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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 39 |
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 Mad Doctor Boris Karloff practices his table-side manner with Glenn Strange as The Monster in 'The House of Frankenstein' (1944) |
Stumble with me down
Frankenstein's lane
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Once forbidden, I knew the time would come when I'd have to make the acquaintance of the Frankenstein Monster, punishment be damned.
Now, these many years later, I suspect the reason my folks didn't want me to see any "Frankenstein" movies in my childhood was that they didn't want to have to sit through any of them with me. They stopped worrying about such things when I grew old enough to go to the movies unescorted. I believe I was still in grade school when the magic moment finally arrived.
That was the reissue of "The House of Frankenstein" and "House of Dracula" at our neighborhood movie theater. As I recall, they played only two nights--Wednesday and Thursday--so as not to mess up the big weekend first-run program and the theater's Friday-Saturday night Bingo games.
I can't tell you how big this event loomed in my life at approximately age 11 or 12. I was absolutely freaked on Frankenstein. I'd read the Classic Comics edition of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and the paperback book, too. I watched the movie ads in the San Francisco and San Jose newspapers daily, hoping to discover a Frankenstein movie playing somewhere, anywhere.
While sorting through some old copies of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin at my Grandma's house, I'd seen an ad for a reissue double bill of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula." There were two ad lines that sent shivers up my spine. One said, "Imitated, but never duplicated!" The other said, "Nurses in attendance."
That last line really got to me. No wonder Mom and Dad didn't want me going to see any Frankenstein pictures. If people got so scared that a nurse might have to treat them, they must be REALLY scary! I remember taking that ad to my Dad and asking him what he thought about the theater having nurses in attendance. I believe he smiled and said something like, "They're probably homely ones."
Anyway, the time had come. I was going to see a Frankenstein movie. What's more, I was also going to see a Dracula movie, a Wolf Man movie and a Hunchback movie all at the same time. Both movies on the double bill boasted four monsters each--plus a different "Mad Doctor" in each one. I hadn't seen any of that stuff before, but my imagination already had made them titanic.
When the fabulous event actually began, I was struck speechless. "The House of Frankenstein" starts with a horrible storm battering a castle-like prison where two horrible looking men are locked in a cell. One of them is a mad doctor with a long white beard and crazy eyes. The other is a deformed little man with a big hump on his back and oily black hair. They are planning what they're going to do when they get out. The Mad Doctor plans to resume his experiments, which seem to involve taking the brains out of animals and putting them in the skulls of other animals.
This could work with humans, too, the loony doctor explains, because the famous Dr. Frankenstein had done it before. Daniel, the deformed little man, wants to know if his friend, the Mad Doctor, would mind putting his brain in a better body. If he has time, of course, in between his more important work.
Well, lightning strikes, knocks a hole in the wall of the prison and the two nutcases escape. They dash out onto the road just in time to see a carnival wagon get stuck in the mud. The offer to help out the old carnival man, who's hauling around the skeleton of Count Dracula, the well-known vampire. Before they strangle the old guy and take over his wagon, the old guy warns them, "Whatever you do, don't pull the wooden stake out of Dracula's heart!"
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Frankenstein's Monster in "The House of Frankenstein" (1944) |
Sure they won't. Like I said before, if you tell somebody NOT to do something, like maybe see a Frankenstein movie, you can be sure that's the first thing they're going to do. And, just as I thought, the Mad Doctor pulls out the stake. Suddenly, flesh starts filling out the skeleton and Dracula wakes up. He's grateful, so he agrees to knock off the local Burgermeister for the Mad Doctor because he has a real grudge against the guy. One thing leads to another and Dracula turns back to dust again after he does his dirty work.
By now, half the movie is gone and no Frankenstein. But I'm not upset because I've never seen anything like any of this neat stuff I'm seeing. I think my hand was frozen halfway to my popcorn box and stayed that way all through the movie.
Pretty soon the Mad Doctor and the Hunchback pull into a village where Frankenstein was seen last. They're told The Monster had been knocked off a few years earlier after being revved up again by Dr. Frankenstein's granddaughter and her boy friend. This was considered bad for business locally, so the villagers climbed up the mountainside, blew up a dam and flooded the castle where the revving-up was going on. They're pretty sure The Monster was drowned.
Now, in retrospect, you have to wonder how smart it was to blow up the dam, which probably held the water supply for the village and probably quite a few more villages in the neighborhood. But I have to admit it made perfect sense to me at the time.
When the Mad Doctor starts heading for the ruins of the castle, the villagers also warn him he might run into the ghost of The Wolf Man, who also happened to be hanging out with The Monster when the dam was blown. Sure enough, the Mad Doctor finds both monsters frozen in ice in the castle basement and immediately gets busy thawing them out.
At last I got to see Frankenstein or "Frankenstein's Monster," as he should more accurately be described. He was big and ugly and had two electrodes in his neck, just as I'd been told. He also seemed very dumb. My Dad probably would have said, "He don't like he knows whether to shit or skedaddle!" Finally, I figured out he was just weak, kind of like Popeye before that can of spinach. But every now and then he'd lift an eyelid--and that was awesome.
I began to understand why some Mad Doctors go mad. It seems like everybody wants them to fix stuff for them. The Hunchback wants him to put his brain in the body of the Monster, which looks big and healthy. I can tell the Mad Doctor isn't keen on this. The Hunchback clearly has personality defects, so do you want this guy fixed up with a giant kick-ass body? Hell, no.
Then there's The Wolf Man, who prefers to be called "Larry." He has a perpetual frown on his face because he hates turning into a werewolf every time the full moon comes out. He wants the Mad Doctor to de-wolf him. I think maybe he wants the Doc to take his brain out and just leave it in an alley or something.
With all this going on--and the villagers coming up the hill, carrying torches--the Mad Doctor really loses it. He pumps a bit too much energy into The Monster, who gets up off the table, throws The Hunchback out the window, grabs The Mad Doctor and walks into a nearby swamp I hadn't noticed before, swatting villagers along the way. As luck would have it, he's soon up to his bolts in quicksand and pretty soon Mad Doctor and Frankenstein's Monster are sunk for good.
Meanwhile, somebody shoots The Wolf Man with a silver bullet and he's dead meat.
Wow, was that a thrill! I couldn't get over it and wanted it to keep going. Which it did, of course, with "House of Dracula" a few minutes later. In that one, they dragged the remains of The Monster out of the quicksand, still clutching the skeleton of the last Mad Doctor, and an all-new Mad Doctor starts the long process of revving him up again. Somehow Dracula is back again, this time wanting the Mad Doctor to de-vampire him, along with The Wolf Man ("Call me Larry!"), who's hoping for brain surgery this time. (I guess the villagers didn't put enough silver in their bullets, no doubt due to the tough economic climate). The only big letdown this time was they had a new Hunchback, this time a girl one, who wasn't the least bit scary, not even when she was wearing a nurse uniform.
This may have been the most exciting Wednesday night I had ever spent in my life. I had seen not one, but two Frankenstein movies and survived. Although I do have friends and family members who think I've never been quite the same since.
©2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos
are from the press kit for Universal's "The House of Frankenstein"
(1944).
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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