House of Frankenstein

(This post is part of Careful With That Blog, Eugene's Universal Horror Blog-o-Thon. I usually only write posts when something really good hits me, so hopefully this is decent writing. Enjoy.).



My only real experience with Universal monster movies is yearly around Halloween when Caleb and I, and some of our friends head down to an old theater in Detroit to watch some classic horror films. While they are fun, I’m definitely not as big of a fan of them as Caleb is, or probably Paul. I think their biggest problem is that you already know the plot going in… I think it’s just pop culture osmosis or something. Besides that, their pacing is a little too slow and their plots too convoluted, but the latter is partly what makes them so fun. However, seeing House of Frankenstein for the first time made me realize just how much Universal had missed their mark on the film. While it turned out to be a generic monster movie that tried to cram Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankstein’s Monster into the same movie, I was imagining something far greater… A buddy movie… Seinfeld for monsters. While The Munsters and The Addams Family give you an idea of what I’m talking about, those were takes on the family sitcoms of the 60s and 70s.

All I want is a bunch of freaks sitting around their apartment in Bucharest and whining about their problems. Frankenstein’s Monster the idiot of the bunch, Dracula the womanizer, The Wolfman always annoyed at the lost sleep from his murder binges, The Invisible Man talking big, but never actually doing anything but sit around and watch M.A.S.H. re-runs, The Creature from the Black Lagoon glubbing… it’d be great. Doctor Frankstein could be their landlord, maybe… You could throw The Mummy in there, too. We could call it Frankstein’s Place.

The plots would be a mix of the mundane and the ludicrous, maybe an annoying Van Helsing could stop by every once in a while. The monsters would want to just be left alone, but they’d have to throw him out the window or they could just eat him, I suppose. But that would be the genius of the show, there is just so much material to pull from. Despite how contrived most of the movies are, these characters are extremely interesting.

Why have them doing the same damn thing all the time? I’ve seen enough Universal Monster movies to know they all have the same basic plot. For once we’d see the world through the monster’s eyes. Sure they’d kill people every once in a while, and maybe The Invisible Man would be tempted to rape some people, but… okay, well that’s not really defensible, is it? But… it would be great! Blood, guts, Frankenstein’s Monster sitting in front of the TV and watching Sesame Street all day.

Okay, this probably is just a really bad idea and I’ve gone off the deep end, but it really seems like it’d make a good show. At least it would be better than House of Frankenstein. At the very least there wouldn’t be any gypsies.

House of Frankenstein focused on some demented scientist whose brother new Dr. Frankenstein. His goal was to bring Frankenstein’s Monster back to life or switch someone’s brain with the Monster’s… or… something, I honestly don’t remember. He ends up killing some schmuck who runs a travelling freak show and quickly after brings Dracula back to life. Dracula eventually gets into a hilarious carriage accent and Dr. Weirdo and his painfully Igor-like assistant head off to free Frankenstein’s Monster and The Wolf Man from blocks of ice beneath Frankenstein’s castle (which I assume is the titular “house”). The Wolfman is freed first and falls in love with some gypsy woman, who eventually has to kill him… Of course, he dies before Frankenstein’s Monster comes back to life. Yes, folks… this movie whose one draw is that we get to see The Monster, Dracula and The Wolf Man together never actually puts them conscious on the screen at the same time.

Fucking brilliant. And that’s the best part of this show! It has all of them together at once, doing weird monster stuff. It’d be like the Super Friends with less world-saving and more pointless table smashing! It takes the best parts of those Universal movies (the monsters), sticks them together and removes the stupid, megalomaniacal idiots, the overacting heroines and the contrived plots. We’d leave in the angry townspeople, of course, because who doesn’t love an angry mob every once in a while?