House of Frankenstein - 1944

Ahhh, movie night. Time to get out the Universal Monster list and see what kind of torment we're in for this week.

So, Dr. Niemann is in prison with Daniel, a hunchback. An earthquake breaks the floor into a huge tunnel that leads to freedom. Once out, they come across a convenient freakshow that claims to have the coffin of Dracula. Niemann kills the guys and takes over the wagons. He takes the stake out of the skeleton, and Dracula comes back to life! Somehow.

Meanwhile, they're in a town where the mayor appears to recognize Niemann. So, he bribes Dracula, and the vampire heads over and spends the evening with the family. He gives his ring to some woman and kidnaps her after he turns into an owl (the shadow really looked like an owl), and they try to escape in a carriage. Niemann and Daniel are afraid the police are after them, but then decide to throw Dracula under the wagon and chuck his coffin out. Then the carriage separates, Dracula dies in the sun, and the couple is reunited. End of act one, I suppose.

Then, Niemann and Daniel come across some gypsies, and Daniel picks up a gypsy and brings her to Frankenstein's ruins. While there, they enter Superman's Fortress of Solitude and find the Wolfman and the Monster frozen in the ice. They thaw them out and take them to Niemann's lab. There, they work on fixing the monster while promising the wolfman he'll be cured/killed. Eventually, all the characters die.

This was one of the weirdest things. It was like two different shows slammed together. The section with Dracula seemed totally unrelated to the second half. None of it mattered, and I still don't understand how taking a stake out of a skeleton would bring Dracula back to life. That was just weird. It was a Dracula movie, then it was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, then it was the Wolfman, then it was Frankenstein. Weird. At least it had the Grinch in it. I love his voice.