1939 sequel
Rating: 15/20
Plot: Frankenstein's son pops in with his family, including the grandson of Frankenstein. The townspeople aren't pleased, especially when Igor starts stirring up trouble.
Intended on skipping this one in my venture through the cinema of 1939, but with the incomparable trio of Rathbone as the titular son, Karloff as the monster, and Lugosi as shit-stirrer Igor and some really great expressionistic imagery, this one is at least very entertaining. The mansion's got all these great curves and angles, and the laboratory is cool, too. And those trees in those exterior shots! Oh, what lovely dark trees!
But that cast! Bela Lugosi's great, lurking early and later playing a weird flute following a murder. Along with saying sketchy things about how the monster is "[his] friend who does things for [him]," that flute playing should have betrayed his intentions. Paying for the sins of his father, Rathbone's super-earnest, talking about "cosmic rays" at one point and his father's creation "from his warped brain down to the tiniest argumentative cell of his huge cockles," making his character a bit like some stoned Ivy Leaguer or something. And there's Karloff as this monster for the last time, so capable of being both completely still and potentially menacing. I believe the monster spoke in the previous installment, and it's unclear why he doesn't in this one.
I also liked Lionel Atwill's inspector character, complete with a Peter Sellers arm. "One doesn't easily forget an arm torn out by the roots," says he. At one point, a character makes a reference to a "hand" around him, and I wasn't sure if the pun was intentional or not. I could have sworn Atwill gave a look of recognition that broke the fourth wall there.
Unfortunately, this movie also features the Grandson of Frankenstein, a kid played by Donnie Dunagan in what will likely be the worst child performance I see all year. You might know Dunagan's voice from his last notorious performance as the voice of Bambi. Imagine Bambi's voice but coming out of an actual human child, and you can imagine how painful this performance is. Looking at his filmography, I noticed that Dunagan is in something that is currently filming, a movie called Sub Rosa. It's his first role since Bambi, and I really hope he shows up on screen and talks the same way he did in 1942. Around the time this kid Peter von Frankenstein starts rudely asking the inspector about his arm (seriously--just imagine Bambi saying, "Gee, sir. What happened to your arm?"), I came to the conclusion that the townspeople were less upset about Frankenstein's son coming to the village and more upset that he brought this terrible child acting there.
The music for this is much better than you'd expect for a movie from 1939.
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