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Son of Frankenstein

When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote her story about the Modern Prometheus, she probably never imagined that her Dr Frankenstein would have such longevity, nor so many relatives.

As one might deduce from the title, this third installment in the Frankenstein soon-to-be franchise centers around Henry Frankenstein's son, puckishly named Wolf by scribe Wyllis Cooper. The newest Baron von Frankenstein was, like many an aristocrat's son, sent away to school, and thus missed out on all the fun and excitement when his father made his infamous Monster. But now that the family mantle has fallen to him, Wolf, who feels his father's reputation was wrongly tarnished because of the "blunder of a stupid assistant who gave (his) father's creation the brain of a killer instead of a normal one", is determined to use his scientific training to restore his father's honor and his family's good name.

I wonder how that's going to work out for him.

Fortunately, having a fair idea where this treacherous path on which Wolf has embarked will end doesn't take any of the audience's enjoyment out of watching his journey. This is largely thanks to the work of Master Cooper and helmer Roland V Lee, here demonstrating that the studio system was good training ground for behind-the-camera, as well as on-screen, talent. The plot, which intersperses tightly-woven suspense scenes with a rather good defense of science in the eternal "Man has gone too far/The quest for knowledge is a noble cause" debate, moves the action along at a sprightly pace, providing plenty of edge-of-your-seat moments and lovely bits of character development, all leading to the satisfying, surprisingly upbeat climax.

It also doesn't hurt that, with one very glaring exception, the cast is first-rate, headed by the ever-reliable, criminally-underappreciated Basil Rathbone as the latest Frankenstein scion to wrestle with the quite corporal family skeleton, and ably abetted by Lionel Atwill as the chief inspector of the little hamlet terrorized by his father's Modern Prometheus. Interestingly enough, these two would meet again with much the same dynamic between them, as Atwill went on to portray Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon. And though Boris Karloff's Monster spends a goodly part of the film slipping into the grave from whence his parts came, he does awaken for a marvelous ending sequence, placing Rathbone's Wolf into a situation where he is forced to choose between his father's posterity and his own.

Unfortunately, the film is very nearly knocked irreparably cockeyed by that glaring exception I mentioned. Bela Lugosi, having turned in a suitably stagy performance as Count Dracula six years earlier, was headed well down the path of melodramatic overkill by the time he essayed the broken-necked Ygor, who manipulates Frankenstein's Creature into carrying out his own crazed dreams of vengeance, instead of leaving the poor miscreation to die in peace. What could have been an interesting study in the strength of bond that is often forged between those whom society casts out simply because they are different, and how that bond can be both for ill and good, instead devolves into a lesson on how far down one egregiously bad performance can drag an otherwise good film. It says something when, compared to Lugosi's hammy stagecraft, the should-have-been mad scientist and the misbegotten creature brought into being courtesy of intellectual hubris become the very pictures of rational behavior

Amazingly, even with Lugosi's comical nut-burger acting turn, or perhaps in spite of it, Son of Frankenstein is one of those rare exceptions to the Sequels Always Suck rule, and a very enjoyable just-over-90 minutes to spend in the comfy chair, with the popcorn and drink that didn't cost more than the rental fee, in front of the DVD player.