The Ghost Of Frankenstein [VHS] [1942]

What is puzzeling, though, is why Universal chose not to issue the film before this one, The Son of Frankenstein..

This film could easily have been called The Other Son of Frankenstein because, lo and behold, the son who restored life to the creature in Son of Frankenstein has a brother. The timing aspects of the whole thing aren't very clear. The film opens with the villagers we know so well storming the castle to destroy the curse of Frankenstein. Ygor (Bela Lugosi) despite being shot numerous times by Dr. Wolf Frankenstein in the last film, still lives (hey, he had already survived a broken neck at the gallows years earlier); in the course of fleeing the besieged castle, he finds his good, monstrous friend (whom we last saw sinking into a pit of boiling sulphur). After escaping the castle, Ygor decides to take the monster to the other Frankenstein brother. Ludwig (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), a respected mental health doctor, is none too happy to see Ygor or to deal with the creature he believed had finally been killed, yet rather than destroy the monster, he decides to give him a new brain. In this way, he believes, he can resurrect his father's shattered reputation and renew the good name of Frankenstein.

Ludwig must be around fifty years old, which creates a problem. The events of Son of Frankenstein took place some twenty-five years after the creation of the Bride of Frankenstein. The original Dr. Frankenstein reportedly died very soon after bringing the female creature to life. Obviously, very little time has passed since the events chronicled in Son of Frankenstein, so Ludwig should be, at most, in his mid-twenties. I suppose that's neither here nor there in the final scope of things, however. I must say I loved Hardwicke's performance here. Ludwig is a serious fellow who never slips into the madness that claimed his father and brother. He does agree to harbor the monster and to replace his "criminal" brain with a good brain, but his desire to substantiate his infamous father's work and to restore the family name are the driving forces behind his decision-making. Everything might have turned out all right, too, if it weren't for Ludwig's assistant Dr. Bohmer (played by Leonard Atwill, who stole the show in Son of Frankenstein as the indomitable Inspector Krogh). Bohmer taught Ludwig almost everything he knows, but one little "miscalculation" destroyed his career and forced him to assume the role of assistant to his former protégé. It is in the pool of Bohmer's bitterness that the ever-resourceful Ygor finds the leverage he needs to pull one over on Dr. Frankenstein. Ygor, you see, wants his own brain transplanted into the creature's body.

As much as I respect and idolize Bela Lugosi, I really wasn't that impressed by his performance in Son of Frankenstein - I should say that I didn't think his character, Ygor, was worthy of Lugosi. In Ghost of Frankenstein, however, I found Ygor to be a much more engaging fellow. I still don't believe it is one of Lugosi's better characters, but clearly Lugosi contributed a great deal to the overall success of this movie. Is Ghost of Frankenstein as impressive a film as the first two Frankenstein films? Hardly. It is, though - at least in my opinion - a much better film than Son of Frankenstein. Chaney, despite his proto-Herman Munster appearance, turns in a very solid performance as the creature; he is not in the same league as Boris Karloff, yet he deserves much credit for his contributions to the evolving Frankenstein storyline.

It is easy to defend the earlier films in the Universal "Frankenstein" series. After all, the first two were directed by James Whales and stuck the closest, all things considered, to Mary Shelley's original novel, and Karloff played the monster in the first three. By when we get to "The Son of Frankenstein" and "The Ghost of Frankenstein" the driving force of the stories is no longer the monster or his creator, but Bela Lugosi's Ygor. Ironically, Lugosi had turned down the role of the monster in the first "Frankenstein," which then catapulted Karloff to stardom and codified his performance as the finest monster in screen history. Consequently, I can look at Lugosi's two Frankenstein movies as his revenge (and not in a good way).

"The Ghost of Frankenstein" was written by Scott Darling ("Charlie Chan at the Opera") from a story by Eric Taylor ("The Black Cat"), and was directed by Erle C. Kenton ("Island of Lost Souls"). Actually, this 1942 film is more "The Son of Frankenstein II" because the Dr. Frankenstein of this one is Ludwig von Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke of the 1939 version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"), another son of the original Dr. Frankenstein. Ludwig helps people suffering from diseases of the mind and when he finds out that his father's monster is still running around his solution to the creature's apparent immortality is dissection. If his father could sew a body together, then unsewing it to take it apart makes sense. But Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill) thinks this is a bad thing and Ludwig does not feel compelled to argue the point, especially after the ghost of his father shows up and tells him to play along in the family business.

When their colleague Dr. Kettering (Barton Yarborough) is killed by the monster, Ludwig comes up with the bright idea of replacing the criminal brain in the monster's skull with that of Kettering. However, Ygor, who has survived having his neck broken after being hung, and now has also survived the three bullets that Basil Rathbone put in his chest in "Son," has a better idea. So the question is whose brain is going to end up in Chaney's skull, especially since the monster has his own weird suggestion. There is a minor plot line involving Ludwig's daughter Elsa (Evelyn Ankers) and the local proescutor (Ralph Bellamy) adds little to this 67-minute film.

Basically, the problem with this movie is that Lugois's Ygor is a more interesting character than Hardwicke's Ludwig and breaking the fundamental dynamic of a Frankenstein movie to make the insane assistant more important than the mad doctor is not a smart move. I was almost going to round up on this one because of the twist provided by one of the basic medical concepts regarding transplants that comes into play at the end, but not quite. The idea of transplanting a second, "better" brain into the monster's head is pursued more successfully in later films, most notably Hammer's "Revenge of Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell." Certainly the makers of these later films were inspired by the failure of "The Ghost of Frankenstein" to even come close to maximizing the story line's potential.