Universal Horror, part IV: One mildly bright point in a sea of darkness

And, oh, how I wish that title could be taken as approbation of the "darkness" of Universal horror, but we're on a downward slope of quality here, as the studio went cheaper and cheaper in their attempt to squeeze as much juice out of the various franchises (and combinations of said franchises) as they could.

The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)- Jon Hall returns as the transparent actor from Invisible Agent and encounters a plot that's perhaps less composed than the previous film, which isn't setting the bar very high. This is more about one man's obsession to recover money from the some swindling partners than anything else. The invisibility serum is just a side detail that enables more camera tricks that are no longer so interesting or enlivening as they had been in the past. The character, Robert, again bears the last name of Griffin, but has no connection to the previous owners. It's simply "the name of the Invisible Man" at this point. The most notable visual element of the film is the presence of John Carradine, patriarch of the Carradine acting family and who stated years later that he loathed the horror films that he had been relegated to acting in, but enjoyed this one, probably because his character, Doctor Peter Drury (not that Peter Drury), had clear motivation as the scientist who rediscovers the serum and then who is forced to entertain the desires of the subject that he enables with it. The phone conversation shown above is a solid acting moment for both players and it's probably the kind of thing that noted character actor, Carradine, would have appreciated. No one else in the film has either the chops or the thusly earned reputation, but there also wasn't a whole to work with, not least because the main villain ends up being killed by the doctor's dog, Brutus (played by the canine actor Grey Shadow) which happens off screen, which is the most invisible you can get in this industry.

The Mummy's Ghost (1944)- This is easily the best of the trio of direct sequels to The Mummy's Hand, although, again, that's not setting the bar especially high. Despite it once again taking place in suburban Massachusetts, there's more meat on the story, with the spirit of Ananka being essentially reincarnated in the form of Amina Manson (Ramsay Ames), which explains high priest Yousef Bey's (John Carradine, again) pursuit of her. That pursuit is enabled by Lon Chaney, Jr. as the title monster, Kharis, again and said pursuit is shared by him when it finally comes down to "who gets the girl", thus ending in Bey's demise. Curiously, this is the first really grim ending in the series, unless one bemoans the loss of the title creatures in question (and we'll get to that involving the Creature in the next post) as, in the finale, Kharis stalks into the swamp, seemingly destroying himself, but brings with him the rapidly-aging Amina, such that no one "gets the girl", since she dies with the monster and her fiancé, Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery) is the tragic figure, as he can't get his wife-to-be away from the cloudiness in her mind caused by an ancient spirit or the moldy, bandage-wrapped hands of Chaney. Speaking of whom, Chaney had real difficulty with the costume and makeup in this one, complaining often of his discomfort on set and that might have triggered some method acting, since one action scene found him almost choking Professor Norman (Frank Reicher) to the point where Reicher almost passed out. This does end up being the lone "high" point in this batch.

House of Frankenstein (1944)- This film follows in the path of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in invoking the (sigh) "Dark Universe" where all of the monsters stumble upon one another and through the shadow of a plot until no one is quite sure why they're present or what they're doing. This is the return of Boris Karloff to the series, but not as the Monster. Instead, he plays Dr. Gustav Niemann, who was arrested for attempting to duplicate the more famous doctor's experiments and conveniently meets a hunchback, Daniel (J. Carroll Naish) in prison right before they both escape during an earthquake. They kill a local carnival barker and steal his wagons which supposedly contains the bones of Dracula, whom they then awaken to somehow seek revenge on the burgomaster who imprisoned them. Poor John Carradine, who like all others failed to emulate the presence of Bela Lugosi in the role of the most famous vampire, has all of 15 minutes in this film before being killed by sunlight, which should give you every indication of the quality of the story at hand. 'Lest I forget, the Wolf Man is here, too, as Lon Chaney, Jr. continues Larry Talbot's quest of tragedy, having been frozen alongside the Monster (Glenn Strange) under Castle Frankenstein. Like Carradine, neither Wolf Man nor Monster survive, the former dying to silver bullets and the latter drowning in quicksand with the aspirational Niemann. This is just a parade of scenes thrown together that are more amusement park than film.

The Mummy's Curse (1944)- If you've noticed that all of these films were produced in 1944, you'll probably be making a safe guess about their quality before you read a word of what I'm saying. While this is a sequel to The Mummy's Ghost, which took place in Massachusetts, this story suggests that we've all been transported to Louisiana, with the words "bayou" and "Cajun" thrown around. Both Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr. soldiering on) and Ananka (Virginia Christine) emerge from the mud of the swamp, but the latter appears as an attractive young woman (i.e. not aged) once again as soon as the mud is washed off while Kharis remains Kharis (with Chaney hopefully relieved of some of his discomfort under the piles of makeup.) However, one thing that didn't change is when this film used stock footage from both The Mummy and The Mummy's Hand in the course of spieling out a condensed version of the previous three films. The real story of this one involves showing Ananka trying to remember herself while Kharis pursues her and basically kills everyone who happens to cross his path, including members of the Arkam sect like Ragheb (Martin Kosleck) and Dr. Zandaab (Peter Coe.) Ananka's sojourn as a beautiful young woman is again brought to ruin once all of the above meet their fate, as she also returns to being a mummy... which she wasn't at the end of the previous film so, yeah, I don't know where they were going here. Other than trying to make a profit on a cheap flick, again. You'd think this was the low point but, no.

House of Dracula (1945)- This is the return of the Monster Mash, with John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Glenn Strange reprising their roles from House of Frankenstein. If you think Carradine looks utterly disenchanted with his whole life in the picture above, this film might be a good reason why, since Dracula has arrived at the home of Dr. Franz Edelmann (a castle, natch), played by Onslow Stevens, seeking a cure for his vampirism via blood transfusion. Larry Talbot soon appears seeking a similar relief, only to be told by the doctor that his transformations aren't the result of the full moon, but instead pressure on the brain(?) which a special fungus that the doctor is coincidentally growing should alleviate. Yeah, I don't get it, either, and neither does Talbot, since he tries to jump off the cliffside near the castle to finally achieve that suicide that he's craved for four films and is instead washed into the caves underneath the castle to find the Monster, still clutching the bones of Dr. Niemann. In the course of things, Dracula is destroyed again and Edelmann becomes a strange fusion of both vampire and werewolf (via transfusion) and begins killing people, only to be pursued by the townspeople of Visaria who think he's Larry Talbot. They chase him back to the castle where Talbot shoots and kills him and the townspeople piss off the Monster who begins killing them until they set the castle on fire and the collapsing building once again buries the Monster. At this point, the tension must be about what they're going to find said Monster immersed in next time they find him somehow still alive.

She-Wolf of London (1946)- But, no, this is definitely the low point of the entire series, as this film's only redeeming feature is the first top-billed role of a very young June Lockhart, who really only has relevance for those of us who were Lost in Space fans as kids. Despite its title, this isn't a horror film and actually doesn't have anything to do with werewolves or lycanthropy of any kind except for speculation. It's really a Cinderella story, where a young woman might possibly lose her handsome fiancée and inherited estate due to the scheming of her evil stepmother (housekeeper, really.) Said housekeeper is a mass murderer using her own acts to try to convince Phyllis Allenby (Lockhart) that she's rampaging around the countryside as a werewolf at night as a form of sleepwalking. Like Invisible Woman, there's nothing supernatural or horrific about this film. It's just a murder mystery dressed up to be something it's not, so how it gets included in the Universal horror/monster series is anyone's guess and yet somehow things like two versions of The Black Cat (1934, 1941), Horror Island (1941), and The Mad Ghoul (1942) were not.

We're crashing and burning here and I wish it was as exciting as that sounds. We'll have one last highlight that's extremely questionable in its own way, along with spoofs that are almost as horrifying as a lot of this set was but not for the reasons you'd expect.