Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
I’ve been slowly making my way through the Universal monster movies. Once you get beyond the classic original films for each of the monsters, the quality drops off a bit, at least in general. While there are some good follow-up films, most are an effort to cash in on the monster and the name. That’s absolutely the case with House of Dracula, the last of these from the Dracula collection that I have access to. The world of horror movie fans had become jaded enough that a bloodsucker wasn’t enough to bring the audience in. No, in addition to Dracula (played in this case by John Carradine), we’re going to have a wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr, naturally), Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange), plus a mad scientist and even—to use the term the movie does—a hunchback.
And really, that’s the issue with House of Dracula. This film runs a lean 67 minutes, but packs in as many monsters as possible, meaning that most really don’t get their due. While Lon Chaney Jr. is a major part of the film, he’s only the Wolfman for a few moments. Strange’s Frankenstein Monster appears several times, but really only does much once, and Dracula is long gone by the time we get anywhere interesting. No, it’s the otherwise unknown mad scientist who spends most of the time chewing the scenery.
