Archive for Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff Blogathon: Review of House of Frankenstein (1944)

Posted in Frankenstein, monsters, movies, pop culture, Universal Studios with tags , , , , , on November 25, 2009 by Paxton

Well, I mentioned on Monday that this week is the Boris Karloff Blogathon over at the awesome blog, Frankensteinia.  There are over 100 blogs participating in this event to celebrate Boris Karloff’s 122nd birthday.

Boris Karloff Blogathon

This past October, for my Halloween celebration called AWESOME-tober-fest, my theme was Frankenstein and I reviewed the three original Boris Karloff Universal Frankenstein movies; Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. In each of these, Karloff played the role that he made famous, the Frankenstein monster.  All were fantastic movies and, to me, earned their status as classics.

However, after Son of Frankenstein, Karloff did not return to the role of the monster in any Universal motion picture.  The fourth Frankenstein movie, Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) featured The Wolf Man’s Lon Chaney Jr as the monster.  The fifth movie, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1944) had Dracula’s Bela Lugosi in the monster role.  Interestingly, Lugosi was originally offered the Frankenstein monster role in Universal’s 1931 movie but turned it down thinking it was beneath him to play a mindless brute.  This rebuttal lead the way for Karloff to take over the role.  Glenn Strange would then assume the monster role in this movie,  House of Frankenstein (1944) as well as Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)  and House of Dracula (1945).

So, House would be the third Universal Frankenstein movie to not feature Karloff in the role of the monster, but Karloff did return to star in this movie.  And this is the movie I decided to review for the Boris Karloff Blogathon.

House of Frankenstein poster

So, yes, Universal was able to get Karloff to return to the Frankenstein franchise, but not as the monster.  Karloff instead plays the mad scientist, Dr Gustav Niemann.  It’s also interesting to note that Universal tried to get Bela Lugosi to reprise the role of Dracula for this movie, but the actor had a last minute scheduling conflict and John Carradine was hired as Dracula instead.

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Pop Culture Milestones this week

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, pop culture with tags , , , on November 23, 2009 by Paxton

Two very important dates happened this week in pop culture.

BTTF Part 2
First, Back to the Future Part II turned 20 years old.  Can you believe it?  Back to the Future was one of my favorite movies of all time (if not my favorite) and I loved both of the sequels.  Part II was released on November 22, 1989.  So happy birthday, Back to the Future Part II!  I’ll be sure to have a celebratory article up this week.


The other event is Boris Karloff’s birthday.  Today is Boris Karloff’s birthday (122 years old!).  Having just gone through AWESOME-tober-fest where the theme was Frankenstein, I was acutely aware that Boris’ birthday was fast approaching.  The Frankenstein blog, Frankensteinia, is hosting a Boris Karloff Blogathon this week. Click on over and check out all the cool articles about Frankenstein, Boris Karloff and everything having to do with Mr Karloff. It’s a ton of fun.  I’ll also have a review of House of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff’s final Universal Frankenstein movie this week.

Stay tuned!

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2009: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Posted in Dracula, Frankenstein, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, Universal Studios, Wolf Man with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2009 by Paxton

Awesometoberfest banner

Yesterday, I watched the first three Boris Karloff Frankenstein movies, the last one being Son of Frankenstein in 1939.  Today, I’m going to jump ahead almost 10 years to talk about my next movie, 1948’s Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein

This movie was a horror comedy (Horr-edy?!) staring the comedy team of Abbott & Costello. It is notable because it features three of the Universal monsters, two of which are played by their original actor. Lon Chaney reprises his role of The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi returns as Dracula (this is the only time Lugosi played Dracula apart from the original 1931 classic). Karloff, however, had stopped playing “The Monster” after Son of Frankenstein in 1939, so Glenn Strange played the titular monster in this movie (as he had for The Ghost of Frankenstein a few years earlier). Karloff would actually appear with Abbott and Costello in another movie, Abbot and Costello Meet The Killer, Boris Karloff, one year later. This movie is considered the “swan song” of the original Universal Monsters as the popularity of the Universal Horror movies had waned towards the end of the ’40s. As a matter of fact, Bud Abbott did not even want to do the movie, but Universal offered him so much money he couldn’t turn it down.  Also, Universal was set to cast another actor as Dracula because it believed that Bela Lugosi had died!  However, Lugosi’s agent had informed Universal otherwise (his movie career was almost non-existent at this point) and convinced the executives that they owe Lugosi the role he originated.  As for the Wolf Man, it is the only character to be portrayed by the same actor (Lon Chaney) throughout the original Universal monster movies (including this one).  Despite the pedigree, this movie was a cash grab for Universal.  And it kinda shows.

Abbott and Costello 2

I can see why Abbott didn’t want to do the movie. It’s dumb. Apart from the novelty of having the original Universal Monsters all together, this movie is silly and hard to watch (even boring at times). Having Dracula try to reanimate The Monster and being opposed by Abbot, Costello and Larry Talbot (The Wolf Man) is a good idea on paper, but the execution is lacking. I’ve watched this movie twice and I barely made it through each time.  The idea is definitely better than the result.  Abbott and Costello are funny, but I prefer the Universal Monsters in a horror setting where they are taken seriously, not in this comedy setting where they seem more ludicrous and out of place than scary.

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Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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