Post by RedKing on Oct 5, 2006 9:04:54 GMT -8
This would be Karloff’s last performance as the Monster, though he would return to the series years later as mad scientist Gustav Niemann in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. While not quite as good as it’s predecessors SON is still an excellent film with great performances by Basil Rathbone as Wolf von Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi as the evil blacksmith/body snatcher Ygor and Lionel Atwill as Inspector Krough with his wooden arm. All of these performers mixed with Karloff’s usual excellence, an outstanding musical score and some magnificent expressionistic sets make a great movie. Unfortunately here the Monster is much less sympathetic than in the 2 James Whale films and acts as a killing machine for Ygor’s twisted revenge. Lugosi really steals the show from Karloff as his portrayal of Ygor is simply great and proves once and for all that he could act something other than a variant of Dracula. His wonderful lines of “He does things for me” and “He was…hunting” are priceless. However, Ygor does have a genuine friendship for the Monster, making him somewhat sympathetic-almost more so than Rathbone’s Wolf who really just wants to use the Monster as a specimen and a way to clear his Father’s name! Jack Otterson’s sets are full of sharp angles, shadows and huge spaces and the barren countryside glimpsed from the windows show barren ground populated with twisted skeleton trees groping for the lightning ripped sky-something he would elaborate on with the grand foggy forest sets of THE WOLF MAN a couple years later. The village where Castle Frankenstein is, is now called Frankenstein while in the first 2 movies it was the village of Goldstadt. It’s interesting that the finished film is radically different than the original script-Ygor is not in the script and Lugosi was signed to play a police inspector named Nuemuller, who eventually became Krough. The Monster still had the ability to speak and in the ruins of the lab Wolf was to find the skeletons of Dr Pretorius, the Bride and Pretorius’ little homunculi. What happened was Karloff convinced director Rowland V Lee that the Monster shouldn’t talk and Lugosi was paid 500 bucks a week and Universal wanted all his scenes shot in one week. Director Lee vowed to keep Lugosi on set for as long the movie was being filmed, and he did. Lee threw out the script and created the role of Ygor on the fly! The movie also took much longer to film than initially planned causing the front office a great deal of concern, and in fact it wrapped 2 days before it was primiered! Universal kept the editorial, sound effects and musical departments going 24 hours a day to piece the movie together as it was being shot!