energy. So, yeah, I really like it. All right. We have another returning actor reprising her role as the wise Roma woman, Maleva. We have Maria Ospinskaya, who lived 1860. 1949. She played this character in The Wolfman, a Russian actress who started out in silent film and then late in her career played a lot of older woman roles in Hollywood. Two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress for 1937's Dodsworth and 1940's Love Affair. Her only other horror film was 1942's The Mystery of Marie Roget, which I've not read the original story. This is an Edgar Allan Poe story, a sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Does

it have gorillas in it? I don't know. I would hope. It's like doing a Dracula sequel without vampires, right? Yeah, totally. OK, one more character. This is another. This film has a number of these where the character is not much different. It seems to be just a background side character, but it ends up being very pivotal to the plot. And that is the character Vazik, the innkeeper, played by Rex Evans, who lived 1903 through 1969. This guy was in various films at the time. A heavyset actor, did a lot of like, you know, heavyset character roles. Played Herman Goring in the 1943 anti-Axis Powers comedy, Nazi Nuisance.

I could see that.

Yeah, I think it's one that was like positioning the leaders of the Axis powers as like three stooges. I am not putting this on the watch list, but interesting connection for this actor. His other credits, though, include 1940s The Philadelphia Story, 1940s The Invisible Man Returns, and Hitchcock's Suspicion in 1941. All right, I'll just mention in passing that Jack P. Pierce, the monster makeup master, returns once more to do the makeup here. He worked on 1928's The Man Who Laughs, 31's Dracula, 32's The Mummy, 33's The Invisible Man, 41's The Wolfman, and so forth. So, you know, everything, all the makeup looks pretty darn good, especially the Wolfman makeup, as we'll discuss. And then the

music comes to us from Hans J. Salter, born 1896, died in 1994, Austrian-American film composer. His most celebrated scores or scores that he worked on include The Wolfman from 41, Scarlet Street from 45. And he's also he's not credited, but he's one of like three different uncredited composers on The Creature from the Black Lagoon from 54. He's one of these composers who is oftentimes he's either uncredited or he's one of two or three different composers whose work was used. And sometimes it's stock music. But he himself was a six time Oscar nominee himself.

All right. Are you ready to talk about the plot?

Let's do it.

So the title and opening credits play over a chemistry laboratory set with a bunch of bubbling flasks and beakers pouring fog all over the table. And I think this opening imagery feels like an odd fit for most of the runtime of the film, because while unrestrained scientific research is a major theme of the original Frankenstein series, It does not really become a major theme of this movie until the very end, until right at the end. The first half is all Wolfman stuff, and there's very little laboratory work until the climax.

Yeah, but it's like a glass with dry ice in it, you know, getting the smoke in it. You want to reach up and grab it off the screen and take a sip.

It does look nice, yeah. So the action opens on a lonely cemetery at night, and I... said this earlier, but I love this opening set. The atmosphere is wonderful. There's a bright full moon and banks of mist pour across the sky. Down on the ground, we can see it must be late autumn or winter because the trees and the shrubs are bare. They've got black limbs casting shadows in the moonlight. The cemetery is surrounded by this ancient tumble-down wall of stone, which has wrought iron spikes and marble ornaments on top. And then on one of these gateside flourishes, there is a raven perched, just cawing.

So the wind rattles the tree branches and it blows these little dead leaves through the air like confetti. And we see a bronze placard on the stone gate engraved with the words, Here rest the dead of Lanwelly. And Lanwelly, viewers would probably remember at the time this movie came out, is the fictional village in Wales that is the setting of The Wolfman. And I think later became the setting of a bunch of horror stories and films. So up the hillside path to the cemetery come two men. They're both kind of leaning and staggering as they walk. One carries a lantern, the other a shovel. These guys do not feel like the first string of the grave robbing team.

They seem a little incompetent, perhaps under the influence. And they approach a big old mausoleum in the cemetery bearing the name Talbot.

Well, you know, they're not robbing graves because things were working out well for them elsewhere in life.

You know? Yeah. Now, we've sort of already covered this, but just to get the backstory straight, again, Talbot is the name of the family in the original film, The Wolfman. The main character, played by Lon Chaney Jr., is Larry Talbot, who comes back to visit his ancestral estate in Wales after being away for many years. He gets bitten, I think, on the chest one night by a werewolf. And the curse is transferred to him. You know, you probably know the general outline of the story from there. Wakes up in the morning. What have I done? But worth noting is that at the end of The Wolfman, Larry Talbot is dead, dead, dead, beaten to death with a silver headed cane by his own father, played by Claude Rains.

Yeah, it's sad. It's grim.

And again.

It's not a moment that leaves you wondering, I wonder what will happen to Larry Talbot. How will his adventures continue? No, it seems done.

So the two grave robbers climb through the transom over the door to the mausoleum. They head inside and they survey the tombs, eventually coming to the one they're looking for. The shorter grave robber reads the inscription out loud, saying, Lawrence Stuart Talbot, who died at the youthful age of 31. R.I.P. Ooh, man, when viewing this, this is really one of those I am older than Homer Simpson moments. Larry Talbot does not read as younger than I am now. To be fair, Lon Chaney Jr. was a bit older than the character, but still younger than me. Wild. Wow. I assume many people your age, my age, or anywhere in between would have a similar reaction. He seems like a more mature fellow. Yes.

It was a different time. Anyway, so the grave robbers here crack the vault with a chisel while discussing what they're looking for. Rumor around the village is that Talbot was buried with a big wad of cash, a gold watch, and a ring. And they say it's a sin to bury good money when it could help people. The taller one says, what do you think it'll look like after so many years? And the other one says, just bones and an empty skull. So the lid pops open and they peer inside and the body appears to be covered in some kind of dried herb. They pull like crispy branches of this herb off the body. And one of them recognizes what it is. It is wolf's bane. And then the lead grave robber freezes as if startled. And

he begins to recite a poem he knows by heart. Even a man who's pure at heart and says his prayers by night. may become a wolf when the wolf's bane blooms and the moon is full and bright. The face of the body lying in the tomb is then uncovered, and it is clearly not just bones and an empty skull. The body is fleshy and quick. One of the robbers mutters that he looks to be merely sleeping, and despite this, the smaller thief gets to work. He lifts Talbot's dead hand and wrenches a ring from his finger, observing it in the Talbot stirs and we see his long fingernails, which they're press on nails, aren't they? He's got sharp, long fingernails, uh, revealing he is not dead. And he reaches up with one hand and snatches the arm of

the smaller thief. Uh, note that at this point he is fully human looking. There was no Wolfman makeup in this scene, except for we see the long nails and the thief cries for help. He drops his lantern to the ground that starts a fire. The second grave robber panics and abandons his partner escaping through the transom over the door and running away through the graveyard while the wind shakes the trees. And I think, okay, good start, strong opening scene. The writing and the acting don't especially sing, but they're good enough. And the set design and cinematography are wonderful. So it's a really good mood at the beginning.

Yeah. I love the sequence. And it was ultimately rather, um, uh, rather a revelation, uh, concerning other werewolf films that I've seen that, you know, all were clearly influenced by this and The Wolfman. On one level, I mentioned Paul Nashie earlier, and we previously discussed 1980's Night of the Werewolf on Weird House Cinema. This movie basically opens the same way.

Grave robbers come to the tomb, this time of Waldemar Daninsky, Nashie's werewolf character. They're going to rob the grave, but when they open it up, werewolf gets them. Though in the Nashie picture, the werewolf is already like fully transformed and it's a good bit more terrifying, you know.

He is RIPing in wolf mode. Yes.

And then this scene also solves another puzzle from another werewolf film.

And.

That is why does a werewolf emerge from a casket in 1965's La Loba? In my opinion, anyway, excellent female werewolf film from Mexico. We see the werewolf, you know, arising fully transformed out of a casket. And in that episode, we were discussing, we were like, why is she getting out of a casket? And I think this is probably the reason, because that movie, like a lot of werewolf movies, was inspired by Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.

That does make a lot of sense, because typically the werewolf is not understood as an undead type of character. So why would it be coming out of a grave? It's not dead. This is a living person who transforms. But yeah, if it's a callback to this scene... where the werewolf has been assumed dead and lying, you know, laying.

I think the implication is that all of the wolfsbane piled up on top of him is some kind of talisman that has like suppressed his power and kept him down there. Did you read it the same way?

I guess so.

Yeah.

Like, you know, one of the big problems with the plot of this picture is that Talbot is like, I wish I could die. There's got to be a way to make me die. And Despite the fact that he very clearly died in the first film and we had, you know, lore that established that werewolves could die. And then it also just seems like, isn't this something you could maybe manage? Like, I don't know, shackle yourself whenever there's a full moon or, you know, have somebody lay a bunch of wolfsbane on you and you can just kind of like cryo sleep. through the full moons. It seems like there might be another way forward here.

It really does. But the film, it just elides these details. Don't worry about that. We got a plot to pursue.

It's just a film. Yeah.

Anyway, what happens next is we cut to a nearby city. I didn't know where this was at first, but I think this is supposed to be already in Cardiff, the big city in Wales, where a policeman is patrolling an empty street at night and he comes across the unconscious body of Lon Chaney Jr., collapsed on the cobblestones with a gaping head wound. And then we cut to some time later in a hospital where Talbot is recovering in bed with bandages around his head. His surgeon, a Dr. Mannering, played by, again, a very baby-faced Patrick Knowles, enters the ward accompanied by a police inspector named Owen. They are informed that not only is the patient recovering well from surgery, he is already conscious and talking about And this is

quite unexpected given the severity of his head wound and the procedure required to fix it. So the doctor and the inspector go to see him. Talbot's awake, but at this point very soft-spoken and tentative. He says that he feels no pain at the moment, but he's confused. He doesn't know where he is, and to his distress, he doesn't remember how he got there. Talbot gives them his name, and the doctor and inspector leave to go see what they can find out. So Owen phones police in Lanwellie to inquire about Lawrence Talbot, and they inform him with certainty that yes, Lawrence Talbot is from Lanwellie, but he is also dead. He died four years ago. So this is supposed to be four years since the events of

the first film. Also, I will say that the inside of the Lanwellie police station does not look like a police station. It looks like a beer hall. It's got these stone arches, long tables, and big roaring fireplaces. And then one of the policemen is pumping air into the tire of a bicycle in the middle of the room.

Seems like outdoor work, but... Anyway, of course, Inspector Owen concludes that Talbot is an imposter, but Dr. Manoring convinces the police to hold off on interrogating him any further, you know, until he's recovered. But unfortunately, before that can happen, there is a full moon.

Something about the pacing and the sense of time in this film, but it feels like there are roughly... Four full moons a week in the universe of Frankenstein meets the Wolfman.

Full moons are constantly happening.

And randomly. You don't know when they're going to occur. You can't possibly prepare for it.

That does seem like part of the plot. You don't know when it will be a full moon, which is not how it works. Yeah.

Larry's like, oh, geez, when's the next full moon? He's like, oh, it's right now.

Yeah. So Talbot is lying in his hospital bed and the moonlight falls on him through a large window at the end of the room. His eyes go glassy. And then as he lies there in his bed, staring into space, we begin to see the changes. And this is the classic Wolfman transformation where a sequence of different shots fade into one another. And in each one, he has more of the Wolfman makeup applied. So he quickly grows a beard.

The beard creeps in from his jaw toward the center of his face until his head and face are fully covered in dark hair. His teeth turn into piercing canines. His nose becomes somewhat canine, too. Though, to be clear, this is not the long snout kind of werewolf makeup. We've talked about these differences in other episodes in the past.

But the wolfman makeup is relatively humanoid, flat-faced, just with lots of hair, claws, and fangs.

Yeah, and I think I've probably said this before, but I'm done with snouted werewolves.

I don't want it anymore.

It's the wolfman slash wolfwoman look. Uh, that's what I'm into. That's, that's, that's what I like to see. And so, yeah, the makeup here looks incredible. I mean, you could maybe critique it and say, well, maybe the nose looks a little picky. Um, there's, but you still can't take much away from it. It is the classic Wolfman look. All other Wolfmans, Wolfmen, Wolfwomen, Wolf people exist in the shadow of this creation.

Yeah.

One more note I want to add about this transformation scene is that we've all seen sloppy versions of this effect. Or I don't know, if your cinematic diet is like us, you've seen sloppy versions of this kind of transformation. But it's really smooth here. Looks great. And one thing that was pointed out by Shane Morton at the Silver Scream Spook Show is that the pillow that his head is on for the transformation was made out of porcelain. Because you have to film, stop, apply makeup, film, stop, apply makeup.

And you can't have the pillow changing underneath Lon Chaney Jr. 's head. So you have a porcelain pillow there behind his head, which I thought was very fascinating.

That's a good solution. I wouldn't have guessed that by looking at it. But once the transformation is complete, we see the Wolfman on the loose in Cardiff, tearing through the city streets in the dark, sort of doing parkour. Jumping up on top of crates and these cotton bales piled up in the street. He attacks a policeman, snarling and grabbing him by the throat, and then we can see in shadow as the Wolfman drags the body away down an alley.

And he's really scary and intimidating looking, same as in The Wolfman. I saw this film with my family, and afterwards my wife was asking me, she's like, do you think people who saw this movie originally, were they scared by it? Did they find this particular film scary? And I don't know. Based on some aspects of the plot, I could see an argument for... for it being not that scary. But I don't know. These scenes with the Wolfman, I think, hold up really well.

Some of the later stuff, especially the big climax, by that point, it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be scary. That's like fun mode. At this point, it has turned into Godzilla versus King Kong.

Once the monsters are fighting each other, you're safe. It's like, yes, have them fight each other and I will slip.

Out the back. So the next morning, the hospital staff find Talbot lying face down sideways on his bed. He's kind of dirty. His hair is must. Bandages are missing. And the window is hanging open. And he suddenly awakes and asks Manoring, his doctor, to call the police. He says, because I am a murderer. So Talbot has no control over his actions when he is in wolf mode. And I think there is some question about whether he remembers anything when he wakes up. I recall from the original Wolfman, Rob, correct me if I'm wrong, that he does not remember anything when he wakes up.

Right.

But maybe what's going on here is he's just putting the pieces together based on what happened in the first movie, not based on memories of the previous night.

He has a lot to figure out here.

Yeah.

Like, even if he is remembering, oh, yeah, I'm a werewolf, he's probably thinking, didn't I die?

Yeah.

So anyway, they call up Inspector Owen, but Manoring convinces, or he tries to convince Talbot that he is not a murderer. He says, true, there was a constable killed last night, but that was several streets away and he was killed by a wild animal. Talbot says, that's just it. I turn into an animal. I love that.

I did laugh at that line.

That was great.

Nothing on his delivery, but the line itself was pretty funny.

Yeah. Manoring explains it all the way. He's like, no, no, no, you're not a murderer. You're suffering from a delusion. So what's a guy got to do to get arrested for murder around here? Anyway, when Owen arrives, Talbot desperately recaps the major events of the first film. He was bitten by a wolf on the chest. Though it wasn't a wolf, it was a man, a werewolf. Talbot killed the original werewolf in a fight. He beat it to death with the silver cane. But then he began himself to transform at night and roam hill and dale in a bloodthirsty rage beyond his control. And then he says, Ask Maliva, you know, she'll tell you. This is, again, a character from the first movie. It is the mother of the werewolf,

played by Bela Lugosi, that turned Talbot, and she's going to be back in the sequel. And I think the werewolf character in the first movie is not only played by Bela Lugosi, but is named Bela?

Yes, you're correct, yes.

Then Talbot gets really bad news. Owen says, come on, tell us your real name. You can't be Lawrence Talbot. He died four years ago. ago. And this leads Talbot to realize that he has the curse of immortality. Because he is a werewolf, he cannot die. Now, I recall several reviewers saying that this movie has serious plot holes or at least inconsistencies and premises that were not really reconciled with the events of the previous films. Unless I'm missing something, this does seem to be the big one, or at least a major one. It is clearly established in The Wolfman that you can kill a werewolf. You need a silver weapon. Not only is this said by the characters, it actually happens multiple times in the film.

The premise is proven. Yeah, yeah.

Like, there are multiple places in... in The Wolfman where he's like, I just killed a wolf. And they're like, no, you killed a werewolf. Like, yes, you can kill a werewolf. Otherwise, there'd be like six of them in this movie.

Right, yeah. But then a major theme of this movie is that there is no known way to kill a werewolf. There is no way to do it. And Talbot's desperation at the discovery that he cannot die is what sends him on the collision course with Frankenstein, with the Frankenstein lineage. So... This is so big that it feels like it can't just be an oversight. It seems like the sequel appears to have deliberately chosen to ignore a major plot device established in the first movie for the sake of character pathos.

You know, the hopeless frustration of Talbot's search for a way to die. That's like the main emotion in the film.

Yeah, I mean, I guess on one hand, I come back to Highlander 1, is that when a movie wraps up so succinctly, you have to break something in order to make a sequel work. And maybe that's what's going on. But also, I mean, in turn, like, what is the most interesting choice in bringing this character back? There's an argument to be made that, I mean, we're talking about it.

You're turning him into a sort of another iconic creature of fantasy, like the undying wanderer. Someone who maybe wanted him, well, not in Talbot's case, but in the mythic sense, it's sometimes someone who wanted to live forever and then realizes that that was a ridiculous wish and now they wish they could take it back.

Yeah. But Talbot is purely pitiable and tragic. Like, he didn't ask for this. It just happened to him by accident. Terrible fate.

Yeah.

But it is fitting that he should be facing all this confusion and existential dread because it's very much the nature of the character in The Wolfman as well.

Right. So Talbot is put in a straight jacket and carried away by orderlies. He's fighting all the way. And then Mannerling and the inspector have this bizarre exchange that I can't really decode. They go back to his office and Owen says, You mean to say that Talbot actually experienced that murder last night? And then this is what Manoring says.

Hmm.

So what is he alleging happened?

I can't help but think this is sort of plot artifact from the first film. Because the first film, I understand that Siobhan's The Wolfman script originally left it rather vague as to whether we were dealing with an actual monster or just purely clinical lycanthropy. So somebody who thought they were turning into a wolf and was maybe murdering even thinking they were a wolf. But then they change it and they realize, no, moviegoers want to see a wolfman and we're going to give it to them. But the film still plays with this idea a bit, this sort of logic and superstition butting heads about what's occurring.

So this just seems like maybe another callback to that theme.

Yeah. And so Manoring clearly thinks that Talbot is a clinical lycanthrope, a man under the delusion that he is a wolf. But it sounds like he's implying here that that also gives him supernatural powers. Anyway, the inspector and the doctor decide to take a road trip up to Lanwellie to figure out more about Talbot's backstory. So they go to the family mausoleum and the cemetery from the opening scene, and they find that the door has been broken down from the inside. They also find Talbot's coffin empty and the body of a local vagrant lying on the floor of the crypt, dead by way of a severed jugular. They also hear stories from the local constable about a wild animal who killed many people in these

parts four years ago. They say, you know, bit through their throats, drained their blood. John Talbot thought he killed it one night, attacked it in the dark, but it was his son he killed. Poor Mr. Larry. And so the local police show our two characters here a photo of Lawrence Talbot. And wow, he sure does look a lot like our lycanthrope in Cardiff. And then Owen says, of course, it's not the same man. If it were, I'd be off me top. So Owen and Manoring make a plan to bring the Lanwelly constable back to Cardiff to see if he can positively ID their patient. But when the doctor calls the hospital, he learns that Talbot tore off his straitjacket in the night and escaped. So, oh, no, we have loose Talbot. And they say, tore off his straitjacket?

How?

Bit right through it with his teeth.

Oh. They're not wolf proof.

So sometime later, we rejoin Talbot as he wanders into a Romani camp dressed like a vagabond with a wide brimmed hat. He is looking for Maliva, the the wise old woman from the first movie. Mileva was the mother of Bella, the original werewolf who turned Talbot and then was killed by Talbot. Both Bella and Mileva were in the first film divulgers of lore. So I think Talbot is here hoping to find answers, primarily to find out how he can be cured or more likely how he can just die. So he meets with Mileva and she receives him with sympathy. He says, Mileva, here I still carry the sign of the pentagram, the mark of the werewolf.

I kill people. When the moon is full, I turn into a wolf. But unfortunately, she says that she has no power to help him. She doesn't seem to know of a way that he can die. But she says that she will join him and take care of him as she would her own son. And while she doesn't have the power to help him, she knows of a man who might. And there we get dum-dum-dum. Nobody says the name Frankenstein yet, but that should be the audience.

They're out there thinking, oh, is she talking about Frankenstein?

Quick note on pentagrams, though. If you like pentagrams, watch The Wolfman because they talk about pentagrams a lot.

Am I wrong in remembering that in the first Wolfman, it's not the wolf, the werewolf who has the pentagram. Isn't it his victims who have the pentagram emblazoned on them?

Well, you also have the pentagram on the cane. The cane has this big round part that has the pentagram on it and then the wolf's head. So it looks like a golf club.

And in fact.

Talbot makes a joke when he first handles the cane and pretends to play a.

Little golf with it. So Mileva is part of the team now, and she is going to lead him to a village in the Alps. It's a place called Viseria, the village in the shadow of the ruined Castle Frankenstein. They sort of, on the way there, they go on a wagon road trip through Europe, and we see a bunch of still photos of different towns there. But Talbot and Mileva, when they get to Viseria, they visit the local inn and tavern to ask about Dr. Frankenstein. But, of course, this gets them a quite frosty reception, particularly from Vazik, the innkeeper, a large, bespectacled man with a handlebar mustache. I watched this with Rachel, and she was calling him Teddy Roosevelt.

Yeah, and when we first meet him, he seems like a real nice guy. You know, he's just bringing around the beer. It's a popular place.

But no, he reacts unpleasantly when they ask him about Frankenstein. He leads them to the window and points out at the crumbling castle. We see that it is nestled in a mountain ravine next to a rushing river just downstream from a large dam. And Vasek says coldly, there, that is his burial place. The fire destroyed him and all of his misdeeds. He didn't die any too soon for us.

We all wish that he had never been born. What did you want with him? And Mileva here says that she heard he was a great doctor and that he could help people that other doctors couldn't cure. Is that part of the Frankenstein story? I don't remember anything about that.

You know, it seems it's a reasonable suspicion that, hey, he was doing like amazing godlike things. What if we looked at that research again? Maybe we could find something helpful in there.

It seems like part of the prep for his treatment is he'd have to go ahead and kill you before he could resurrect you.

Yeah.

Anyway, Vasek scoffs at this idea as well. He says that murder is all that Frankenstein brought to the people of Viseria. They say he harbored a monster at his house, a foul being created by black magic.

And he was also a job creator, though. I think it's being a little unfair.

The news that Frankenstein is dead hits Talbot very hard. He collapses into a chair. He's like, this was my only hope. And then Vasek tries to throw them out of the bar. He doesn't want to serve anyone who would be asking about the mad doctor. And this leads to a confrontation. Talbot shouts at him on the way out.

So they seem to be developing enmity for one another.

Hmm.

Maliva and Talbot ride their wagon up the mountain pass and Talbot says now I must go on living there's no hope for me to die and then uh-oh surprise full moon just comes out of nowhere Talbot begins the transformation. He jumps off the wagon and runs into the woods as the change takes hold. So while on a wolf rampage, he kills a young woman of the village. And then we later, this all happens very fast. And then we later see the villagers, they formed this mournful procession in the streets. Vazik is carrying the woman's dead body. And the locals begin to talk about who could have done this.

Could it be Frankenstein's monster returned? They say, no, the monster is long dead. An animal bit her to death. And then Dwight Fry says, what animals are there around here that can kill people? And a wolf howls in the distance. So they say, a wolf, a wolf, that's his cry. So they form a posse, you know, pitchforks, torches, the classic Frankenstein posse.

They've done this a few times before. So they get it together quickly.

Yeah. Familiar with the procedure. angry mob, torches and pitchforks, guns this time, and they go out into the woods hunting the beast. They pursue the Wolfman through the forest in the dark, shooting him and driving him into the ruins of the castle. And eventually the Wolfman, wounded, stumbles and falls into an underground cavern filled with ice and snow.

But there's no snow on the surface? I was confused about this.

Yeah, yeah. It feels like we're almost in a magical land at this point. But it looks really cool.

Yeah. The villagers also capture Mileva and they take her back to town for interrogation. So later Talbot awakes in this snowy cavern with tattered clothes. He's back in human form and he searches around and then finds, tucked away in a corner of the space, what looks like a great translucent window made of ice under a stone arch.

He begins to kind of chip at it. He bashes through the ice with a rock and then behind it he finds the frozen unconscious body of Frankenstein's monster. But of course, it is not Karloff. It's Bela Lugosi in the Karloff makeup.

Great sequence here with the breaking ice.

I did like this.

Yeah.

And so with the ice broken away, the monster begins to stir and regain consciousness. So Talbot thinks his prayers may be answered. We see Talbot and the monster wandering through the ruins of the castle together. I didn't get this at first, but part of the reason the that the monster is walking the way he is, is that he's supposed to be blind. I don't think any characters say this. Right.

And then originally, he's supposed to speak. So this is like a true team up at this point. Like, I don't know, Talbot's saying like, hey, monster, you want to come with me? And maybe we can help each other out. And the monster's like, yeah, let's get out of here. This place sucks.

But I think the producers found the dialogue lines of the monster laughable, so they removed them from the film.

Yeah, that's what I've read.

So Talbot, yeah, Talbot leads the monster by hand, asking the monster to show him where he can find Dr. Frankenstein's notes and diaries, something that will explain how to kill a werewolf, I guess. So the monster tries to show him a secret hiding place behind a bookshelf, but the safe inside doesn't contain anything useful. I don't know how Talbot determines that these papers are not useful. He just dumps them out really quick, and he's like, it's not here.

Yeah, what are you looking for? Why would it stand out so easily?

Yeah.

And Talbot is filled with despair. But in the safe, he finds this is the part where he finds an autographed Hollywood glamour photo of Ilona Massey. And it's it's signed Elsa Frankenstein. It says to my father.

So great news. There is a there is a surviving Frankenstein and she's hot.

She's a movie star. Yeah. To my father. I made it big in Hollywood. Signed Elsa. But OK, here's here's a new angle. Maybe Dr. Frankenstein's living descendant, his daughter Elsa, will know how to help them. So Talbot makes contact with her by deception. He poses as an investor looking to buy the castle, and this gets him a meeting with Elsa. In this part of the film, we also get to know the mayor of Viseria, played by Lionel Atwill, who acts like he's sort of also Elsa's lawyer.

Yeah, you got to wear a number of hats in this town, you know.

Now, Elsa wants to be free of the memories of what her father did, and she is eager to sell the estate and put it all behind her, but she hasn't been able to find a buyer. So the prospect is tempting, but when they sit down together, Talbot reveals his true intentions, that he simply wanted to meet with her to talk about something, and this was the only way.

I have to say, I would have expected her to be more annoyed about this deception, but she takes it rather well, at least at first.

Yeah, like, this would be a huge red flag, like, I need to get away from this individual who just totally misrepresented themselves and is not actually interested in the business proposal that was presented to me.

Yeah. But when he reveals that what he really wants is the records of her father's research on the subject of life and death, she turns cold at that point. She says she doesn't have any records, and if she did, she would have destroyed them long ago. She says her father was a great scientist, but everything he created brought unhappiness and terror. And so it seems like we're at an impasse. But that doesn't mean we can't party a little bit because outside music is playing. The mayor comes in and says, oh, it's the festival of the new wine here at the village. And the mayor convinces Elsa and Talbot to stay for the evening's festivities. Basically, he sets them up on a date.

Basically, this is Frankenstein meets the Wolfman because we get the we get actual Frankenstein, not Frankenstein's monster meeting Frankenstein. Larry Talbot, who is the Wolfman. And yeah, they essentially go on a date.

Also at the wine festival that night, we are treated to a musical number, which I think is wonderful. I looked this up to see if this is a traditional song. If it is, I couldn't find evidence of that, but maybe I didn't look hard enough. In the one YouTube rip of it, I found it was just called The Song of the New Wine, Faro La, Faro Lee. It's a rousing tune.

Yeah, yeah, they have a good time here.

Come one and all and sing a song, faro la, faro li. For life is short, but death is long, faro la, faro li. There'll be no music in the tomb, so sing with joy and down with gloom. Tonight the new wine is in bloom, faro, faro, faro lo. And then also, you remember the part, the song gets some sick burns in on Vasek, the innkeeper.

Yeah, yeah.

Singer goes up to him and the verse he sings for him is, I guess he's freestyling because he's just making up verses about the people around in the square. He goes up to Vasek and says, his barrel belly's dipper lipped. For drinking wine, he's well equipped. But where's his chest? It must have slipped. Faro la faro li. Darn.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, when the singer makes his way over to the table where Elsa and Talbot are having their date, he sings a verse toasting to their health and happiness, and he ends on a line wishing that they may live eternally. Whoops. That's a sore subject. Talbot freaks out. He grabs the singer by the collar and screams in his face, I don't want to live eternally. Why did you say that to me?

Yeah, he really shows his butt here, I guess you could say. This is a real I think you should leave sort of moment.

Yeah. Exactly. Why'd you say that? But in the middle of this explosion of anguish, a character from earlier in the movie suddenly returns. It's Dr. Manoring from the hospital in Cardiff. Like, wait, he tracked Talbot down all the way to the Alps? Doesn't he have other patients?

Yeah.

I guess it just seems like this case of clinical lycanthropy is too interesting. It is worth going on a wolf hunt across Europe.

Yeah, I would say that his interest here is quite suspicious, and that suspicion may pay off.

Yeah. There's been nothing indicated about mannering so far that would raise eyebrows or make you think that he's, like, overly curious about the secrets of life and death.

At this point, he feels totally like a plot convenience.

Yeah.

He's just there to move the plot along and get us to the point where these two monsters can really do more together.

In Act One, he's a complete square. Yeah. But they discuss how Manoring tracked Talbot here by following newspaper reports of wolf attacks. And by the way, Elsa is just sitting at the table listening to this. And then eventually she almost seems to get bored and she goes to dance with the mayor. So Manoring wants to put Talbot in an asylum where he can't hurt anyone anymore. and you know, it seems like a reasonable plan to me, like put you in a, in a locked facility so that you can't escape on the full moon and harm anyone.

But Talbot says, no, no, it wouldn't work. I'd only escape again. I have to die. It's the only solution. Unfortunately, it seems that's impossible unless we can find Dr. Frankenstein's diary and discover the secrets of life and death.

Which again, it feels like a huge leap. It's just like a leap that, um, Dr. Frankenstein's discoveries would be applicable to this scenario, but that's what the whole movie is about.

Now, Manoring seems skeptical, but a little bit interested. He's heard of Frankenstein. He says, Dr. Frankenstein's experiments were considered rather extraordinary. Medical science never recognized them. Meanwhile, by the way, Vasek the innkeeper is listening in on them, scheming. Uh, This conflict here is unjammed by a monster ex machina.

Suddenly out of nowhere and for no given reason, Frankenstein's monster comes wandering into the town square and everybody starts screaming and running away. from the new wine festival. So Talbot saves the day by getting the monster onto a horse-drawn cart full of wine barrels, and then he drives them away from the crowd. Farola Farley. But I guess, importantly, Dr.

Mannering here witnesses the monster, and I think this somehow changes what the characters accept as reality. Did you take that as a motivating moment? Yes, I did.

But I have to say, I was also just rather distracted by the prospect of Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman going on adventures together on that cart. Like what happens next? Yeah. Yeah.

They become a traveling duo and they've got plenty of wine with them.

They disguise themselves as school children. I don't know. There's so many hijinks that you could get up to.

After this, there is a scene in the tavern where the prominent men of the town discuss what to do next. As you might expect, Vasek is sort of the hothead of the group. He wants to storm the castle and get monster blood immediately. Also seems like he wants to maybe kill Elsa because she's a Frankenstein. But he is thwarted by the reservations of the mayor and some others.

The mayor says, we've tried to kill the monster by force before. We must use our brains for once. And Vasek says, brains? I'd rather depend on my fists. So he's a real tough guy. Yeah.

And they're all just like, oh, that's not going to work.

Yeah. After this, Dr. Manoring, Elsa and Maliva all somehow end up in this big town argument scene. They're like in the room. And the doctor, the doctor Manoring offers his opinion to the mob. He said, why would he have thoughts on this? I don't know. He says the monster was created artificially. It must be destroyed by the same means. artificially? Yeah, sure. The doctor tells them that if the people of the village trust him, he'll take care of the problem. He'll rid Viseria of this curse once and for all. And instead of being like, who is this guy? The villagers all seem to agree, oh yeah, okay, let's give this assignment to Dr. Manoring, the doctor from Cardiff who just arrived. So it now seems kind of

the gang is getting all together. Maliva, Elsa, Dr. Manoring all go up to the ruins. There they find Talbot with the monster. Talbot calms the monster and convinces the monster that the new arrivals are friends. He says, this is Dr. Manoring. He's come to help you, to make you well. Now, what exactly is he supposed to be doing for the monster? Like, make him undead? It's not clear what the offer is.

Yeah, I was not able to get a hold of any kind of, like, prior script to see, like, what Lugosi's Igor monster would have been saying. Like, because I feel like the answer probably can be found there, if that exists.

Yeah.

Is he saying, like, I will end your existence because you're entombed blind in the body of this monster, or I'll make you better, I'll make it so the monster can see? Like, what exactly is in it for the monster here, whether we're considering this the same monster that we had in previous films, or is this the monster-Igor connection that we got at the end of House of Frankenstein, I mean, Ghost of Frankenstein?

Yeah. They all agree that the doctor will help them find a solution. And Elsa reveals that she actually does know where her father's diary is hidden. It's in a secret compartment inside the other secret compartment.

Yes.

So it's a book called The Secret of Life and Death.

Triple secret.

And then Manoring reads out loud from the book, fascinated. He says, matter ages because it loses energy. This artificial body I have created has been charged with superhuman power so that its span of life will be extended. Its lifetime will equal the lives of more than 100 human beings. This, my creation, can never perish unless its energies are drained off artificially by changing the poles from plus to minus. Okay.

That's the secret.

All right.

And then Talbot, he reacts to this by saying, but that's the secret of life. What good does it do me? I'm not interested in life. I wasn't created artificially. I'm a human being. I've got real blood in my veins. What can we do to end my life? And then the doctor reads on and says, energy which cannot be destroyed can be transmitted. And this seems to mean something to Talbot. He says, well, if that's the case, then the energies from my body can be drained off also.

So they formulate a plan. By using Dr. Frankenstein's old equipment, they can drain off the werewolf energies from Talbot by changing the poles from plus to minus, which should allow him to die.

And conceivably do the same thing to the monster as well? Again, we come back to why is the monster necessary for this process at this point?

Unclear. I mean, they promise the monster help. Meanwhile, in secret, Elsa goes up to the doctor and she says, did you mean what you said about helping the monster be well? And the doctor's like, oh, no, I mustn't do that. But we could see he's developing a curiosity here. So we've got the plan in place, which will lead us to the climax. So we're getting up to the final scene here. Dr. Mannering, he first sets about preparations. He orders a bunch of equipment to repair Frankenstein's machines. Meanwhile, Vasek and his crew meet in the tavern, grousing about the situation. These guys are very, like, they remind me of Senator Walter K. Powers and the Brain Eaters. They want action.

Mm-hmm.

And the mayor tries to chill them out, but Vazic, Dwight Frye, and a couple of the other guys are like, eh, the Frankenstein girl, the doctor, they're all up to no good. And then Vazic, in front of everyone, describes a plan. He says, we should blow up the dam. That will flood the castle and kill them all.

Yeah, just a little domestic terrorism. That's all the situation calls for. Yeah.

So the mayor, by the way, is sitting at the table and hears this whole plan. And his reaction is, you're drunk, Vazik. That's why no one takes your words seriously.

That'll put him in his place.

Yeah. Meanwhile, up at the castle, a full moon is coming tonight and Talbot is impatient. This time he does seem to know a full moon's on the way.

Yeah, finally.

But he doesn't want to live through another night of wolf terror. And Manoring promises, he says, his work is almost complete and he will be able to kill Talbot before the transformation. By the way, at what point did Manoring become convinced that Talbot was a real werewolf and not a delusional lycanthrope? Was it like when he saw Frankenstein's monster? Or is he even actually convinced of that at this point? Does he still think that he's not a real werewolf?

I don't know. I mean, I assume that he bought into the werewolf thing by now, but, but why?

Yeah.

The closest we can come to is he saw, well, Frankenstein's monster is real. Therefore, why not werewolves?

Elsa, meanwhile, is working her angle on mannering, which is destroy the monster. He, she's like, look, you could just lock Talbot up somewhere, but you've got to do what's really important. Destroy my father's creation. Uh, and mannering is, yeah, he's, he's stretched thin by all of this work, but he indicates that Elsa shouldn't worry. He, He implies he will destroy both of the creatures tonight at the same time.

Then he powers up the machines and they begin to arc with this ferocious, deafening electrical power. And then later that night, we see both Talbot and the monster strapped to tables side by side, hooked up to the fantastical laboratory array and mannering reads from Frankenstein's notes, reading out loud, connecting the poles plus to minus will charge the energy output of the nervous system. as by connecting the minus to the minus. That seems utterly nonsensical. Mannering at this point, he gets a faraway look in his eyes, and he says to himself, I can't do it. I can't destroy Frankenstein's creation. I've got to see it at its full power.

So sudden heel turn here, where he's kind of like the parking valet in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, who takes the sports car and grabs a buddy and rides it throughout the town, all over Chicago, because he's like, it'd be just a crime not to drive the heck out of this car. It'd be a shame, a crime not to power Frankenstein's monster up to full strength.

Right, gotta take it for a spin. So he fiddles with some cables, retools the machine to juice Frankenstein's monster to maximum frank, And we see the effects of this, like the leads connected to the bolts in the monster's neck starts smoking. The monster's mouth twitches with stimulation. It's like he's saying words with his lips closed. This is a good detail in Lugosi's performance, by the way. Like the close-ups on his face are great. Elsa is in bed for some reason. Why didn't she stay up for this?

She's awakened from her bed and she comes to check out the action in the lab. And then she realizes what is happening. She shouts at Manoring, no, you're making him strong again. But Manoring doesn't stop. He's got to see him in full power. So the monster turns to look at Manoring and smiles. And again, this is a good Lugosi close-up. Meanwhile, up at the dam, we see Vazic just planting dynamite. Yeah. Getting ready to flood the castle by himself. No crew with him. Seems kind of sad and lonely. Yeah.

Again, he's a big guy. So it took a lot for him to creep up and climb on the dam to find just the right spot to place the dynamite. But he's doing it. He is going to blow up the dam.

He's on a precarious, slippery little ledge there, planting this dynamite. Yeah. Again, we come back to the castle, and Elsa at this point is actively trying to stop Manoring. She throws a switch or something, and it short-circuits the machinery. Stuff explodes, and beams and rocks begin falling from the ceiling. But it's too late. The monster is all powered up. He is at full power, and he busts out of the straps and begins to rampage through the room. He goes after Elsa... He picks her up. She faints, of course, immediately goes unconscious. And we get the monster carrying away Elsa's unconscious body like the poster promised. But just then Talbot transforms into Wolfman and he comes to save the day.

He attacks the monster rescuing Elsa. I found this so confusing because I thought the whole thing about the Wolfman is that he retains none of Talbot's mind and is just a slavering beast. Why would the Wolfman form of Talbot be trying to save Elsa? That's something Talbot would do. But the Wolfman isn't Talbot anymore. That's the whole point.

Yeah, it seems like the most he would do is like try to drag her away by the neck and eat her himself. Yeah. But no, he's he's suddenly a hero wolf.

He's more like Valdemar Janinski here.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, so up at the dam, Vazik lights the fuse on the dynamite, and we see the dam is about to blow. In the laboratory, the Wolfman and the monster begin to fight. They duke it out. Rob, any notes on this matchup?

Yes. So we have to consider this is the first monster match, so it is not going to be as advanced as many of the later battles are going to be between various monsters. But it's still really good. There's some throwing each other around. The werewolves, crime strategy is to try and climb on progressively higher pieces of furniture so as to leap off like luchador style. Yeah. At Frankenstein's monster, which, which is a lot of fun. I don't know. You know, it's, we see shades of that earlier with the world. We're also always climbing on stuff.

Wolfman likes to get up high. Like he's a goat.

We saw that in Cardiff when he was running around doing parkour on the cotton bales. Yeah.

Yeah, keep getting higher and higher until you have some nice height come off the top rope.

The monster is supposed to be a much bulkier, I think, heavyweight-style fighter. So I'm imagining this is this kind of like a matchup between Andre the Giant and Rey Mysterio Jr.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, David Goliath sort of a vibe here.

Yeah.

Each of them have their strengths. And so, yeah, it's a fun smackdown here. You know, again, occurs very late in the picture.

Right.

Doesn't last that long but again we really hadn't we didn't have this before this is a this is a first so everything we get here is a gift.

Yeah so while the two monsters fight mannering and elsa flee the laboratory and they escape the castle do we ever see what happens with maliva does she escape do they show show her i.

Don't i did i'd kind of forgotten about her by this point but yeah um I hope she's okay. Maybe she found a little boat or something. She's a survivor. I bet she's fine.

She is, but I don't think we see her at the end unless there's something I'm forgetting here. So the dam explodes. Water rushes toward the castle while the monster wrestling goes on. And then finally, a huge mass of water bursts through into the laboratory and we see the rushing river destroy the castle entirely. Every part of it is washed away in the flood. And here, I love the model work. Oh, yeah. The dam and the flood and the destruction of the castle looks great. I love this kind of stuff. And then suddenly just the end. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Feels extremely sudden. I am sure people in the theaters when this came out would have been like, wait, it's over?

Well, yeah, it feels, I mean, on so many levels, it feels sudden because. First of all, we've already established that neither the Wolfman nor Frankenstein's monster can be easily killed by conventional methods.

Yeah.

Like it was going to take mad science to do it. A flood is not going to cut it. Yeah. A collapsing castle is not going to cut it. So I don't, you know, I don't have any, any, there's no indication here that they have defeated the monsters. They just maybe washed them downstream and now they're the, you know, the next town's problem.

Yeah.

And yeah, what, Manoring and the Baroness escape, but are we supposed to believe that they are a magical item now because they've escaped together? Because communication in a relationship is very important. And there's already been a very serious betrayal with this decision to power the monster up to full strength instead of destroying.

Manoring has done some serious crimes and been deceptive in the perpetration of these crimes now. And it seems like he's just getting away scot-free. And again, maybe this was indicated and I just missed it. We don't know what happens to Mileva. And yeah, yeah. So the main question of this movie is, will the Wolfman be able to die, to end his tormented eternity of immortality? And I don't think they answered that question. Like it wasn't clear to me whether mannering actually did anything to cure the Wolfman's immortality.

I don't think so. I think all he did was push Frank to full power.

Yeah. Like, and we don't even get a firm answer. Like if we'd at least gotten, I mean, this would have been a more of a downer ending, but if we'd had a scene where Talbot is like, oh, I guess I'm cursed after all. I'll never die. And he just wanders off, you know, into the distance like that, you know, incredible Hulk music. Yeah. That would, that would have been, that would have felt more like closure.

Yeah.

Uh, as it is, we're just like, did the movie forget how the rules that they had already established? They were just like, we gotta, we gotta end the film folks. Sorry. People have to go home.

Uh, well that is Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. They do indeed meet.

Absolutely. And again, you know, uh, despite the ridiculousness that we had some fun with here, uh, really fun film, uh, definitely worth checking out. Uh, I really enjoyed it. And you know, it's the, again, the first monster mash. It's, uh, It has almost religious significance for film fans. All right, we're going to go ahead and close this one up, but we'll be back later in October with more Halloween-y Weird House Cinema selections. In the meantime, we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And if you would like to see a list of all the movies we've covered over the years, go over to Letterboxd.com. Look us up. Our username is Weird House. And you can find a nice Weird House Cinema episode list.

And you can get a nice rundown on all the movies we've covered over the years. This was film number 222, I believe. And sometimes you'll even get a peek ahead at what's coming up next.

Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

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