Here’s my reluctant take on The Ghost of Frankenstein, from a night when my husband chose the movie. The actors were more interesting than the film. Click below to listen on YouTube, or scroll down to read.

My husband made me watch this movie, and I don’t know if I didn’t pay enough attention, but I had trouble following it. It doesn’t matter.

So, they’ve got this laboratory that looks like a Spencer’s Gifts with lights and one of those swirly things that you hypnotize people with all over the place, which is, as I’ve said, my favorite part of supernatural horror, is the bullshit.

And here comes the bullshit.

And they manage to move his Igor’s brain into the monster’s body.

But haha, it is I, Igor. And then everything goes wrong and everyone dies except the prosecutor and the daughter.

And immediately, once you see that castle on fire, the music changes to light and happy, and they’re looking at the sunset and everything’s going to be all right forever because Universal Pictures is not going to make four or five more movies resurrecting this monster.

This is not a poorly regarded movie at this time. The little girl became a cult figure in the horror community. Her name was Janet Ann Gallow, and she lived out the rest of her life being beloved by horror fans, and she would go to conventions.

Lionel Atwill, who played Dr. Bohmer, did not fare so well, and this story is a little bit more interesting than this movie.

What ruined his career was that he showed some pornos at a party. But how that got found out was that some people did a crime. A husband and wife did a crime against a 16-year-old girl. And their defense in court was that it was okay that they got her to do this thing because they saw her at one of Lionel Atwill’s parties. And so it must be okay. They could do whatever they want because she goes to parties.

And Lionel Atwill says in court, “Well, nothing cool goes on at my parties. Like, we’re all drinking milk and playing Scrabble.” But that was perjury [snorts] because he was watching dirty movies with his friends at the party.

And I don’t even know really what became of the people that did the original crime, but his career was ruined by perjury and porno, and he died of a heart attack soon after.

When I was in college and we were dissecting books in English class, because I got an English degree, you always had to think about who is the title referring to.

And in the middle of the film, a ghost shows up. Just a floating head of the original Dr. Frankenstein, but it’s a different actor. It’s the same actor playing the son in this movie. And he tells him, you know, don’t go there.

And that’s really a very small part of the movie to name the whole movie after. But is he the ghost of Frankenstein that the title is referring to?

I think the ghost of Frankenstein that the title is referring to is Lon Chaney, the Frankenstein that they thought was dead, who comes out of the sulfur pit. He’s the ghost, and he’s dead, but he’s undead, undead, undead, and he’s wandering, you know, the earth unable to rest.

So, that’s something to think about.

And I guess that’s about all I have to say about The Ghost of Frankenstein.

I used to be really into Frankenstein movies for a while about 15 years ago. I would watch one every Friday and detail it on my old blog. And what really interests me much more than the Universal Frankenstein movies and the movies that actually use the word Frankenstein in them are the movies that you’re watching and then it has a different title. It has a different plot, but then you realize in the middle, like, this is just Frankenstein.

And the one I think of most is a Canadian movie called Blood Relations from 1988.

This guy shows up with his sexy new girlfriend to meet his crazy dad in the middle of nowhere. And the dad is a brain surgeon. And the girlfriend happens to look exactly like this guy’s dead mom. So, you know where this is going. And it does.

And that is what I like. Not Frankenstein movies, although I like the book and the story around the book and the Ken Russell movie about the story about the book. But these movies that are not Frankenstein but are clearly Frankenstein, that’s what really interests me.

Excuse me. So, if you can think of any other examples of really good hubris and brain-swapping movies that are pretending not to be part of the Frankenstein mythos, but very clearly are, let me know in the comments.