Son of Frankenstein
Page Two

Son of Frankenstein

The last time we saw Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff ) several years ago, he was blotted out with a good deal of finality for the second time, and many heads were shaken sadly at such ruthlessness on the part of Universal. But those were inexperienced people of little faith. If the monster could be revived once, he could be revived again, and surely enough, he is back on the screen in the same attractive black and white make-up, with the rivets still through his neck, and the same engaging habit of murdering people by the dozens.

The main trouble with The Son of Frankenstein as a horror film is that time has softened that first horrified reaction to the monster. To know is to understand, and to understand is to love him, and more than a few of us cherish the pretty through that if WE met the good old lonesome monster out on the dark moors at night, it would be a simple matter to win him over with a few kind words and maybe a pat on the head.

It is a clear case of the triumph of charm over circumstance, because the studio certainly has employed every resourceful horror dodge in the list to make this film a shocker.

Castle Frankenstein lay black and deserted for twenty-five years, guarded only by the half-mad shepherd, Ygor (Bela Lugosi), until Frankenstein's son (Basil Rathbone) returned with his wife (Josephine Hutchinson), their little boy Donnie Dunagan) and his assistant Edgar Norton).

Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) warns that the village hates the name, fears the family, and that there may be trouble.

Frankenstein laughs at his fears, scoffs at his hints of something evil still at large in the castle. But he changes his mind when he discovers the monster in the ruins of his father's workshop. The monster is in a coma. Frankenstein, fired by scientific zeal, revives him by sending an enormous voltage of electivity through his body. Then Ygor takes over, and sends the monster out to kill the jurors who had sentenced him to hang years before.

My, my, it's like old times when the monster goes stamping in those heavy shoes over the crags and through the mists and in and out of secret panels.

They get him in the end, of course, but this time think nothing of it. The little boy comes through safely, and I see no reason to doubt that before too long we shall be seeing the adventures of the monster with the son of Frankenstein's son.

—Hollywood, April 1939

"Son of Frankenstein"

SWELL HORROR THRILLER WILL MOP UP WITH GREAT ACTING OF THE FIVE PRINCIPALS.

A real horror production that will give all the thrill fans a treat. It is a far better constructed play than the first "Frankenstein," and with Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill in the cast in addition to Karloff and Lugosi, it is one of the finest acted thrillers ever produced. All of the five principals give grand performances. The story builds to fine suspense, and the horror scenes have been handled expertly. The entire atmosphere, especially the scenes in the gloomy castle, will bring delicious creeps down the spines of all the thrill addicts. Willis Cooper is to be highly commended for a grand screenplay, and director Rowland Lee has proved himself one of our best directors of taut suspense. Rathbone as the son of Baron Frankenstein, the scientist who created the Monster, returns to occupy the ancient castle in the little European mountain village. He brings with him his wife and baby boy, and his butler and handy man, who assists him in his laboratory experiments. Bela Lugosi as a demented villager who has escaped hanging by being pronounced dead and coming to life again after being cut down from the scaffold, is as sinister in his way as the Monster (Boris Karloff) himself. He leads Rathbone to a dungeon cell in the outside laboratory on the mountain,, and here discloses that the Monster still lives, but in a sort of coma as the result of an accident years before. Rathbone, eager to prove that his father's experiment was meant to aid and not injure humanity, restores the Monster to normal activity. Then the horrors start, as the Monster escapes, and kills several people, including the last two villagers on the jury who had condemned the demented man to hanging. The work of Atwill as the local police inspector who lost his arm when a boy in an attack by the Monster is superb. He and Rathbone match wits, one trying to uncover the whereabouts of the hidden Monster, and the other trying to conceal him for further experiments. The climax has the Monster obliterated in a seething sulphur spring, and the demented cause of the crimes shot by Rathbone.

DIRECTION, Excellent. PHOTOGRAPHY, Fine.

—The Film Daily, January 31, 1939

Son of Frankenstein

"Son of Frankenstein" is the sequel to "Frankenstein," and it is a parallel story in which by reason of this circumstance, the entertaining and commercial value of terrorizing surprise has worn thin. Most everybody knows the original Mary W. Shelley "Frankenstein" story. Exhibitors are few and far between who don't know the sensational history of the picture evolved therefrom by the Universal of the Laemmle era.

Yet, assuming from reports anent the recent revivals of "Frankenstein" that there is a continuing public market for unadulterated gruesomeness and horror on the screen, "Son of Frankenstein" has considerable value in its own right. This picture starts, a generation later, from the point where its sire finished. the memory of the horror provoked by the manmade monster still endures when "Baron Frankenstein," his wife and son, arrive at the ancestral home to claim his father's estate. The monster lives, too, cared for by awesome "Ygor," legally dead but still alive. "Frankenstein" gives the piece of unearthly humanity new animation and, under "Ygor's" direction, the monster becomes his avenging instrument. Two brutal murders serve to panic and terrorize the populace, and "Frankenstein's" safety is menaced. Still he persists in fostering the brute, the prove that his father might have stumbled on the secret of creating artificial life, until "Ygor" and the monster threaten his child. Then, first killing "Ygor," he destroys the monster forever.

Artistically, "Son of Frankenstein' is a masterpiece in the demonstration of how production settings and effects can be made assets emphasizing literary melodrama. Histrionically, the picture is outstanding because of the manner in which Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill, as well as the members of the supporting cast, sink their teeth into their roles.

Everything in the picture is grim. The single pleasant note is the final destruction of the monster. That "Son of Frankenstein" is horror to the last degree is widely known. Audiences will know what to expect.

—Motion Picture Herald, January 21, 1939

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN

It is hard for anyone who does not like horror pictures to understand why anybody should want to see one. This production has a fine cast, is technically extremely good and perhaps fascinating to those who are not repelled by its hideousness. The close-up details of facial expressions of the monster and of those whom he terrifies make the picture sickening to look at. The film is a sequel of the last Frankenstein picture. The son of Frankenstein attempts to revive the monster his father had created, and to carry on the experiment of trying to provide him with a human brain. The monster breaks loose, terrorizes the community, and is finally disposed of in a pit of boiling sulphur.

—Motion Picture Reviews, February 1939

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN

Grim and gripping "horror" film in which the son of Frankenstein revives the monster to prove his father's greatness and death again stalks the countryside. (Adults)

Conceived as the last word in chill-thrill melodramatics, given a more pretentious production than its predecessors, grimly played by a cast headed by veteran screen terrorists, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and mast character actor Basil Rathbone, the Son of Frankenstein emerges from the Universal studios as strong screen fare for those who like out-and-out horror films.

Twenty-five years after his father's death, Baron Wolf von Frankenstein with his wife Elsa and son Peter returns to the ancestral castle in Europe. The villagers, aroused by a series of brutal murders, believe that Frankenstein has come to carry on his father's dangerous experiments and Inspector Krogh warns him of impending trouble. Frankenstein investigates the old laboratory and is led by the crippled and crazed Ygor, who had been hung for grave-robbing, to the family crypt where the Monster lies in a coma. Determined to prove his father's greatness and, if possible, to change the monster's nature, Frankenstein tries to revive him, but does not know he has succeeded until later when he learns that the monster is at large and is being guided by the mad Ygor to kill the jurors who had passed the hanging sentence. Still Frankenstein would persist in his efforts to vindicate his father's experiments—but Ygor and the monster threaten his own life and that of his boy and at last, as tension tightens to the climax, he kills Ygor and destroys the monster.

Boris Karloff as the man-made ogre and Bela Lugosi as the grave-robber, legally hanged but restored to broken-necked life by Karloff, fully justify their reputations as the top terrorists and Basil Rathbone matches then throughout with a brilliant performance as the doctor-son of the original Frankenstein. Lionel Atwill leads the uniformly able support as the village police inspector. Photography, settings and musical score are carefully calculated to emphasize the eerie atmosphere. The pace is slow at the start but after the introductory sequences are out of the way and the monster again at large, interest is held with unrelenting grimness.

—Movies and the People Who Make Them, 1939