“Even though the path is cruel and tortuous, carry on.”

“The last of the great Frankenstein films…every aspect of the picture, from the acting to the technical departs, is first-rate. Grandiose in scope, magnificent in design, it supplanted the quaint romanticism and delicate fantasy flavoring of Bride of Frankenstein with a stark, grimly expressionistic approach to horror.”
— Tom Weaver, Michael & John Brunas, Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946

Frankenstein 3: Ygor’s Revenge

If Frankenstein was a reckoning with the sins of Man, and Bride of Frankenstein was a reckoning with the sins of God, then Son of Frankenstein is a reckoning with the sins of an Earthly father.

In Rowland V. Lee’s 1939 return to Universal horror, Baron Wolf Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) is introduced as a man poisoned by his name, although he does not know it yet. With wife and young child in tow, he leaves behind a comfortable teaching job to take possession of his late father’s cursed castle.

His not so warm welcome to the village (that just so happens to be named after his family) is locked doors, barred windows and hearts closed to him and his kin. Wolf is like an excited child in his father’s medieval abode, not even bothered by the precipitous omen of his arrival coinciding with an especially dark and stormy night (naturally, he loves the lightning)

The Monster’s rampage from the prior two Frankenstein films is shown to have left very real scars on the villagers in the town below the ominous castle. In their first meeting, Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill), the one-armed constable of the village, tells the new Baron of how he had his arm torn from his body by The Monster, an act both physically and emotionally traumatic, dashing his childhood dreams of becoming a decorated war general. Now he’s a stoic, monocled police officer trying to keep the peace while a new Frankenstein family member arrives to a town not yet healed from the previous. His new false arm needs constant, comical adjusting. 

I wouldn’t say Son of Frankenstein is a full-on retcon of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, but while that film has an aura of lighthearted camp, Son is more visually sinister, though not without its moments of tongue-in-cheek whimsy and intentionally humorous, over-the-top histrionics. In one particularly telling moment that I interpret as a poke at Whale’s Bride, during The Monster’s climactic rampage, he briefly stops to admire a book entitled Fairy Tales, only to rip it to shreds and continue his rage.

In Boris Karloff’s last major role as The Monster, the lumbering giant no longer speaks, there’s no mention of Pretorius or Elsa Lanchester’s Bride. Instead, we have the introduction of the similarly iconic Ygor character (Lugosi, in one of his most grotesque roles) as the series’ new villain. Willis Cooper’s original script was rewritten during filming to give more meat to Lugosi’s role. Director Rowland V. Lee was keenly aware that The Monster had become sympathetic to the audience, and the film needed a new foil to jeer, and fear.

We’re told that Ygor was unsuccessfully hanged for stealing bodies (“they said,” the hunchback retorts). He still holds a grudge against the jury of eight, it’s insinuated that he had something to do with the death of six of them, and he is currently working to finish off the final two. His parasocial relationship with the Monster requires the help of the Baron to “make him well” so the killing machine can continue running macabre errands for the hunchback.

As the blood-cursed Baron, Basil Rathbone is very good as the titular son initially unaware of what he’s gotten himself into, who literally says “my father did nothing wrong,” and proceeds down the path blazed by the deceased patriarch toward that “irresistible desire to penetrate the unknown.”

Son of Frankenstein isn’t often talked about in the same breath as the first two Universal Frankenstein films, but it should be. It’s a gorgeous, expressionistic picture with a surfeit of amusing and terrifying performances. It also features one of my favorite Frankenstein film finales: the Monster drop-kicked from a rope-swing into a fiery, bubbling sulfur bath.

Still, Donnie Dunagan as young Peter von Frankenstein, a very weird little kid.

“It’s in the blood, I tell you.”

Son of Frankenstein can be found in the Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection from universal pictures. thanks to DVD Beaver for the images