31 Days of Horror Reviews 2018: The Ghost of Frankenstein

The Ghost of Frankenstein is a fitting title for this boring movie that is a ghost of its former self.

REVIEW

It’s clear that the idea of a creature made from multiple corpses and brought to life by science has run out of steam. Lon Chaney Jr replaces Boris Karloff as the Monster and plays the part pretty straight. But he takes a back seat to Ygor, once again played by Bela Lugosi, who somehow survived being shot at in the last film and Ludwig von Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke), brother of Wolf von Frankenstein, who he neglected to mention.

The whole story is that after Ygor frees the monster from the hardened sulfur, he takes him to the village where Ludwig lives in the hope of having him make the monster well again. At first Ludwig refuses, but that quickly changes. He initially wanted to dissect the creature so that it wouldn’t cause anymore trouble, but then he’s visited by the ghost of Henry Frankenstein (also played by Hardwicke) who tells him to put a normal brain in the Monster. Ygor gets wind of this idea and makes a deal with Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill) to put his brain in the Monster instead of the brain of Dr. Kettering who died earlier in the film when they were trying to capture the Monster. Bohmer agrees to this and he switches the brains behind Ludwig’s back. The Monster, who now speaks like Ygor because of his brain, starts going on a rampage before going blind because of incompatible blood types. Enraged, Ygor-Monster destroys the entire lab causing an explosion and the credits end.

If you hold the first two Frankenstein films in high value, this movie doesn’t live up to it. But if you enjoy B-movies then you might get some enjoyment out of this. For me, the whole movie is just bare bones.