Lon Chaney Jr.—fresh off his role in the previous year’s The Wolf Man—plays the Monster in this direct follow-up to 1939’s Son of Frankenstein. The beast was boiled in a hot sulphur pit in the previous film, but those ever-angry villagers still aren’t happy. They decide to rid themselves of the Frankenstein legacy once and for all by blowing up Castle Frankenstein with dynamite and what happens then? Why, these dopes just WAKE UP the Monster, who’s somehow been kept in suspended animation like Han Solo in hardened sulphur.
By this point, the films in the Frankenstein series are quick B-movie programmers that come in, sell some popcorn, and then roll credits. Under journeyman director Erle C. Kenton, Chaney’s Monster is more a wind-up toy than a character. The success of The Wolf Man looms over this movie, though, as Wolf Man director George Waggner produces and a lot of the cast from that film (Ralph Bellamy, Evelyn Ankers, Chaney, Lugosi) show up here.
Followed by Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.