You’re Telling Me!

The inventor of Crystal Springs, optician by trade, perfects his puncture-proof tire and sells it for a million, his hardships en route are comfortably depicted in a work of genius from first to last with some particularly elegant camerawork by Kenton in the opening scene of a drunken homecoming, for example, a medium long shot over the lawn with overhanging trees, and from the railroad car later on when the two gossips outside strain to observe the princess and her savior from “class distinctions”, which in America are called “railroad tracks”, as he explains.

The Ghost of Frankenstein

The “curse of Frankenstein” persists, Ygor defends the castle per The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Dynamite frees the monster, “My friend!”

The scene shifts to Vasaria, where Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein has his practice, surgically treating “diseases of the mind”.

A rude little boy kicks a little girl’s ball above the street, she entreats the monster, who carries her to it. Two alarmed villagers intercede and are struck dead.

Heinrich Frankenstein’s second son disavows the monster chained in the docket. It is wounded by this, and breaks free.

The Promethean theme begins with Ludwig reading his father’s diary and his brother’s notes and memoranda. His clinic has a “soporific gas” to subdue dangerous patients, the monster and Ygor are felled, not before Dr. Kettering is killed.

Baron Frankenstein’s ghost appears to Ludwig, here is a chance to “make amends”, to “restore the good name of Frankenstein”. Dr. Kettering’s brain will replace the initial mistake.

Ygor volunteers his own. Dr. Bohmer once made “a slight miscalculation”, he is offered high position by Ygor when the operation is completed and the friends are united to rule the nation.

The monster gently kidnaps the girl, her brain is his wish.

This is the central point of the delicate construction, which gains force by its laconic yet detailed attention to its contributing strands.

The monster speaks with Ygor’s voice, the villagers arrive. “Turn on the gas,” it says, “we’ll kill all of them,” and then it goes blind due to a mismatch of blood types. “What good is a brain,” it says, delivering the moral, “without eyes to see?”

The town prosecutor and Frankenstein’s daughter depart the burning edifice for a sunrise.

Who Done It?

The General Broadcasting System (GBS) loses its head and his Czech doctor over the air in Murder at Midnight.

Abbott & Costello nearly solve the case (that job is for a college professor and his sweetheart, a GBS executive).

America on the Air gives out curious facts and statistics, the head was a cryptographer during the Great War.

Crowther deciphered the water fountain gag, and that was about it.

House of Dracula

The spores of a hothouse flower promise alleviation of various ills, the good Dr. Edelman hopes first of all to cure his hunchbacked nurse.

To the seaside clinic repair first Count Dracula, then Lawrence Talbot. The latter is indeed cured, the Count receives transfusions from the doctor but infects him.

Frankenstein’s monster is found inert beneath a skeleton in a cellar open to the moonlit sea. The homicidal doctor revives it, Talbot does battle.

Dracula is quelled by a ray of sunlight.

The beautiful medical analyses of the patients show a parasite around the Count’s blood cells and a certain “hardness” cramped by Talbot’s brainpan.