House of Dracula (1945) Review

The third film in my OctHorrorFest series of viewings and reviews is House of Dracula. It's one of the two major monster mash-ups that Universal put out to milk the money for their creations. Sometimes what happens when studios decide to combine their most popular creatures is disastrous. Remember Alien VS Predator?

Dracula (John Carradine) and Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) are tired of being monsters and so they both travel (separately) to Visaria, presumably somewhere in Europe, to enlist the help of a Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens) who has a reputation of treating patients with strange diseases. With the help of his hunchbacked assistant Nina (Jane Adams), Dr. Edelman discovers that Dracula has a rare blood disease and Talbot has pressure on certain parts of the brain which bring about his hideous transformation. Unfortunately Edelman's treatment will take more than a month to be ready. Talbot, in a last ditched effort to end it all, jumps off a nearby cliff and into the ocean. He survives (as happened with all his previous attempts) and washes up into an underground cave. When Edelman joins Talbot they discover the body of the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange). How the monster managed to go from sinking in a swamp in House of Frankenstein to a cliff-side cave here is not clear. While he deals with the moral question that plagued all the other scientists who came across the monster, Edelman realizes that his experiments with Dracula have caused him to become a vampire as well. All of this leads to a showdown where only one monster can survive.

It's a shame that Onslow Stevens' career took a downward spiral towards the end of his life because he is really quite good in this film. The juxtaposition of the two sides of Dr. Edelman in the final act of the film has an almost Jekyll/Hyde feel to it. It's more than tousling up his hair and moving around with an evil grin on his face. He looks like Dr. Edelman, he sounds like Dr. Edelman but we know that these two are not at all the same. Although Stevens shines the truly great performance of the film is given by Lon Chaney Jr. who was an actor that, unfortunately, was not appreciated during his lifetime for the wonderfully complex portrayals of tortured souls or hulking monsters that he brought forth. By this, his fourth appearance as Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man, Chaney exudes a tragedy that is familiar to those who have seen the other films but no less meaningful.

My only lament for the film is that the Frankenstein monster is left with nothing to do but lie on an operating table and, in the film's climax, have a thankless lurch around the lab. This is a far cry from Boris Karloff's riveting emotional portrayal of the monster in three of the earlier films. Still the fault is not with Strange. He does the best he can with what he's given which sadly isn't much.

Offering just enough scares and plenty of camp, House of Dracula is a wonderful monster mash up for a more civilized audience. Is it perfect? No but the thing about these films that you have to remember is that they are like a fine wine. They just get better with age and the more you watch them.

★★★