House of Frankenstein (film)



"THE DEVIL'S BROOD! All the screen's Titans of Terror - together in the greatest of all SCREEN SENSATIONS!"

House of Frankenstein is a Universal Horror movie from the year 1944 and its plot continues from the Monster Mash Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. It has a sequel of its own called House of Dracula.

Few years have passed after the brawl between the Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man and both are now trapped under the ice. The film opens with Mad Scientist Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) escaping the prison with the hunchbacked Daniel. After taking over a carnival "Chamber of Horrors", Niemann sets out to do the first thing on his mind: Revenge upon those who sent him to the prison.

He finds that the main event of his newly acquitted "Chamber of Horrors", Dracula's (John Carradine) staked corpse, is pretty much real and uses him to take out his first victim. Dracula is quickly done in and Niemann sets out to village of Vasaria Frankenstein and finds the frozen bodies of Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney jr.) and the Monster (Glenn Strange) under the remains of Ludwig Frankenstein's sanoratorium. He decides to revive the Monster and promises help to Larry to get his assistance. Then they set out to Niemann's old place to begin the experimenting...

In 1997, NBC created mini-series remake of the movie with the backing of Universal. See House of Frankenstein 1997 for more information.


 * Arc Words: Certain poem is repeated twice.
 * Breaking the Bonds
 * Chase Scene
 * Dead Guy on Display: Dracula's role in Lampini's Chamber of Horrors.
 * Dead Person Impersonation: Niemann takes Lampini's place after he has ordered Daniel to kill him.
 * Destination Defenestration
 * Dramatic Thunder
 * For Science!
 * The Great Escape: Convenient lightning strike frees Dr. Niemann and Daniel from the Prison early in the film.
 * Harmless Freezing: Both the Monster and the Wolf Man are found enclosed in ice, but only Wolf Man is unharmed by it. The Monster has been damaged by freezing and its restoration is one of Niemann's goals.
 * Hostile Weather: The storm in the beginning of the film.
 * Human-to-Werewolf Footprints
 * The Igor: Daniel. He is done with unusual sympathy for one of these movies, however.
 * Love Triangle: Daniel loves Ilonka, Ilonka loves Larry and Larry only wants to die.
 * Mad Scientist: Dr. Niemann.
 * Mind Control Device: Dracula's ring.
 * No Immortal Inertia: When Dracula is exposed to the sunlight, he turns into a skeleton.
 * Pietà Plagiarism
 * Quicksand Sucks: How there is quicksand in mid-Europe, we don't know.
 * Rampage From a Nail: Inverted. Removing the stake from the heart area of Dracula's skeleton lets him instantly re-form and go on a "rampage" of bloodsucking.
 * Roma: Ilonka.
 * Scream Discretion Shot
 * Shadow Discretion Shot
 * Silver Bullet: Ilonka makes one to release Larry from his curse.
 * Sound-Only Death
 * Strapped to An Operating Table
 * Torches and Pitchforks
 * Trailers Always Lie: We were promised that this Monster Mash would have Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's Monster all together. While they're all in the movie, Drac dies before Frank and Wolfy even show up, and the only scenes shared by the latter two are while Frank's in a coma and Wolfy is in his human form.
 * Transformation Sequence
 * Überwald
 * Whip It Good: Daniel takes his frustrations on the bound Monster with a whip. Which has been proven to be such a good idea in the past.
 * The X of Y