Frankenstein's Ghost Urges on his Son to Restore His Scientific Name!

Watching Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), I all the more would have loved to have seen Ygor inside the Monster just for a change of pace. It could’ve been interesting seeing what something as devious and cunning at Ygor would have done with the use of such a powerful body of human wreckage. I think Ghost has good qualities and mediocre qualities. I think Chaney’s version of The Monster is a sad omen to how it would be treated after Ghost…just a hulking brute with no personality to speak of. What Karloff did for the Monster was nowhere to be found here which is a shame. Lugosi’s lone chance to sink his teeth into the Monster was misfortunately bastardized by the studio in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (which should actually be Frankenstein’s Monster Meets the Wolfman, but I digress) so he never had that golden chance to summon Ygor within the hulking form of the character. Like the Mummy, Chaney just brings nothing to the role of the Monster and it’s too bad. Chaney, Jr. had every opportunity to bring life to each character at Universal, but his major contribution was to his long-suffering Talbot and a series of the Inner Sanctum.

“While it lives, no one is safe”

That is how the Monster would be treated the rest of the way. It destroys and/or used as a tool of destruction. Those first three Frankenstein films are gold, though. The Monster more than had its just due prior to the mistreatment it receives later. The arms outstretched and this scowl with eyes closed, as if on the verge of a major fart, the Monster is more of a joke than a real character to enjoy. Ygor, as deliciously calculating and malicious, scheming and planning as only he can, is a marvel as played by Lugosi. I wish Ygor was as celebrated as his Dracula. Lugosi, to me, had a number of great parts. Dracula, Ygor, and Dr. Vitus Werdegast are just some before he was reduced unfavorably into parts that paid him little. Funny to me was how the horn Ygor blows leads the Monster around as if he were a snake from a basket.

Cedric Hardwicke had his sole Universal Monster part and it was a descendant of Frankenstein, Ludwig, a “doctor of the mind”. How Ygor knew of his existence is baffling to me. Such a logic loophole is not uncommon in the B-movie Universal Monster cycle. Still, the image of the castle truly detonated into oblivion as Ygor and the Monster flee is quite a sight.

"You're a cunning fellow Ygor. Do you think I would put your sly and sinister brain into the body of a giant? That would be a monster indeed."

“A slight miscalculation”

The other part in the film that I enjoy is that of Lionel Atwill’s bitter scientist, Dr. Bohmer. Holding a grudge against Ludwig for successfully accomplishing what he didn’t (a brain operation that killed the person on the table), once the mentor and now the assistant, Bohmer seethes under the surface. I think he’s undermined by a badly written character, particularly as he’s manipulated so easily by Ygor into surgically transferring his brain to the Monster. How Bohmer could possibly expect the surgery to be a success and his status afterward enriched if Ygor was inside the body of the Monster circumvents his intelligence. Sure he might be alongside the Monster as they reign over mankind in the state, but that is highly doubtful considering Ygor has proven he only considers himself important…at the expense of everyone, including the Monster he had befriended.

That it all goes to hell, and another mansion burns echoing Corman Poe films twenty years later, is of no surprise. Director Kenton was tasked with the studio’s descending interest in providing the Monster films with the budgets once given and so I can’t fault him in the screenplays and escalating devolving qualities of the writing that once were far better than what you get in the likes of Ghost. Flashes of brilliance are even in Ghost (there are memorable lines in this film) so I can’t totally dismiss it as lackluster, and thankfully even the lowest of the low Universal B-films look great thanks to those delightful sets and Pierce’s work in the makeup. That the likes of Lugosi and Atwill bring their A-game helps.

Ultimately, this film piggybacks off of the notoriety of the Frankenstein name and how it has harmed the locals and their village. The name itself reeks of terror and misery towards all after the Monster was created by the scientist Baron Frankenstein. The Frankenstein Curse, even if his castle was reduced to rubble, wouldn't die, though, after this film. How could it? Universal still had some money to make off of it.