Last night I was in the mood for something classic and genre so I popped into the player my favorite of the original Universal Frankenstein films, Son Of Frankenstein.
Son Of Frankenstein was the last film in which Boris Karloff played the creature. The story follows Frankenstein’s son as he arrives at the family castle with wife and son in tow and becomes seduced by the brilliance and madness that destroyed his father.
This film is a joy to watch if you are fan of the comedy, Young Frankenstein. It is clear that Gene Wilder loved the original Universal movies and many of his gags work best if you have seen these movies.
Basil Rathbone plays Wolfgang Von Frankenstein — and I think this is the first film to give him the title of Baron, but I could be wrong about that — and the performance is really one to watch. Wolf is a man for whom nature holds no terrors. In his book fear exists where there is ignorance and misunderstanding. Armed with knowledge a man fears nothing in nature. Naturally a man with this sort of hubris is heading for a fall. Wolf’s life takes a turn for the worse when he meets Ygor, played by Bela Lugosi, a criminal who’s survived a hanging and now uses the Frankenstein monster to visit revenge on the men who sat in judgement on him. Ygor manipulates Wolf into restoring the monster to health. (It was only wounded by the fantastic explosion at the end of the last film.) Countering these two conspirator is the police inspector Krogh, played by Lionel Atwood, who would in the next film in the series be a scientist that causes the tragedy to continue. Krogh is a wonderful character and he is lampoon marvelously in Young Frankenstein by Kenneth Mars.
This is a Frankenstein movie where the monster is an invalid for two of the three acts, yet it is my favorite. I particularly like watching Rathbone’s performance as Wolf cracks as the situation spins dangerously out of control.