Universal Monsters #13: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942, Erle C Kenton)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

Bela Lugosi’s name was made playing Count Dracula, initially on stage for two years then in Universal’s movie adaptation in 1931. His interpretation – the halting Hungarian accent, the languid demeanour, the dinner suit and cape – became the definitive Dracula and raised the actor to the status of a horror star. But he didn’t play the part again on film for 17 years.

Instead, his 1930s and 40s were dominated by Gothic, spooky and scary characters in non-Dracula horror films, amongst them Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), White Zombie (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935), The Raven (1935) and The Dark Eyes of London (1939). He also cropped up a few times in the Universal Monsters series. In 1939, he played the grotesque henchman Ygor in Son of Frankenstein; in 1941, he cameoed as a gypsy with a secret in The Wolf Man. Despite Dracula being his most famous role, it’s in these other films where you best see Lugosi’s talent for injecting empathy and soul into macabre, off-kilter characters.

He was given perhaps the best opportunity to shine when Universal chose to focus on Ygor for their follow-up to Son of Frankenstein. Although created for Son of…, the sidekick was essentially the same character as the hunchbacked Fritz played by Dwight Frye in the studio’s first Frankenstein film. Fritz was not taken from Mary Shelley’s novel – he was added to the mythology for a 1823 stage adaptation – but this run of films cemented the idea of a deformed, uneducated yet loyal aide to a powerful villain. Throughout the 20th century and beyond, this trope-character has been used in myriad films and TV shows – House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), House of Wax (1953), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966), Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971), Young Frankenstein (1974), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t (1979), The Munsters’ Revenge (1981), Count Duckula (1988-1993), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Van Helsing (2004), Igor (2008), Victor Frankenstein (2015) and countless more.

The Ghost of Frankenstein, which has precious little connection to Mary Shelley, begins with a prologue set soon after the previous film. Local villagers, fed up with the misery brought to the area by the Frankensteins, attempt to destroy the family castle. However, their actions accidentally resurrect the Creature, much to the delight of Ygor who has been keeping vigil over his friend’s resting place while playing a mournful tune on a horn. After being brought back to life, the Creature is initially weak, though thankfully he gets struck by lightning during a storm and this peps him up. ‘Your mother was the lightning,’ says Ygor, referring back to the character’s creation. ‘She has come down to you again.’

The pair resolve to seek out Baron Frankenstein’s second son and ask for help. Arriving in the town of Visaria, the Creature befriends a small girl – a deliberate nod to the first Frankenstein film‘s most infamous scene – but is arrested after killing a villager he thought was being antagonistic. Meanwhile, we meet Dr Ludwig Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke, The Invisible Man Returns) who has just carried out a revolutionary brain operation at his medical practice. He lives with his grown-up daughter, Elsa (The Wolf Man‘s Evelyn Ankers), while her beau is the local prosecutor, Erik (Ralph Bellamy, another The Wolf Man alumnus). After the Creature’s arrest, Erik asks Ludwig to assess the prisoner ahead of a trial. Oddly, they all just treat the Creature as if he were a madman; no one seems to notice he’s a stitched-together cadaver brought to life artificially. But then Ygor appears and blackmails Ludwig into helping him – the doctor doesn’t want the locals knowing about his family’s macabre history.

Elsa is also in the dark about the backstory – that is, until she finds the Frankenstein family papers. As she reads them and is aghast at the actions of her grandfather (Frankenstein and Bride of…) and uncle (Son of…), we’re treated to flashbacks from the earlier movies. Ludwig, meanwhile, is feeling the pressure. He wants the Creature euthanised, but his assistant Bohmer (Lionel Atwill, who had played a different role in Son of…) refuses to assist with the operation: ‘It’s murder!’ he cries. Ludwig therefore decides to go ahead alone. His conscience starts playing tricks on him now and he sees visions of his father’s ghost, who argues that the Creature’s criminal impulses could be cured… by swapping its brain with someone else’s! Cedric Hardwicke doubles up to play the spectral role, even though we’ve *just* seen original Henry actor Colin Clive in the flashbacks, and there is a clear echo of Hamlet here with the conflicted son given fatherly guidance from the afterlife. When the Creature realises what Ludwig has in store, he wants his brain replaced with the little girl’s. But Ygor and Bohmer overhear and conspire to swap it with Ygor’s instead…

After his trio of appearances as the Creature, Boris Karloff was unable to reprise the role this time (he was busy starring in Arsenic and Old Lace on Broadway). So in his place director Erle C Kenton cast the rising star of the Universal stable – the 6’2″ Lon Chaney Jr, fresh from his success in The Wolf Man. Sadly, rather than capture the inner sadness and sympathy that Karloff had found, Chaney gives a lumbering, vacant performance. Frankly, anyone could be behind the make-up. Elsewhere, Hardwicke, Bellamy and Ankers – the latter two playing similar characters as those in The Wolf Man – all fail to make an impression. In fact, almost the entire cast play their scenes in a blandly straight way. It’s melodrama without the heightened emotions, while Kenton directs as if he’s keen to get home that day. Bela Lugosi’s enjoyably theatrical performance is left to add the fun and ghoulishness.

Five secrets of life artificially created out of 10

Next: It’s war!

Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series (2019, Fabien Dubois)

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

An entire multimedia franchise was spawned by Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Alien, encompassing movie sequels, comic books, novels, roleplaying and video games, crossover stories with the Predator series, and even theme-park attractions. The quality has varied as much as the competing claims of canonicity, but while most cinemagoers only know of the high-profile films released in 1979, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2024, dedicated Alien fans have rarely been without new material to enjoy.

One such diversion was a digitally animated drama that dropped onto YouTube in 2019. Alien: Isolation is an adaptation of a successful 2014 computer game of the same name – and like the game, it focuses on a character with a special connection to the film series…

In the original Alien of 1979, there was never any mention that spaceship warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) had a daughter waiting for her back home. The first sequel, Aliens, was similarly mute on Ripley’s family life. But when the latter movie was rereleased in expanded form on laserdisc in 1991, bonus scenes revealed that she was a mother.

We learn that her daughter, Amanda, had been a child when Ripley left Earth. However, after an attack by a murderous alien creature aboard her ship the Nostromo, Ripley then spent an unusually long time in a process called hypersleep. Fifty-seven years passed while she was in suspended animation, and company suit Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) now has to break the news that 66-year-old Amanda Ripley-McClaren (‘Married name, I guess’) recently died of cancer. It’s a devastating blow for Ripley, of course – after all, she’d promised to be back for Amanda’s 11th birthday. It was also, we may assume, an unnervingly meta moment for Sigourney Weaver, because the photograph used to illustrate the grown-up Amanda (below) is actually of Weaver’s actor mother Elizabeth Inglis.

Cutting this subplot out of the original version of Aliens in 1986 reportedly upset Weaver greatly – understandably so, as it robs Ripley’s subsequent relationship with a young girl called Newt of an added maternal subtext. But even though she only appears in a photograph, Amanda was later to have a life away from James Cameron’s action masterpiece – in what’s known as the ‘Alien expanded universe’. In 2014, she appeared as a playable character in the video game Alien: Isolation and also cropped up in novels and comic strips. Then, due to the critical success of Isolation, plans were made for an animated adaptation – seven 10-minute episodes, comprised of scripted scenes from the game plus newly created sequences to plug the narrative gaps.

The story begin 15 years after the events of the 1979 movie. With no word of the long-missing Ellen Ripley, her now-adult daughter Amanda (voiced by Andrea Deck) has lots of questions and plenty of abandonment issues (‘You can’t count on anyone’). So when the Nostromo’s flight recorder is salvaged from deep space, Amanda can’t resist the chance to find out what happened to her mother. Accompanied by an android called Samuels (Anthony Howell) and lawyer Nina Taylor (Emerald O’Hanrahan), who both work for the conglomerate Weyland-Yutani, Amanda travels to Sevastopol space station to retrieve the recording. However, they arrive to find the station damaged, its crew either dead or on the point of mania, its android workers murderous, and the decks overrun by a deadly alien creature. After barely escaping several dangerous encounters, Amanda then meets the station’s marshal, Waits (William Hope, who’d played the not-dissimilar Lieutenant Gorman in Aliens). He reveals that the ship that saved the flight recorder also found a crashed alien ship… and unknowingly brought a savage creature to Sevastopol…

The project’s origins as a video-game adap are obvious throughout, for good and bad. Echoing the most dynamic first-person games, sequences encompass both grand scale and sweaty claustrophobia, and some scenes – especially those that use Amanda’s point of view – are genuinely suspenseful. There’s also a cute fidelity to the design work of the movies, whether it be the recreation of some sets from the first film or the general vibe of an entropic industrial future. The whole series is admirably violent and bloodthirsty; action sequences have punch; the sound design is very good.

But the simplistic plot is a series of mini-quests, meaning a stop/start momentum, and the quality of the animation depends on whether footage has been grandfathered in from the game or created anew. Despite a decent voice cast, the characters’ dead-eyed expressions undercut any emotional connection and, perhaps inevitably, it soon feels like you’re watching someone else’s Playstation session rather than following a story. A novelisation of the game, by tie-in master Keith RA DeCandido, was published soon after this digital drama and made a much better stab at fleshing out the gameplay and making us care about what’s happening.

Six proprietorial materials out of 10

Universal Monsters #12: The Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

There had been plenty of werewolf stories beforehand, of course: lycanthropy myths can be found in numerous cultures; Little Red Riding Hood and Dr Jekyll are spins on the idea; and Bram Stoker used a fair amount of the lore in his 1897 novel Dracula. But there hadn’t been many werewolf *movies* before 1941. Other than a couple of now-forgotten silent films – The Werewolf (1913) and Wolf Blood (1925) – the only true example had been made by Universal Studios in 1935. The creaky, stagey Werewolf of London starred Henry Hull as an English botanist who is bitten and cursed to become a wolf while in Tibet.

When the same studio decided to commission a new horror picture on the theme, they didn’t have a foundational text to adapt like with Dracula, Frankenstein or The Invisible Man. So instead they took the key tropes of the genre and weaved an original story, creating an effective chiller that would become arguably the most influential werewolf tale of all time.

As the story begins, the second son of the aristocratic Talbot family returns to Talbot Castle after the death of his elder brother. Larry, who has been away for 18 years, is back to reconcile with his father and help run the estate. While he settles in, Larry also meets and flirts with a local woman called Gwen who works in an antiques shop. (When and where all this is taking place is debatable. The outside world is not referenced, we see both cars and horse-drawn carriages, and there’s a panoply of accents in the cast. A 1943 sequel confirmed that we’re in Wales, but no one familiar with the nation would guess that based on this movie.)

When some travelling gypsies arrive in town – they come every autumn, we’re told – Larry takes Gwen and her friend Jenny for a fortune-telling. However, in the woods near the gypsy camp, Jenny is attacked by a wolf. Larry manages to kill the animal, though is bitten in the process. Then later both Jenny and a gypsy called Bela are found dead. Suspicion quickly falls on Larry and Gwen, and they become pariahs in the town. Eventually, Bela’s elderly mother Maleva explains to Larry that Bela was a werewolf. *He* was the animal who attacked Jenny and bit Larry, and that means that Larry is now a lycanthrope too… The next night, Larry undergoes a grisly transformation and becomes a hairy, savage man-beast who – now out of control – kills a villager. Consumed by guilt after he morphs back into a human, Larry confesses all to his father, but Sir John just assumes Larry is deluded…

The film is powered by economic storytelling and moves at a canter. But the script and the cast still pack in plenty of feels for a horror quickie – characters are sincerely upset when there’s a murder, Larry is driven close to tears by his ordeal, Maleva has a scene of genuine melancholy as she grieves for her son. Meanwhile, multiple references to dogs, wolves, wolfsbane and the moon keep things thematically pleasing, and the movie is moodily staged by director George Waggner and cinematographer Joseph Valentine, with plenty of fog, high-contrast light, big sets, expressive camera moves and tight cutting.

For a relatively cheap B-movie churned out in just 25 days, The Wolf Man also has an impressive cast. Claude Rains adds authority and paternal weight as Sir John; fellow Brit Evelyn Ankers is likeable as Gwen; while Ralph Bellamy, whose career stretched from 1931’s The Secret Six to 1990’s Pretty Woman, appears as Gwen’s bland fiancé Paul. The poor gypsy Bela is played by his namesake, Dracula star Bela Lugosi, who only has seven lines of dialogue but still makes a big impression. Veteran Russian actor Maria Ouspenskaya, a former student of Soviet theatre bastion Konstantin Stanislavski, is both memorable and moving as Bela’s wise, wisened mother, Maleva.

The lead character of Larry, meanwhile, was a star-making role for Lon Chaney Jr. Just 35 at the time of filming, but looking 10 years older, Chaney was the son of the first Lon Chaney – the ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ who had been the 1920s’ biggest horror star, had revolutionised the use of macabre movie make-up, and was earmarked to be Universal’s Dracula before cancer killed him in 1930. Junior had spent a decade in bit-part roles before The Wolf Man, and while he never reached his father’s heights as an actor, he ended up as one of Universal’s most bankable assets. In the seven years between 1942 and 1949, he played the Wolf Man five times, the Mummy three times, Frankenstein’s Monster and Count Dracula once each. (He also ultimately appeared in eight films with The Wolf Man co-star Evelyn Ankers… despite the pair hating each other off-camera.)

At several points in The Wolf Man, villagers recite a piece of doggerel: ‘Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and autumn moon is bright.’ Heavy-handed, perhaps, but it does flag up the subtext. If this film is about anything beyond movie thrills, it’s about the duality of mankind; the potential in all of us for dark, dangerous impulses. Larry’s transformation into a werewolf is achieved simply, via dissolves, but the full body make-up looks rather comedic to modern eyes. So Chaney’s decision to play the character with real anguish when in his human form goes a long way in selling the horror.

Eight mazes of his own mind out of 10

Next: Frankenstein’s a ghost!

Universal Monsters #11: The Invisible Woman (1940, A Edward Sutherland)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man (or an equivalent character), the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

After a decade or so of Universal’s successful run of monster films, the world was changing. The Depression had ravaged many American families and, although the US was yet to enter proceedings, the Second World War was now raging in Europe. Perhaps that’s why the studio injected some comedy into its series. Everyone needed a laugh in 1940.

The Invisible Woman’s storytelling has a similar mood and pace to His Girl Friday – Howard Hawks’s sublime romcom from earlier that same year – while another Cary Grant film, 1937’s ghost comedy Topper, was also an influence. The dialogue is littered with sarcasm and self-deprecation, while scenes feature double-takes, prat-falls and plinky-plonky incidental music. It all results in a bright and likeable experience, directed by a man with real comedy pedigree: London-born A Edward Sutherland had been one of the original Keystone Cops; had worked with Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy; and had recently directed Abbott & Costello’s first ever movie. We are a far wolf’s cry from the spooky Gothicana of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Rather than a conventional sequel, The Invisible Woman is narratively unrelated to Universal’s earlier Invisible Man movies. We’re introduced to an eccentric scientist, Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore in one of the final roles of his lauded career), who is working for an American dilettante called Richard Russell (John Howard). When it’s pointed out that Gibbs is spending a lot of money, Russell is blasé: ‘He must be inventing something. I never asked.’ In fact, Gibbs is developing an invisibility process. He tried it on a cat, but the effect wore off, so he now places a classified ad in the Daily Record newspaper. Initially the wording reads ‘Wanted – a human being, willing to become invisible, $3000 remuneration’, but Gibbs has a rethink and changes ‘$3000’ to ‘no’.

And then – how’s about this for a plot twist? – a *woman* replies!

The woman in question, Kitty Carroll, is a department-store model who’s bored with life. She seems game for taking a risk, so Gibbs reluctantly agrees to let her try his process, which plays as a whimsical parody of Dr Frankenstein’s experiments: there’s scientific equipment abuzz, levers to pull, and bolts of electricity flashing between coils. Originally, Margaret Sullavan – who was under contract to Universal – was cast in the role of Kitty, but she was eager to do another project instead… so simply didn’t show up for the filming. Virginia Bruce stepped in at the 11th hour, bringing a good deal of comic energy to the film, while Sullavan, who’d recently co-starred with James Stewart in The Shop Around the Corner, was hit with a legal backlash.

After the invisibility procedure, Kitty is of course able to move around unseen. So the first thing she does is return to the department store to prank her obnoxious boss and some prim, posh customers. She has lots of fun, as does the creative team responsible for the film’s special effects – we see clothes and gloves moving around as if by magic, doors slamming of their own accord, and Kitty’s boss trapped under a window sash. Elsewhere, a romcom thread is sewn when Kitty encounters Richard, but sadly the unquestioned sexism of the era means that, from this point on, Kitty’s entire personality becomes related to her appearance, her figure and her clothes. Will Richard still fancy her when he can *see* her?! (Just generally, the movie seems childishly giddy with the risqué conceit that the invisible Kitty is actually naked through all this.) There’s also a crime subplot involving a gangster played by Three Stooges member Shemp Howard, but this never feels essential.

Instead it’s the breezy comedy, the playful special effects, Virginia Bruce’s charm, and the comedic secondary characters – a housekeeper played by The Wizard of Oz’s Margaret Hamilton, a butler played by Charlie Ruggles – that create a diverting 70 minutes of fun.

Seven combinations of chemical, biological and dynamic influences out of 10

Next time: It’s a wolf, man! It’s the Wolf Man!

Ten years of blogs… My 100 favourite TV shows

Recently, to celebrate a decade of this blogging nonsense, I posted a list of my 100 favourite films.

So, as an obvious sequel, here’s the same format but for television. Again, I’ve been guided by the word ‘favourite’, rather than ‘best’. They’re just the shows I like the most. (I’ve also cheated a few times, in order to bundle sequels together with their antecedents, so there are actually more than 100 choices here. Live with it.)

100-51

The list is too unwieldy for a full ranking, so let’s start with the shows that fill the bottom half of the hundred, listed alphabetically, then we’ll dive into a top 50…

24 (2001-2010), Agent Carter (2015-2016), Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995), The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019), Births, Marriages and Deaths (1999), A Bit of a Do (1989), Blackadder (1983-1999), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021; above), Callan (1967-1981), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-1968)…

Coogan’s Run (1995), Coronation Street (1960-current), Dark Season (1991), Dracula (2020), Family at War (1970-1972), Foyle’s War (2002-2015), Game of Thrones (2011-2019; above), G.B.H. (1991), Gotham (2014-2019), Green Wing (2004-2007)…

Have I Got News For You (1990-current), In Plain Sight (2008-2013), Knightmare (1987-1994), Life on Earth (1979) and its sequels such as The Living Planet and Life in the Freezer, Longitude (2000), Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989-1994), Man About the House (1973-1976), M*A*S*H (1972-1983), Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974), Moondial (1988; above)…

The Newsreader (2021-current; above), The Newsroom (2012-2014), NCIS (2003-current), QI (2003-current), Pennyworth (2019-2022), Peter Kay’s Car Share (2015-2020), Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights (2001-2002), Scrapheap Challenge (1998-2009), Sherlock (2010-2017), Sports Night (1998-2000)…

Star Trek (1966-1969), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), State of Play (2003), Strictly Come Dancing (2004-current), Three Men in a Boat (2006) and its sequels such as Three Men in Another Boat, UFO (1970-1971; above), Whitechapel (2009-2013), Wonders of the Solar System (2010) and its sequels such as Wonders of the Universe, Would I Lie to You? (2007-current), The Young Ones (1982-1984)… 

TOP FIFTY

50 – Downton Abbey (2010-2015; above)

49 – Race Across the World (2019-current)

48 – The Royle Family (1998-2012)

47 – dinnerladies (1998-2000)

46 – One Foot in the Grave (1990-2000)

45 – I’m Alan Partridge (1997-2002; above)

44 – Life on Mars (2006-2007) and its sequel Ashes to Ashes

43 – Early Doors (2003-2004)

42 – You Rang, M’Lord? (1988-1993)

41 – Time Team (1994-current)

40 – Red Dwarf (1988-2020; above)

39 – Shackleton (2002)

38 – The X-Files (1993-2018)

37 – Firefly (2002-2003)

36 – Ever Decreasing Circles (1984-1989)

35 – The Sopranos (1999-2007; above)

34 – Jonathan Creek (1997-2016)

33 – Press Gang (1989-1993)

32 – 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (2012-current)

31 – Friends (1994-2004)

30 – Love Soup (2005-2008; above)

29 – Long Way Round (2004) and its sequels Long Way Down and Long Way Up

28 – Count Dracula (1977)

27 – Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975)

26 – Edge of Darkness (1985)

25 – Doctor Who (1963-current; above)

24 – Seinfeld (1989-1998)

23 – The Office (2001-2003)

22 – Warehouse 13 (2009-2013)

21 – Black Sails (2014-2017)

20 – Cheers (1982-1993; above)

19 – seaQuest DSV (1993-1996)

18 – Stark (1993)

17 – Inspector Morse (1987-2000)

16 – The Beatles Anthology (1995)

15 – Babylon 5 (1993-1999; above)

14 – Spaced (1999-2001)

13 – The Sandbaggers (1978-1980)

12 – Crime Traveller (1997)

11 – The West Wing (1999-2006)

10 – Columbo (1968-2003; above)

9 – Lost (2004-2010)

8 – Only Fools and Horses (1981-2003)

7 – Taskmaster (2015-current) and its New Zealand and Australian remakes

6 – Endeavour (2012-2023)

5 – Around the World in 80 Days (1989; above) and its sequels such as Pole to Pole and Full Circle

4 – Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989-2013)

3 – Fawlty Towers (1975-1979)

2 – Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-2007)

1 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003; below)

Have I missed out your favourite? Or included something you think is awful?

Let me know in the comments section below…

Universal Monsters #10: The Mummy’s Hand (1940, Christy Cabanne)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

Universal Studios, hip to the success of their horror films, were starting to churn them out by 1940 – every big hit was being sequalised while the audience was still hungry for more. The Mummy’s Hand is the first follow-up to Boris Karloff’s The Mummy of 1932, though actually the two films don’t share any plot crossover. This is more of a spiritual sequel, reusing the same mixture of low-level horror, Tutankhamun iconography and xenophobic representations of Egypt. Oh, and it’s the first truly dreadful entry in this series.

The focus is on two American archeologists who buy a vase in a Cairo market for $75. The buffoonish Babe Jenson thinks it’s a piece of junk, but his more strait-laced colleague Steve Banning (Dick Foran) accurately deduces that markings on the exterior will lead to the long-lost tomb of Princess Ananka. Ignoring condescending telegrams from their museum back in New York, the men organise an ad-hoc expedition to the location. For funding they conveniently get chatting to a stage magician in a bar and the Great Solvani (Cecil Kellaway from The Invisible Man Returns) agrees to help. Meanwhile, a high priest called Andoheb (George Zucco) is growing obsessed with Solvani’s daughter, Marta (Peggy Moran) – and he has a secret weapon: the mummified body of an Ancient Egyptian called Kharis (Tom Tyler) who is being kept alive via magical means…

After a reasonably spooky prologue, setting out the sub-Tolkien mumbo-jumbo of Kharis’s backstory, there’s no real horror until the 43-minute mark when the mummy awakens. In a film that’s only just over an hour long, that’s quite a chunk without any real thrills. In its place comes some low-energy comedy in the form of mild bickering between Abbott and Costello clones Babe and Steve. There’s also now the unintentional humour of a lead character called Babe, resulting in several straight lines that take on a different meaning to modern ears: ‘What’s all the excitement, Babe?’, ‘Babe, those jackals give me goose pimples.’ By the way, Babe is played by Wallace Ford who, despite the Brooklyn accent and attitude, was born in Bolton in the north-west of England.

The movie lacks any kind of vim, with a simplistic plot and boring characters struggling to fill a short runtime. A sense of going through the motions is also confounded by the budget-saving choice to recycle sets, music and even some footage from earlier Universal films. We don’t even get any star power from the mummy character when he does finally join the action. Boris Karloff’s dignity and sincerity have been replaced by a more shambling, ‘monster’-ish take by Tom Tyler.

Four trick revolvers out of 10

Next: The Invisible… Woman?!

Universal Monsters #9: The Invisible Man Returns (1940, Joe May)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

Well, the title is a lie for a start: this sequel does not feature the same Invisible Man as the 1933 original. Our new see-through character does have a familial link to Claude Rains’s Jack Griffin. But despite previous Universal horrors being named after relatives of villains – Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, Son of Frankenstein – it was felt that audiences might blanche at The Invisible Man’s Brother.

The brother in question is Frank Griffin, played by British actor John Sutton. Nine years after Jack developed the secret of invisibility, Frank now uses the process to help a friend escape from police custody. Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price) has been wrongly convicted of murder, so now that he’s free he’s able to investigate incognito and hunt for the real killer…

The Invisible Man Returns starts with an appallingly creaky scene – overacting servants discussing whether their imprisoned master will get a reprieve – but thankfully this low-rent mood doesn’t last. In fact, as mid-budget horror films go, this one has a rather remarkable cast. In 1940, Vincent Price was on the early rungs of a career ladder that would lead him to immortality. He’d just appeared with Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in Richard III drama Tower of London and continued to crop up in films of many types. But it was in the horror genre where he built his lasting legacy, lighting up House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958), House of Usher (1960), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971), Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983) and many more. In The Invisible Man Returns, his hypnotic accent and soulful demeanour are perfect for a role that is largely a voice part – you can detect the makings of a star. (Price’s knowledge of German also came in handy on set, as it meant he could converse properly with Austrian director Joe May who barely spoke English.)

The aforementioned John Sutton had also been in Tower of London. So too had Nan Grey, memorable for a small role in 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter and here playing the love interest. Elsewhere we get Alan Napier – Alfred the butler in the 1960s TV series Batman – as a shady guy working for a mining company, and Cedric Hardwicke – a respected English stage actor who was later directed by Hitchcock, Olivier and DeMille – as Radcliffe’s cousin. It’s a good cast, who elevate a tatty script and keep us interested in the intrigue.

The pick of the bunch, though, is Cecil Kellaway as Scotland Yard detective Sampson. Sampson is a smart man with a knowing look in his eye who clocks immediately how Radcliffe has escaped from his prison cell. The Invisible Man Returns is really more of a murder mystery with a sci-fi twist than a traditional horror, and it would perhaps have been a more compelling film if Sampson were the central character and we followed the investigation through his eyes.

Because despite the best efforts of the cast, this story is told rather blandly. The directorial tone sticks relentlessly to the middle of the road – it’s mildly funny but never a hoot, sometimes edges towards a thriller without ever really gripping you. The special effects, meanwhile, are less audacious than in the first film, though there is some fun. A scientist has cages for invisible animals and in each one we see a collar and lead moving around seemingly of their own accord. In fact, the film’s best moment combines this kind of whimsy with its strongest character: Sampson is able to identify where the invisible Radcliffe is by blowing cigar smoke in his direction.

Six extractions of an East Indian herb that took the colour out of things out of 10

Next: Get ready to shake The Mummy’s Hand!

Spider-Woman: Dracula’s Revenge (1979, Bob Richardson)

An occasional series where I watch and review works inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula…

These reviews reveal plot twists.

Faithful to the novel? Based on the Marvel character of the same name, who had only debuted in the comic books a couple of years earlier, animated TV series Spider-Woman follows magazine editor Jessica Drew, who tackles a variety of villains and monsters using an arachnid alter ego.

In lieu of an introductory episode, we’re told the backstory during each week’s opening titles. When Jessica was a child, she was bitten by a venomous spider, so her scientist father injected her with an experimental antidote (‘spider serum #34’), which saved her life but also gave her superhuman abilities… While ‘weaving her web of justice’, Jessica (now an adult voiced by Joan Van Ark, later of Dallas and Knots Landing) can fly, thanks to web-wings on her red-and-yellow spider-suit, as well as stick to walls and ceilings and shoot ‘venom blasts’ out of her hands. When not in her superhero persona, she’s a hotshot editor who runs Justice Magazine; her closest friends are photographer Jeff Hunt (Bruce Miller) and her young nephew Billy (Bryan Scott).

The show’s connection to Dracula comes in the 10th episode, Dracula’s Revenge, which was originally broadcast on 24 November 1979. In a spooky graveyard, two grave robbers resurrect the vampire Count Dracula who has been entombed for 500 years. He is very much the Dracula cliche: Romanian accent, fangs, goatie board, red-lined cape, the ability to turn into a bat. Before he was defeated five centuries earlier, the Count put a curse on the family of his rival Van Helsing, and now he’s back he seeks out the rival’s descendent – who bizarrely lives in Castle Dracula – so he can turn him and his friends into vampires.

Thankfully, Jessica somehow intuits the danger – even though she’s several thousand miles away – and heads over to Europe with Jeff and Billy in tow. Dracula, meanwhile, also resurrects two allies: the Wolf Man and a very Boris Karloff-like Frankenstein’s Monster. Jeff and Billy are soon turned into monsters, and then Spider-Woman begins to metamorphose into a half-vampire, half-wolf hybrid. But thankfully she’s able to do some quick library research into the creatures and, one-by-one, squash the threats.

Setting: The modern day (late 1970s). Jessica and her pals live in an unnamed US city, presumably New York, and we see them attending a local cinema to catch a horror film. But the bulk of the action takes place in Romania. Jessica travels there at first via her superhero ability to fly, but when she has to return later accompanied by Jeff and Brian they use the Justice jet-copter.

Best bit: Given that Spider-Woman was a children’s show, the way Count Dracula converts victims into the Undead had to be changed, of course. So rather than seduce people and drain their blood, this version of the character shoots green laser beams out of his hands and this somehow results in them becoming vampires. No sex please, we’re a kids cartoon.

Review: Created for television by genre legend Stan Lee, the animated series Spider-Woman only ran for 16 episodes. In that time the lead characters encounter a myriad of flamboyant threats – a resurrected Egyptian Mummy, a demon, time-travelling Vikings, urban criminals, dinosaurs, a giant spider, androids, aliens – but neither Jeff nor Billy ever learn that Jessica is a superhero. In the standard format of these things, they just don’t spot that Jess goes missing as soon as Spider-Woman swings into view. (Dracula’s Revenge actually contains a sly joke about this: Jessica is forced to switch into her Spider costume in a phone box – a deliberate nod to fellow hero Superman. ‘Well, it’s not exactly my style,’ she says to herself, ‘but it’ll have to do.’)

It all makes for a diverting adventure series that features some whimsical threats and doesn’t outstay its welcome. The use of Dracula is part of a long tradition of the vampire count cropping up in cartoons for children – see also Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Scooby-Doo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more – and while the drama of the situation never approaches anything too complex, the writers have fun hinting towards the cliches. But the series’ most appealing aspect is the fact Spider-Woman is a quietly progressive cartoon series. For one thing, it was the first animated superhero show to focus on a female character; for another, Jessica is a successful professional who doesn’t bat her eyelashes at any of the male characters. Maybe that’s what riles the famously misogynistic Dracula the most.

Six monster pictures (they give me nightmares) out of 10

Universal Monsters #8: Son of Frankenstein (1939, Rowland V Lee)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

This film starts with a boastful credit: ‘Universal presents BASIL RATHBONE, BORIS KARLOFF, BELA LUGOSI in…’ That’s quite a cast. Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein’s monster and Count Dracula, all brought together. The Invisible Man‘s Claude Rains and Hungarian star Peter Lorre were also in the running for Rathbone’s part. But the studio bosses were right to promote the talent at their disposal. Their horror-movie sequence was now well established – and about to become something of an assembly line. Son of Frankenstein is the first of an astonishing *15* Universal Monsters films released within just six years.

Whereas the earlier Frankenstein movies had taken place in a nebulous, fin de siècle, mid-European hinterland, events have now moved on. We’re in the modern day, albeit one that never references the outside world, and Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein is long dead. As the story begins, Henry’s grown-up son Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Rathbone) returns to the town named after his family. With the help of a local blacksmith called Ygor (Lugosi), who has a crooked neck from a failed hanging, Wolf realises he can rebuild the Frankensteins’ reputation by resurrecting his father’s famed Creature (Karloff) and proving the experiment was justified…

There’s some placeholder dialogue and this is the longest film in the series so far, so it’s not as punchy as we’ve been used to. But there’s fun in the details. For example, local police chief Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) has a surreal tic: a fake arm, which he manipulates with the other to salute or hold his monocle. We learn that his real arm was torn off by the Creature when Krogh was a child, adding a backstory and a personal connection; the character and his disability were spoofed in 1974 comedy film Young Frankenstein. Director Roland V Lee also dips into the same expressionist toolbox that enthused James Whale earlier in the series, keeping things visually interesting with Brugelesque peasants, enormous and theatrical sets, artful shadows and rainy exteriors. (Lee considered shooting in colour but a test of the Creature make-up was not successful.) The film may lack Whale’s subversive wit but is nevertheless atmospheric and enjoyable.

Seven faiths, beliefs and unfoldments out of 10

Next: The Invisible Man… returns!

Universal Monsters #7: Dracula’s Daughter (1936, Lambert Hillyer)

I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points

The plot of this delayed sequel to the Bela Lugosi-starring Dracula is sometimes said to be based on Bram Stoker’s short story Dracula’s Guest. However, the resulting film shows precious little connection to this prose source, which may or may not have originally been a chapter of Stoker’s most famous novel. (Draculaologists have spent a century debating this point. It seems probable that Stoker cut out the section early in his seven-year writing process. His widow then published the ‘deleted scene’ as a self-contained short story after Bram’s death.) Whatever the provenance, Dracula’s Daughter stands as an enjoyable film in its own right.

Surprisingly, given how impressive the finished movie is, there was chaos during pre-production. Versions of the script were junked, numerous writers took stabs at new drafts, cast members were replaced, and directors were switched. James Whale – fresh off the success of Bride of Frankenstein – originally agreed to direct what would have been his fourth Universal horror, but then got distracted by more high-end projects. In the event, with the studio’s option on the Dracula rights running out, the gig was given to a journeyman called Lambert Hillyer. In the following decade, he would direct the first on-screen version of Batman (a 15-part cinema serial), but arguably Dracula’s Daughter has had a more lasting influence on popular culture.

Using a line of thinking that was later repeated by Hammer Films in the late 1950s, Universal figured that Count Dracula himself couldn’t appear in this sequel because he’d died in the first movie. (The notion of supernatural resurrection would come later.) But the vampire’s corpse does appear briefly as Van Helsing (a returning Edward Van Sloan) recaps the events of the 1931 film for the police. Rather oddly, other major characters such as Mina and John are neither seen nor mentioned. The focus then moves to a new lead…

First appearing with only her sad, expressive eyes visible above a scarf, the vampire Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) is the previously unmentioned daughter of Count Dracula. She steals her father’s body and burns it, hoping that this ritual will release her from her own demonic curse. The plan fails, meaning she must continue feeding on innocent victims, but Zaleska still wants to change. So, aided by her lugubrious lackey Sandor (Irving Pichel), she seeks assistance from a psychiatrist. This offbeat twist for a mass-market horror flick actually has a historical resonance: Sigmund Freud was developing the concept of psychoanalysis at the same time that Bram Stoker was publishing Dracula, and many commentators have read Freudian implications in the novel. After all, Freud claimed that there are two dominating impulses behind human behaviour, which other psychoanalysts later dubbed Eros (the drive for life, love, sex, self-satisfaction) and Thanatos (aggression, destruction, violence, death). The entire vampire trope is built upon this combination of sex and death.

But the psychiatrist featured in Dracula’s Daughter is no stuffy, self-important Austrian who talks about cigars, anal fixations and the Oedipal complex. A personification of 1930s swagger and debonair detachment, Dr Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) is seen first on a golfing holiday. We also meet his assistant, an American woman called Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill), and together this flirty pair feel like they’ve been drafted in from a screwball comedy. The contrast shouldn’t work – a Gothic horror playing against a romcom – but it does. Brilliantly. Both sides of the story benefit from the charms of the other.

Shot more conventionally than Tod Browning’s original movie, Dracula’s Daughter is nevertheless a finer, more confident piece of filmmaking. An effectively creepy tone hangs over the Countess’s scenes, while secondary characters are well-cast, notably Nan Grey as a young woman targeted by Zaleska. Decorated by some effective incidental music and a few moments of humour, the story rolls along very enjoyably, and Zaleska – cinema’s first sympathetic vampire – is a fascinating character, bringing a huge amount of melancholia to the Universal series. (The actress thought the movie was tripe. You’d never know that from her soulful performance.) There’s also undoubtedly a sapphic subtext at play here, which was made explicit in a little-seen but fascinating quasi-remake called Nadja (1994).

Eight long shadows on the hillsides out of 10

Next: After the daughter of Dracula, meet the son of Frankenstein!

Previous review: I appraised this film as part of my Dracula blogging project in 2017.

For a review of Nadja, click here.