The Movie: House of Frankenstein (1944)
What Is It?:
“FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER! WOLF MAN! DRACULA! HUNCHBACK! MAD DOCTOR!... All the
Screen's Titans of Terror - Together in the Greatest of All SCREEN SENSATIONS!”
House of Frankenstein is the kind of
matinee pap one would expect from a movie with such a tagline, but as far as
matinee pap goes, it’s gold. Logic, craft, and all pretensions toward
thoughtfulness are pitched out the crypt door, leaving nothing more than a
gullet-choking feast for monster aficionados. If one could detect the last
gasps of a once formidable genre in House
of Frankenstein, at least the Universal monster movie was going to go out
just as it came in: overflowing with fun.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1816, Mary Shelley allegedly
had the dream that inspired the book without which there’d be no Frankenstein
and no house for him.
