It's here where the Frankenstein franchise started turning comedic, and while the third installment is both the longest and the most consistent of the original Universal Frankenstein movies, there's no denying its camp value. It bears every stamp of a contrived franchise sequel, though it doesn't half-ass the job as intentionally as subsequent chapters (The Ghost of Frankenstein, especially). In this one, Basil Rathbone is the son of Colin Clive's original Baron von Frankenstein character, and he's inherited the cursed castle and all of the bad press his name carries among the villagers of Frankenstein. Of course, it doesn't take long before the new Baron feels compelled to open the Pandora's box his father opened, out of a desire to clear the family name as well as to fulfill his father's dream of creating life from lightning. Problem is, Ygor (Bela Lugosi) has his own designs on the fate of the Monster, whom he's been using as a killing machine against the villages who hung him! Lugosi is so hammy that Marty Feldman's later interpretation actually seems restrained in comparison, and Lionell Atwill as the Inspector (mechanical arm, monocle, and all) is about the same. As a result, the interactions between all the characters become quite laughable early on, and it only gets moreso as the thing goes along. Karloff isn't given much to do besides grunt, and the screenwriter doesn't seem to have been able to decide whether he's capable of crafty thinking or not. Certainly some of his methods of murder are curiously intelligent … laying a body underneath a horse-drawn carriage, closing the shade in an apocathary's office before killing the owner. The climax is great, with Karloff tearing apart the set and throwing everything into a boiling sulphur pit … that's about as symbolic an act as can be, especially given that this was Karloff's last turn as the Monster. Universal would have done well to end it all in that bubbling pit; it was the failure to do so that turned Frankenstein's Monster into an archetype of comedy instead of one of horror.
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