the wolf man (movie 1941)
i reviewed this one super recently, so i don’t have anything all that interesting to add tbh! while we were watching it my boyfriend mentioned he super wished the movie had been from the point of view of all the drastically smarter romani people (seriously, even in this racist-ass movie they are blatantly smarter & more helpful than any of the white people), and yeah that would’ve been a much better movie. i mean, not the way it would’ve been made by white people in 1941, but you know.
i think they have the title of this one backwards because it really feels like a wolf man movie that frankenstein’s monster (um actually etc) briefly shows up for. still though, the universal monsters movies only beat the mcu & dceu by almost 70 years but who’s counting? seriously though this is a first of its kind crossover. it paved the way for the rest of the monster mash movies and basically every movie crossover that has come since. it also isn’t a half-bad wolf man sequel! it… kinda is a half-bad frankenstein sequel? but that’s alright.
i know it’s an extension of his much more verbose turns as ygor in the previous two frankenstein sequels, but good heavens bela lugosi is criminally overqualified to be given the part of frankenstein’s monster. it’s just wild to me that you would ever cast him in a movie in a way that very specifically gives him almost no dialogue. i know his nonverbal acting is strong as heck, but it still just feels like such a waste!!
talbot coming back to life 4 years after his supposed death would open up a lot of potentially interesting character possibilities considering he went from being a rich, pampered heir to being just, y’know, a guy, but the movie isn’t especially interested in dealing with those at all. i know it’s asking for a lot in a monster movie crossover, but idk man he’s literally homeless and kind of a fugitive? it feels like you’re squandering a lot of great story threads here.
i did really appreciate maleva being back!! she’s a much better character than these movies give her any credit for being. it really sucks that she’s consistently placed in such a subordinate role, but y’know. racism gonna racism.
i know kind of all of the universal monsters movies end super abruptly, but this one feels rushed even by those standards. for that matter, the sudden 360 dr. frank (... wait, really?) does from “i want to be a normal doctor” to “i want to be dr. frankenstein 2.0” also happens totally out of nowhere with like 5 minutes left in the movie. the result is a movie that’s undeniably fun but ends up feeling like a rather unfocused mess.
still, i hasten to remind that this literally invented the genre of the monster mash, and it’s not like it was a chore to watch, so all in all i’d call it a win. b-rank
house of frankenstein (movie 1944)
i was kinda hoping that i’d like this a lot better this time but yeah, nah, it’s just super not good. like i still enjoy the overall vibe of it and making fun of how bad it is, but i don’t get much straightforward entertainment out of it. and “oh no, don’t go that way, there’s narratively-convenient quicksand that no one has mentioned before!” has got to be the best terrible, anticlimactic ending in a series full of terrible, anticlimactic endings.
oh also, we decided that the random straight couple where the guy is doing the usual “bitches amirite?” routine about how miserable & henpecked he is is just totally covering for the fact that he’s legit being femdommed behind closed doors. it makes the toxic straight bullshit a lot easier to swallow. plus at one point the guy points out a pillory and says he’d like to know where he can get one to “keep his wife under control” but clearly he’s just bratting and he wants her to use it on him.
but yeah i’m literally making up ways this movie is secretly more interesting than it actually is. it’s not great. d-rank
house of dracula (movie 1945)
i mean again the structure is still just kind of “stuff happens and then it ends abruptly” so it’s not great, but the “stuff happens” part of the equation is at least more interesting & engaging? i don’t remember a whole lot of what happened which is never a great sign, and i kind of hate the wolf man more & more the deeper we get into this series. he’s just such a sad furball at this point.
also it’s around this point in the series that talbot waiting until literally the night of a full moon to deal with anything so he can conveniently transform into a werewolf at the worst possible time really starts to become a problem? though when my boyfriend pointed that out, it inspired me to read this rebelliously as talbot having untreated adhd and knowing he needs to deal with this whole werewolf sitch but he’s stuck in that adhd pattern of not being able to force yourself to do a thing you know you need to do until it is literally on fire.
sonic added that it would also be nice if talbot very explicitly stopped being a creeper and oh hey remember in frankenstein meets the wolf man when he went from a rich asshole to a penniless fugitive and the movie just refused to engage with that? well, we figured his redemption arc there could’ve tied in with him realizing what a fucking asshole he had been when he was essentially playing with monopoly money in real life and oh no we did that thing where we casually wrote a drastically better movie again.
again this is at least much better than its immediate predecessor, but it’s still a shame that these “monster mash” movies aren’t more fun. and the bitch of it is that it feels like it would be so easy for them to be like 10x more fun than they are, like they basically just need to show basic competence and they’d be golden. c-rank
say, remember when i was literally begging disney to make a good haunted mansion movie and they finally managed to do it by making it a muppets crossover? well…!
abbot and costello meet frankenstein (movie 1948)
this is pretty easily the best of the “monster mash” movies and honestly that’s kinda more than a little sad? like, don’t get me wrong, this is a really fun movie and it has a much more coherent plot than its two “house of” predecessors. it’s just kinda unfortunate that none of its non-parody cousins could reach this level of competence.
also unfortunate is that this is lugosi’s second & final turn in his iconic dracula role, because even in this thoroughly unserious context over a decade & a half later it’s just pretty obvious that he’s the absolute best dracula there’s ever been and there wasn’t any especially good reason for anyone else to ever don the caped tux.
also a shame is that they finally drastically improved the wolf man's werewolf form, and we only get to see it once! (it’s still not great, but at least his whole face is covered in fur.)
but yeah, glass half full, this is a pretty great movie and a really fun way to send off the classic era of the universal monsters. b-rank
freakazoid! 1x12 “house of freakazoid” (tv episode 1996)
i’m glad my boyfriend had us watch this, it was super cute! the universal monsters stuff is played pretty straight, though of course dexter/freakazoid plays off of it in fun & funny ways. i loved his transformation sequence parroting talbot’s. and although i was primed for it, i absolutely adored the silly little joke about talbot “waking up without his shoes & socks!” as though that’s the scary thing about being a werewolf.
alvin and the chipmunks meet the wolfman (video 2000)
okay uh wow. this wildly exceeded my expectations? like, my expectations were practically nonexistent, and this is actually kinda great? a lot of the humor is genuinely funny, the songs slap, and most importantly theodore as a werewolf is fucking adorable. what a pleasant surprise this ended up being! b-rank
van helsing (movie 2004)
hey quick question if your reaction to every single action scene is “yeah okay sure” through laughter, is that good or bad?
no, i’m not joking, i kind of genuinely don’t know. i do know that i’m exceptionally glad that i was high when i watched this, it’s 100% the right way to watch it. i also know that i really wish more bad movies were bad in this way than bad in much boringer ways.
after the black & white prologue (which is quite good, btw, i super wish the rest of the movie had been more like this) this movie is basically all third act. every action scene goes way harder than it should, and every time it seems like the movie is going to slow down for like a second it interrupts itself with another action scene. the cgi looks terrible, and the movie doesn’t know that it should try to hide it, it just puts it right in your face like it’s proud of it.
let’s see, what else? oh, finally some good-looking werewolves. huge jackedman’s werewolf form is the least good-looking of the bunch but i remembered him looking pretty terrible and i honestly have no idea why i thought that? he looks fucking great. dracula’s bestial form looks dumb as fuck, though. maybe i was just conflating the two? idk.
richard roxburgh’s scenery chewing as dracula is a thing of beauty. kate beckinsale is terribly underwritten and her death is weird and kinda makes no sense? it just sort of comes out of nowhere? like they just kinda skip to the part where she’s dying without any indication of how that happened, but also the movie doesn’t really play that like the audience should be surprised by it? so idk exactly what was going on there.
idk man this was pretty bad but i didn’t hate it. again fun-bad > boring-bad, and honestly in a lot of ways also kinda > boring-mediocre. c-rank
house of the wolf man (movie 2009)
look i don’t think there’s much point in me sitting here dunking on a truly independent production that was clearly somebody’s passion project. like this is basically a glorified fanfilm, but knowing that going in i was very intentionally being unusually patient with this and it nevertheless managed to just totally exhausted my entire supply of patience with like half an hour of movie still left. this movie is like 90% bad lines being delivered by bad actors. except the guy who played dracula was quite good, so of course he was in the movie for like 90 seconds.
i would’ve forgiven all of that if the monsters had just been in the damn movie longer instead of it being an unrelenting stream of awkward, unmotivated exposition.
oh yeah and just because you’re trying to emulate movies that were largely made in the 30s & 40s doesn’t mean you need to be as unabashedly racist as those movies were? like, holy shit, what were they even thinking with a lot of this writing?
again i was not expecting a lot from this, but even grading on a very generous curve this was just genuinely unpleasant to watch. d-rank
the wolfman (movie 2010)
hey remember when i was reviewing van helsing and i said i’d rather watch an interesting bad movie than a boring mediocre movie? here’s your proof!
a joe johnston movie is always going to have a base level of competence, and this did. it also had a pretty good-looking werewolf! and some lovely, moody shots of moorlands & forests. but i just super don’t care about the story or any of the characters, i’m sorry, and that makes it hard to get invested at all. c-rank
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