Today is my 33rd birthday! I got my hair done and then went to two wineries with my friends! It was a good day. Now I am back and ready to blog. This installment of Frankenstein is one I had never seen before but I noticed so many things Young Frankenstein had lifted, it felt almost familiar.
Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), raised by his mother in England, has no real attachment to his ancestral home and wants to make a fresh start upon the death of his father. The townspeople, on the other hand, have just about had it with the whole weird bunch and charge the police chief (Lionel Atwill) with keeping an eye on the heir. It's really Igor (Bela Lugosi) who gets Junior back into the monster-raising business. He explains that Frankenstein's creation (Boris Karloff) had been struck by lightning and has not been right since, stuck in some sort of coma. Frankenstein the younger is intrigued by the problem but soon finds that dealing with an angry mob, a spiteful henchman, and a suspicious cop is a bit much for any man.
Bela Lugosi does not get enough credit for this role. He is phenomenal here. Rathbone is famous for playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of films, which I have not seen, but here his timing seems to lag in places, like he's waiting for someone's missed cue. I have no idea if that is the case or not but it makes me award the Stand-out Performance statue to Lugosi, instead. Most sequels suck, especially ones made years after the original but this is well worth a watch.
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