Universal Monsters Movies Ranked
19. House of Frankenstein (1944)
Incarcerated mad scientist Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) escapes his confines and returns to the town where Dr Frankenstein conducted his experiments to finish what he started, resurrecting Count Dracula (John Carradine) and reviving Larry Talbot the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr) and Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) along the way.
The tone is set for this one in the first scene when a prison guard mocks Karloff’s character as a “would-be Frankenstein”.
By the mid-1940s, Universal’s lucrative horror cycle was starting to look tired, and so cramming as many monsters as possible into a single movie seemed like the most logical way to keep audiences entertained.
The first time all three big monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man, would share the screen together was probably never quite going to meet expectations, and it was savaged by critics on release despite decent box office returns.
Two of the stars who originated the monster roles pleasingly share the screen, though Karloff plays an entirely different character.
18. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1946)
Luggage porters Chick and Wilbur (Abbott and Costello) get sent to a creepy and isolated castle where they unpack their cargo to find Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and the tormented Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr) roaming the halls.
The most famous and successful comedy double act of the 1940s met a number of monsters from the Universal movies for knowing spoofs, usually on the same sets as the original movies and sometimes even featuring the original actors.
Bela Lugosi incredibly only played Dracula twice on film, and once was here opposite Abbott and Costello.
It’s all the funnier that Lugosi and Chaney both play this straight, and overall this ended up being more entertaining than most of the monster team-ups we were supposed to take seriously.
Recommended for you: Where to Start with Bela Lugosi
17. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
The first “monster rally” movie sees Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man (Chaney) resurrected and desperate for a cure to his lunar affliction, leading him to seek out Dr Frankenstein’s research in Europe. He unearths and forms an unlikely bond with the Monster (Bela Lugosi), but his animalistic side and the hubristic actions of another mad scientist (Patric Knowles) bring the two into conflict in Frankenstein’s collapsing castle.
This was the first film to feature a full onscreen werewolf transformation, using clever time-lapse photography, and it is an entertaining example of an early franchise crossover in its own right, though admittedly you have quite a wait before they deliver on the titular encounter.
Lon Chaney Jr further fleshes out the least Welsh Welshman in movie history, the tormented Larry Talbot, but Bela Lugosi doesn’t get much to do as Frankenstein’s Monster with all his dialogue cut at the behest of the studio (which justified his turning down of the original role over a decade before).
How dare you put Dracula so far down. We shall have to fight this out in the SecondCutPod podcasts.