Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland

Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland

March, 1965  Paperback Library

I first discovered Famous Monsters Of Filmland when I was very young; it was probably around 1979 or 1980, and I would’ve been six or so. Coincidentally, the same age my son is now. My brother is seven years older than me and he had some recent or fairly recent issues of the magazine, somehow, and I remember looking through them. In particular I was really into the ads for the Don Post monster masks. I can’t recall which issues these were, but I’d love to know. 

Anyway, this must’ve been the tail end of the Famous Monsters Of Filmland era, but just a decade or so before the magazine had been the go-to source for Monster Kids (bonus question – can anyone confirm that Glenn Danzig created this term, in his 1981 Misfits song “All Hell Breaks Loose?” Or was the term “monster kids” in use before that?). At the height of the magazine’s fame, three collections were published by Paperback Library, each of them overseen by editor Forrest J. Ackerman: Best From Famous Monsters Of Filmland (1964), Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland (1965), and Famous Monsters Of Filmland Strike Back (1965). All three are collectable today and thus go for exorbitant prices. But I wanted to read at least one of them, so for a lark I put in a request via Worldcat.org for an Interlibary Loan. 

And folks, a library actually sent me a copy! Not only that, but it turns out the copy I was sent once belonged to famed comic artist/horror historian Stephen Bissette: 

In one of those synchronicities only Jung could appreciate, with the same Interlibrary Loan delivery I also received the 2010 collection The Weird World Of Eerie Publications, which guess what, features an intro by none other than Stephen Bissette:

One thing that made me chuckle is that the cover of Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland is a typically-awesome Basil Gogos painting of Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein Monster, from Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. And yet, the book itself is dedicated to the recently-departed Boris Karloff! I kind of imagine Bela got a chuckle from beyond the grave over that. And speaking of which, a similarly-mordant tone permeates the articles collected here. We’re often told of how Bela Lugosi died…maybe…because he might really be a vampire who thirsts for blood! This sort of churlish disregard for “proper respect for the dead” wouldn’t exist in a publication of today, but then I’d wager it was that very tone that made Famous Monsters Of Filmland so beloved by the readers of the day. 

But anwyway, Ackerman delivers an intro in which he states unequivocably that in his opinion Boris Karloff was the greatest horror actor of all time. From then we are jettisoned into the wily-nilly collection of Famous Monsters articles, with no attribution of when they were published, nor any theme holding them together. It’s basically like a paperback-sized version of your standard issue, only without a letters page or any ads. The black and white photo and art is faithfully reproduced, though, to the extent that the majority of Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland comes off like a picture book:

Articles cover everything from histories on Karloff and Lugosi to the magazine’s well-known rundowns of movies; the latter must have been very important in the days before VCRs and DVDs and whatnot, as you get a thorough recounting of the plot along with pictures from the film. There’s also weird stuff, like a piece – again published long after Lugosi had died – that claims Bela Lugosi was haunted by some golden-eyed witch, who would pop up at memorable times in his life. This piece is just weird, mostly because it’s an apocryphal story about a guy who died in the ‘50s with nothing to substantiate it. But then that just goes with the unruly spirit of Famous Monsters Of Filmland, where nothing was sacred. 

I especially dug the piece on the Flash Gordon serial, even though it’s just a high-level overview of the plot for the three Flash Gordon serials with Buster Crabbe. This one has always had a special place for me; I discovered the serial in early 1988 when I was 13. I was at a K-Mart or something and they had a VHS with the first two chapters of the original 1936 serial and I asked my mom to buy it for me. In hindsight I have to laugh because the jerks were so cheap, I mean it was a video tape that even on SP mode could’ve held two hours, but they only put like 40 minutes on the damn tape (I can’t recall exactly how long each serial chapter was). I watched that damn thing over and over and even then I knew I had to be the only 13-year-old in probably a few hundred miles who even knew who Buster friggin’ Crabbe was. But man I loved that and it wasn’t until decades later that I finally got to see the whole serial, when I purchased the now out-of-print Image Flash Gordon DVD set (which also contained the other two Buster Crabbe serials). Here are some shots of the piece on this one:

In addition we get some of the plot rundowns of various horror movies that Famous Monsters was known for, as well as a biographical pieces on Lugosi and Karloff. There’s also a long piece by Robert Bloch, originally published in another film magazine, which goes into Bloch’s definition of what a “true” science fiction movie is. The humorous thing about this one is the preface that the article is more “sophisticated” than what readers of the magazine might be use to…either Ackerman’s acknowledgement that his readership is mostly made up of kids or he’s just implying his readers are dimwitted. That said, Bloch’s piece is at odds with everything else here, totally lacking the fun spirit of the typical Famous Monsters article and coming off like dry pontificating instead. 

Overall Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland offers a fun peek at a long-gone era, and I’m sure it was hotly collected by the Monster Kids of the day; no doubt the reason copies are so scarce today. So then, a big thanks to Stephen Bissette for giving his copy to the John Dewey Library, so that those of us out here who just want to read the book (and not collect it) can have the opportunity to do so.

The Wolfman

The Wolfman, by Carl Dreadstone

August, 1977  Berkley Books

In the late ‘70s Berkley published a few novelizations of the Universal horror classics, all under the house name “Carl Dreadstone.” While I don’t think all the novels have been accounted for, it is known that this one was written by Ramsey Campbell, who also provides an intro under his own name. But to address the pink elephant in the room straightaway, the title is incorrect: the movie was actually titled “The Wolf Man,” ie two words. It’s incorrectly “The Wolfman” throughout this Berkley paperback, even in Campbell’s intro. I was of course outraged. 

Otherwise, Ramsey Campbell takes a story that encompassed slightly over an hour of screentime and turns it into an epic tragedy; in some ways his novel, more introspective, dark, and violent than the 1941 film it is based on, seems to have more in common with the 2010 Benecio Del Toro remake, which by the way was also titled “The Wolfman.” Curiously, in his intro Campbell enthuses over the acting of Lon Chaney Jr. in the film, and the way Chaney brought to life the plight of his doomed character, Larry Talbot, destined to become the Wolf Man. Chaney makes his Talbot an affable, good-natured lug; there is a lot of smiling in The Wolf Man. There is not much smiling in Campbell’s novelization. 

Instead of the affable lug of Chaney’s portrayal, the Larry Talbot of this novel is already a wolf before he even gets bitten. He is a driven, angry man, quick to lash out and quick to prove himself – even when the challenge only exists in his mind. It was not much fun spending 212 pages with this Larry Talbot. He is very much in the vein of the average Manning Lee Stokes protagonist, only even more aggressively macho. His background is similar to his film counterpart: born to wealth in Wales, but leaving home for America at some point and now returning, in his early 30s, due to the sudden death of his brother. There are some additions to this in Campbell’s novel: Talbot’s brother was his twin, and Talbot left home at 16 due to a fight. 

This Larry Talbot lacks however all of the affable nature that Chaney brought to the role. In his intro Campbell states that the novel makes use of material that was in Curt Siodmak’s original script but didn’t make it to film. One wonders if Siodmak’s version of Larry Talbot was this much of a prick. If so, the producers made a wise choice in making him more likable. Thus, the Larry of the film – and you can’t help but think of Chaney’s character as “Larry” and not “Talbot” – is more of a tragic hero, and one feels sorry for him when his life is thrown into chaos. But the “Talbot” of this novelization already has the nature of a wolf from the start. It isn’t so much a tragedy as it is inevitable that he will come to a bad end. 

This was to me the greatest difference betwween Campbell’s novelization and the film. The story follows mostly the same beats, only with the added resonance of a novel, with more characterization and more introspection. I don’t believe I have ever read a Ramsey Campbell novel before, but he does a great job of turning this old film into a sort of timeless thriller with Gothic touches; it seems we are reminded of the fog or the mist every other page. He also gets it right by setting the novel in the era of the movie’s release; the Universal horror movies are notorious for taking place in uncertain time periods, but it seems clear that The Wolf Man is contemporary. Campbell follows this, with an errant mention early in the book of “Hitler’s Germany.” 

Campbell opens the novel same as the film, with Larry Talbot being chaffeured to his childhood home in Wales. Actually that should be “childhood castle;” as mentioned, Larry comes from wealth. But whereas the Larry of the film is all smiles and warm handshakes, here in the novel the trepidation and anger is laid on thick; Talbot’s almost in physical pain at the thought of returning to this hell he once called home. Also here in the novel the town itself is named “Talbot.” The reunion with his father, Sir John, is also more tense than in the film; another addition to the saga here in the book is that Talbot’s mother died in childbirth. This is nice subtext from Campbell, that Talbot is so driven perhaps because he blames himself for his mother’s death. 

Even if so, this Larry Talbot is hard to root for. He is of course a ladykiller, but even more toxic about it than a Stokes protagonist. Like in the film, Talbot helps his father set up a powerful new telescope and then accidentaly spies pretty blonde-haired Gwen in her bedroom, down in the village. She’s left her curtains up and she’s putting on some earrings before heading downstairs to the antique store her father owns. In the movie, this is played as an innocent lark; a goofy variation on the “meet cute” scenario of contemporary screwball comedies. In the novel, as with everything else, it’s much darker. First of all there is the recurring line that Gwen is “just a girl.” Courting her is just another challenge to be surmounted. Talbot spies on her with the telescope, then goes into town and starts coyly referring to her bedroom and all this other stalker shit – same as in the film, and while the entire premise was a bit “off” even there, here it’s just downright creepy. 

Gwen has also changed a bit in the novel. Here she is presented as younger than the character Evelyn Ankers portrayed in the film; the way Gwen thinks and acts, she could still be in her teens. It’s also quite clear she is a virgin. Campbell tries his damnest to make the spark between Gwen and Talbot believable; again, in the film it’s kind of easier to buy, given the aw shucks demeanor Chaney gives the role. But the Talbot of the novel is a wolf and he aggressively goes after Gwen; the rapport between them is more along the lines of a battle, with Talbot ever trying to press his “advantage” and then Gwen scoring points with an acidic rejoinder. Particularly amusing from our wisened era is when Talbot insists Gwen go out with him at night, despite her firm “No.” His “I’ll pick you up at eight” is practically a threat here, whereas, again, it’s more of a good-natured joke in the film. 

The date of course is to the gypsy camp, that night, where Talbot’s life changes course. Again Campbell stretches the tension more than in the film; Gwen brings along her dowdy friend, Jenny (we learn that Gwen is thinking of setting her up with Talbot), who gets a reading from a gypsy named Bela (Lugosi himself!). Overall the characters in this novelization are just meaner than their film counterparts; whereas Bela sends off Jenny with concern in the film, here he snaps at her to the extent that she runs off in tears – only to be attacked by Bela in wolf form. A curious thing is that the Bela werewolf is basically just a wolf, on all fours, whereas Talbot becomes a wolf man after being bitten by it. Maybe there’s some hierarchy in the world of lycanthropy. If so, Campbell doesn’t dwell on it in his novelization. One thing he does a good job of is noting that the chest wound Talbot gets from the wolf quickly heals, to the point that it can barely be seen…though Talbot is certain it’s shaped like a pentagram. I only say this because we never see the pentagram wound in any of the films; Larry will just open his shirt and the other characters will gawk at what is apparently a pretty nasty wound. 

One of the biggest differences in the novel is a scene, supposedly filmed though no material exists of it any longer, in which Larry Talbot fights a bear. This happens at the gypsy fair, another scene that Campbell brings more to life than in the film. Talbot’s just killed what he claims is a wolf, but all the cops can find is the body of a man (Bela the gypsy), and this has only served to make him seem more of a bad seed; Campbell also has a recurring subplot about an old biddy, who was responsible for Talbot leaving town years ago, still gossiping that he’s nothing but trouble. The bear fight is another display of Talbot’s uber macho drive; the bear is old, pushed into fights by its greedy owner, but a driven Talbot beats the shit out of the poor animal anyway. At this point the werewolf in him is driving him to be even more aggressive, especially toward other animals – another cool part is where Gwen’s fiance Frank comes in with a dog, and Talbot rushes out. In the film, again, it comes off like Larry is just nervous and awkward. In the book, he leaves because he has the sudden desire to tear the dog apart. 

Ramsey Campbell’s The Wolfman is really a slow burn affair when compared to the fast-moving film. Talbot doesn’t even turn into the titular monster until page 126. Curiously, he leaves some of the Wolf Man material off-page, rendering the action from the point of view of the victims. For example, Talbot’s first kill is a gravedigger (who happens to be digging Jenny’s grave), and the attack is more about the mounting terror the poor guy experiences before he is killed. While the novel is not violent, Campbell does bring more gore to the post-attack scenes: we learn that Jenny’s head has almost been severed from her body, to the point that Sir John pukes at the sight. 

As The Wolfman progresses, it seems clear that Campbell is more interested in Larry Talbot than the Wolf Man. While the monster continues to appear “in the shadows,” as it were, we get even more probing of Talbot’s confused thoughts; he is certain he has become a werewolf, though no one believes him. The way this dawns on him is clever, but involves more of that slow-burn vibe, like another scene (unsure if it was filmed or a product of Campbell’s imagination) where Talbot tries to go to church but gives in to a sudden impulse to run out of the place. Otherwise the novel goes on to follow the film faithfully, only with more character depth…and basically different characterization for Larry Talbot. The part at the end where Gwen is willing to leave town with him is especially hard to buy, given how this version of Talbot is such an unlikable, hate-filled prick. But then maybe that’s Gwen’s type. 

The conclusion of the novel is the same as the film, too, but again Campbell does a good job of making Sir John more of an empathetic character than the self-involved Sir John of the movie, who almost came off as maliciously indifferent to his son’s plight. Here one feels Sir John’s horror as he realizes the “creature” he just brained with his son’s silver-headed cane happens to be his son. As with the film, here the novel ends…though of course Larry Talbot would return for a handful of sequels. Unfortunately none of them were novelized as part of this Berkley series. 

Indeed, the Berkley editors chose some oddball titles; in addition to The Wolfman, there were novelizations of expected classics like The Bride Of Frankenstein (also apparently by Ramsey Campbell)…as well as unexpected ones like The Werewolf Of London. One would think they would’ve gone for more obvious choices, like maybe a novelization of 1943’s Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. It would’ve been a lot of fun to read Campbell’s take on that; perhaps we would’ve gotten the cut material of the Monster actually speaking. At any rate these Berkley Universal tie-ins are woefully scarce and overpriced on the collector’s market; I was lucky to get this one, and happy to read it. I’d love to read some of the others someday.

On a related note, check out my Neca Glow-In-The-Dark Frankenstein Monster!  All the Monster Kids on my block are jealous!  I saw it in a Target and couldn’t resist:

The Wolf Man vs Dracula: An Alternate History For Classic Film Monsters

The Wolf Man vs Dracula: An Alternate History For Classic Film Monsters, by Philip J. Riley

No month stated, 2010 BearManor Media

I’ve wanted to read this for a long time. The story on this slim trade paperback is that The Wolf Man vs Dracula is an unproduced script written in 1944 by Universal Studios screenwriter Bernard Schubert, who went on to write the Universal picture The Mummy’s Curse. The script then sat in a box in Schubert’s garage for “forty years” before he and book editor Philip J. Riley got it out. 

The curious thing of course is that Schubert’s name is not printed on the cover of this publication, only Riley’s. Also, Riley has copyrighted the book himself – even though he himself does not contribute anything to it (other than finding the script and talking to the people who worked on it, that is). What I mean to say is, there is no introduction from Riley, or summary of the project, or anything. Indeed this book would have greatly benefitted from a bit more background. As it is, we get a few short introductory pages comprised of the hazy, decades-later memories of two men involved with the aborted project: Schubert (who died in 1988), and special effects man David S Horsley (who died in 1976). 

So in this regard we are presented with the thoughts of men who are no longer around to support the claims. I only note this because apparently Philip J. Riley has come under heavy fire from the Monster Kid community for such stuff: see the Classic Horror Film Board thread on this publication for more on that. The majority of the thread is nothing more than character assassination of Riley, accusing him of everything from plagiarism to theft. To his credit, Riley briefly appears on the thread to defend himself, acknowledging his occasional gaffe (it would appear his greatest “sin” was mixing up the names of a few actresses) and stating that he is merely a fan, publishing material for other fans. 

One of the biggest accusations is that the script for The Wolf Man vs Dracula is shall we say fake, a product of Philip J. Riley’s mind and no one else’s. This is because none of the “major” Universal historians (ie David J. Skal, Gregory Mank, etc) had ever heard of it prior to the publication of this book, and apparently there are no mentions of Schubert’s script in the official Universal records – though some people on that thread I linked to did find a trade announcement from 1944 which confirmed that Bernard Schubert was working on a script of this title. Of course, the answer is that the script sat in Schubert’s garage, and Riley kept the discovery of it to himself. And also, all those accusing Riley of making it up could have saved themselves some trouble and just read the damn book: it is quite evident that this script was written by a Universal screenwriter in the mid 1940s. 

Anyone who has seen the “monster rally” films of the ‘40s, ie Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, House Of Frankenstein, and House Of Dracula, will know one thing: the monsters seldom actually appear in the movies, and when they do it’s brief. And the producers never take advantage of having all these monsters together in one picture; indeed, the monsters will usually have their own separate plots and never come together. Only in the final minutes of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man or the finale of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein do the monsters really interract. Compare to a modern-day approach to the concept, a la Return Of The Wolf Man, in which the monsters share a lot more “screen time” with one another. 

But that ‘40s mindset is front and center in The Wolf Man vs Dracula. I mean first of all, and I apologize for any spoilers, but the title itself is misleading. The “Wolf Man” doesn’t fight Dracula at all in this script! Instead, it’s Larry Talbot, ie the man who is cursed with being a werewolf (Lon Chaney Jr), fighting a giant bat in the climax. There is no scene where the actual Wolf Man fights the actual Dracula. And, true to the underwhelming vibe of the monster rally films (at least insofar as actual monster stuff goes), Talbot is human for the majority of the script, only turning into the Wolf Man at the very beginning and the very end. As for Dracula, he turns into a “giant bat” a bunch of times, but spends the majority of the script trying to get his fangs into some random countryside girl, for reasons never properly explained. 

Here's where more of those accusations come in, because in that hazy-recollections prologue, special effects guy David S. Horsley claims that The Wolf Man vs Dracula was to be shot in technicolor, and that color test photos were taken of Lon Chaney Jr. These photos have never been seen, though Riley intimates in the intro that he has seen them – however they are not reproduced in the book. Also, the historians claim there’s no indication Universal had any plans for a technicolor film in this genre at this time. But Horsley’s claim is backed up by the hazy-recollections of screenwriter Schubert, also in the prologue, who states that he was hired for the job precisely due to his work on a technicolor picture, thus he knew how to cater his script to the increased cost involved with color. 

What this means is that The Wolf Man vs Dracula would look pretty cheap, only taking place in a few locations (re-used sets from previous pictures, as thriftily noted by Schubert in his script) and only featuring a few actors. Oh and I forgot – another claim is that none other than Bela Lugosi would once again play Dracula, playing him for the first time on screen since the 1931 film. Horsley in his recollections says he’s unsure if color photos were taken of Lugosi, but one thing insinuated is that Lugosi was too old at the time for the physical action of a monster fight, thus the necessity of replacing him with a giant bat in the action scenes. This is where Horsley came in, trying to work up a giant mechanical bat to look realistic in technicolor. 

So there’s your buzzkill early in the review: the cover (created by Philip Riley and taken from period illustrations – and in fact I seem to recall a thread once upon a time that he was even accused of ripping this illustration off!) is a total lie. The “Wolf Man” does not fight Dracula. I mean technically he does, but it’s Larry Talbot in his non-wolf form. And he’s fighting a giant bat, not Bela Lugosi in a cape. Interestingly, the actual Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man did indeed fight the actual Bela Lugosi Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, one of the saving graces of what I consider an altogether annoying movie. Also that film established Larry Talbot as a vampire hunter…and curiously the seeds of that idea are planted in this unproduced script. Oh and that’s another thing…throughout the book it is “The Wolfman vs Dracula.” Every Monster Kid worth his salt knows the Universal character is referred to as “The Wolf Man,” ie two words. 

Another thing to handle straightaway is that the intro features a more serious goof, and again it’s “voiced” through the recollections of Schubert, who died many years before this book was even published. Schubert – or Riley speaking for him – states that The Wolf Man vs Dracula “would have been a natural sequel to Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man.” Within the first few pages of the script we realize how innacurate this is: The Wolf Man vs Dracula is actually a “natural sequel” to 1944’s House Of Frankenstein. According to that Classic Horror forum I linked to above, Philip Riley apparently acknowledged his mistake in this regard on some social media forum. But goofs like this are no doubt why he is disparaged by the Monster Kid community. 

Anyone with even a passing interest in the Universal monster rally films will recall that Larry Talbot “died” in the finale of House Of Frankenstein after being shot by a silver bullet, fired by a gypsy girl who loved him. This is how Talbot is discovered in the opening of The Wolf Man vs Dracula, lying beside the skeleton of a girl in gypsy clothes. So in other words the script picks up right after the climax of that film…several years later, but still. It sure isn’t a sequel to Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, which ended with Talbot as the Wolf Man being swept away in a flood beneath Frankenstein’s castle while fighting the Monster. 

So here is the plot of The Wolf Man vs Dracula in a nutshell: Larry Talbot is revived, briefly turns into the Wolf Man in the hospital and kills a guy, then escapes into the countryside. When next we encounter Talbot he is back in human form, still in Transylvania, and has, apropos of nothing, hunted down a local man named Anatole. This is because Anatole, we learn, is the town hangman, and somehow Talbot thinks the hangman will be able to kill him. For good. Meanwhile, none other than Count Dracula has designs on Anatole’s “dowdy” young daughter, Yvonne, if not for that pesky crucifix she wears. Talbot marries Yvonne to force her dad to kill him(!?), and Dracula claims he can “help” Talbot die…if only Talbot will get rid of Yvonne’s pesky crucifix! The action climaxes with Talbot fighting Dracula (in giant bat form) and saving Yvonne from the vampire’s clutches. After this Talbot turns into the Wolf Man and runs roughshod over the local gendarmes in Dracula’s castle, finally being gunned down by Anatole. 

In the opening, Schubert implies that his script went unfilmed because Universal had met their picture quota for that year or somesuch. I think another reason might be that his script is subpar. Sure, this is likely his first draft, but as it stands, Schubert’s The Wolf Man vs Dracula is pretty lame (and pretty tame), and it makes even the most maligned monster rally film, House Of Dracula, seem like Citizen Kane in comparison. Maybe an inventive director could have brought some life to the proceedings, or maybe just the novelty of seeing Chaney and Lugosi in color would have sufficed. But the story itself just sucks. (If that’s too lame of a monster rally pun for you, you could instead say it lacks any bite.) 

And I’m judging the script by the merits of its filmed contemporaries, not from a modern-day perspective. I mean the monster rally films weren’t exactly grounded in logic. Look at Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, which detours into nonsense in the middle half: Larry Talbot starts the picture wanting to die, but halfway through he’s suddenly maddened to revive Frankenstein’s Monster. Even considering that, The Wolf Man vs Dracula suffers from illogical plotting. Like most notably, Larry Talbot barges into Anatole the hangman’s home, announces that he is a “murderer” and wants to die…and Anatole is like, “You can stay here for the night! Oh, and this is my daughter, Yvonne!” It’s just ridiculous. 

Even more ridiculous is Dracula’s fixation on Yvonne, which makes no sense. Actually, Dracula’s presence itself makes no sense. He’s not introduced in any grand fashion; literally we are just informed he happens to be sitting in Anatole’s home when Anatole himself is introduced in the script. Dracula’s just dropped in to chat with the town hangman. That’s literally the guy’s big introduction. And also the dialog, later in the script, intimates that there’s some confusion at play…that this Dracula is only a “relative” of the Dracula who caused all that trouble in London some years ago, ie the events of the 1931 film. Of course it’s the same vampire, though none of the locals realize he’s a vampire. 

And why Dracula is obsessed with Yvonne is a mystery. The impression I got was that she must be the only attractive young woman in the area. But the script makes it clear that Yvonne is not attractive…at least in how she presents herself. Only Dracula can see how hotstuff she really is…something we viewers get to see when Talbot marries Yvonne and she suddenly transforms into a mega babe. But then in the actually produced monster rally films, Dracula (as played by John Carradine) was also a bit of a lothario, so I guess the whole Yvonne storyline makes sense in that regard. What I’m trying to say is it’s so unexplored and unexplained…and so humdrum. We’re talking about Count Dracula here. Literally all he does in The Wolf Man vs Dracula is try to get some young Transylvanian girl to remove her crucifix so he can bite her neck. 

Another thing is that Dracula doesn’t even have any good dialog. In fact, the dialog throughout is without note, though Schubert does successfully capture the whining of Larry Talbot. I could see Lon Chaney Jr. delivering all of Talbot’s lines, so Schubert succeeds in capturing his voice; in Schubert’s comments in the intro, he notes that the Wolf Man was screenwriter Curt Siodmak’s “baby,” but again Schubert got this particular writing gig due to his experience writing to technicolor. There are very few speaking roles in the script; it really is almost a situation horror-drama concerning the core characters of Larry Talbot, Count Dracula, Anatole, and Yvonne. A character who briefly appears is “The Commissioner,” and it seems evident that the role was written with Lionel Atwill in mind; by this point in his career a beleaguered Atwill mostly just had supporting roles in Universal horror pictures. The Commissioner only appears in two or three scenes, but his dialog has a very Atwillian bent. 

Monster action is almost nonexistent. Early in the film Talbot turns into the Wolf Man; given that he’s in the hospital when this happens, the scene comes off like a retread of a sequence in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. After this Talbot doesn’t transform again until the finale, when he again becomes the Wolf Man after fighting Dracula(!!). Schubert does present a little more “Wolf Man carnage” than was seen in the other films of the day; the Wolf Man tears into several gendarmes in the finale before being brought down, yet again, by a silver bullet. Schubert not only recycles sets in his script but scenes as well. Throughout The Wolf Man vs Dracula Talbot pushes Anatole to make a silver bullet to kill him with…which again is more illogical stupidty because Talbot goes to Anatole because Anatole is a hangman! Why the hell would he suddenly expect him to craft a silver bullet? But anyway Talbot as the Wolf Man meets the exact same end as in House Of Frankenstein, gunned down by a silver bullet. 

Other monster action: Dracula transforms into a giant bat a few times, flying back to his castle. There’s also a part where he turns himself into a wolf and attacks some townspeople, trying to frame Talbot. Now a curious thing here is that Dracula, like everyone else in the script, tells Larry Talbot he’s crazy to think he’s a werewolf, because werewolves don’t exist. I thought this would go somewhere, like Dracula of course knowing there are werewolves and looking to turn the Wolf Man into his vassal. Like for example in the contemporary Bela Lugosi flick Return Of The Vampire. But Schubert does nothing with the setup. About the most we get is a part where Talbot ventures into Dracula’s castle and discovers some monster lore in Dracula’s library; in an uninentionally humorous scene, Talbot spends all night reading the books, suddenly becoming an expert on vampires! In fact it is Talbot who keeps insisting to Anatole and Yvonne that Count Dracula is a vampire. This means that Talbot spends the majority of the script trying to convince people that monsters exist: that he himself is a werewolf and Dracula is a vampire. 

But it’s the biggest miss that the Wolf Man and Dracula never actually meet, at least in their monster forms. Talbot heads into Dracula’s castle in the final scene, battling the giant bat and staking it – another special effects shot which would see Dracula dissolve into dust. But it is an ignoble end for Dracula for sure. Even Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein realized the value of having the actual monsters fight one another. My assumption is Schubert was writing under the notion that Lugosi would be physically unable to handle an action scene, but this too is odd because Lugosi, as the Frankenstein Monster, battled Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, released just the year before. Who knows. The long and short of it is that it’s underwhelming, not to mention a letdown given the title of the script. 

So in conclusion, it is not to the loss of the Universal horror franchise that The Wolf Man vs Dracula never came to be. The titular characters come off poorly and the story hinges on one illogical development after another. I wonder though if the script made the rounds in the Universal screenwriter department. Curiously, Larry Talbot is suddenly alive and well in 1945’s House Of Dracula, which turned out to be the actual film that followed House Of Frankenstein. As mentioned, that earlier film ended with Talbot “dead” from a silver bullet. He’s alive again with no explanation in House Of Dracula. Almost makes one wonder if someone goofed and thought Talbot had been reborn as in Schubert’s script. But that doesn’t pan out, for as mentioned Talbot meets the same end in The Wolf Man vs Dracula as he did in House Of Frankenstein.

The Devil’s Night (Universal Monsters Trilogy #3)

The Devil’s Night, by David Jacobs 

February, 2001 Berkley Boulevard 

I’ve meant to read this concluding volume of the Universal Monsters trilogy for a few years now; I read the second volume for Halloween in 2016, and meant to get to this one sooner. But I haven’t really been on a horror kick in a while, so I just never got around to it. Anyway I kind of wish I’d gotten to The Devil’s Night sooner, as David Jacobs picks up events immediately after the conclusion of the previous book; despite the title, for the most part The Devil’s Night takes place the day after The Devil’s Brood, and someone new to the trilogy would have a hard time figuring out what’s going on. 

But while everything takes place immediately after the events of the previous volume, there have been some curious changes to both the personalities of the characters as well as to the narrative style itself. While for the most part we have new characters this time, the returning ones seem to have completely changed, like for example Dorian, the medium/witch who served black magician Uncle Basil in The Devil’s Brood. Dorian started a relationship with Mafia bigwig Steve Soto in that book, but in this volume she’s pretty much a cold fish, bitter and angry. She says she hated Basil, also drops the implication that he’d been molesting her since he took her on as his assistant (when she was 12!), and further says she has absolutely no feelings for Soto – who’s dead, anyway. But folks mark your calendars, because I was actually wrong last time; I figured Soto wouldn’t return to the series, but “zombie Soto” is indeed in this book…bearing none of the personality of his previous self. While he can think, talk, fight, and even make lame one-liners, he lacks any emotion or personality. 

Stranger still is the curious change to the narrative style itself. While The Devil’s Brood did an admirable job of capturing the vibe of classic horror movies with a bit of a Fangoria overlay, for the most part playing things straight, this time there’s a sardonic tone to Jacobs’s narrative. Characters often make lame jokes or comments about the nightmarish situations they’re in, which jibes with the otherwise-horrific vibe Jacobs tries to create. Even worse is that the narrative itself pokes fun at things – at one point Visaria, the fictional Eastern European fiefdom which is ruled by Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleka, is referred to as “a Monaco for monsters,” given how so many of them congregate there. And whereas last time Jacobs correctly referred to Frankenstein’s monster as “the Monster,” this time for some unfathomable reason he keeps incorrectly referring to him as “Frankenstein.” You would think that an editor would’ve at least caught that. I mean that’s just basic Universal Monster knowledge – the creator was named Frankenstein, not the monster. It’s fine for the characters to make this mistake, but not the author. 

Otherwise Jacobs loses that “Aurora model” vibe from the previous book, with its glow-in-the-dark Dracula Blob and assorted zombies, and goes for more of an action-horror hybrid; the novel is for the most part padded out with overlong action scenes that ultimately go nowhere or overlong sequences of new characters trying to find the monsters. At the very least I’m happy that, unlike Jeff Rovin’s overly fan-fictionish Return Of The Wolf Man, all the characters here are aware that monsters exist and etc; I mean there’s no point where some dim-witted disbeliever has to learn the hard way that Dracula, the Monster, werewolves, and other assorted creatures actually exist. The “heroes” for the most part are all members of Marya’s Satanic coven, which is run out of Visaria, and they’ve come to Isla Morgana – the fictional Caribbean island from White Zombie which has featured in the trilogy from the beginning – to collect Dracula and the Monster and take them back to Visaria. 

Now Jacobs was a contract author, and as we know he had his hand in some men’s adventure series, like Tracker and Psycho Squad. Given this he was able to meet a deadline quickly for the publisher – and also given this it means he would often result to inordinate padding to fill up the word quota and meet the deadline. While The Devil’s Brood seemed like a well-thought-out novel, The Devil’s Night seems downright rushed. I mean consider this: the previous book ended with Marya capturing Winfred Glendon the Third, the grandson of the original Werewolf of London, whose ghost Marya conjured in a Satanic ritual. The ghost told Marya the secret of the Moon-Ray technology, a clever creation of Jacobs’s which tied together The Werewolf of London and The Bride Of Frankenstein; the ghost of Glendon the First revealed that it was the Moon-Ray which Frankenstein and Dr. Petronius used to bring the Bride to life, which is why all other succeeding attempts to revive her have failed. Now with the secret in her posession, Marya was poised to awaken the Bride from her century-long slumber and use her in some unspecified means of “propagating a new race” or somesuch. 

So that’s how The Devil’s Brood ended. Promises some cool shit, doesn’t it? Well get this. Jacobs ignores all of it until page 229 of this book…which only runs 252 pages! The vast majority of The Devil’s Night is composed of padded-out action scenes or lame “sarcastic” exchanges among the cult members as they try to collect the various creatures and take them back to Visaria. Even more damning is that the Bride is finally woken at the end of this book…but Jacobs blows the opportunity in a major way. In fact, and not to spoil things too soon, he pretty much rewrites the finale of The Bride of Frankenstein, with a lovestruck Monster chasing the Bride around a dungeon and the Bride shrieking at him. I mean Jacobs could’ve done something with the Bride, actually brought her to life (not just reviving her), as Elizabeth Hand did in her own Universal-approved sequel. But it’s as if Jacobs is only good at assembling all his various pieces and doesn’t know what exactly to do with them once they’re together. 

At any rate, Marya is the force that brings all this together, and Jacobs should’ve spent more narrative time with her. The majority of this book takes place the very day after the previous one, most of it occuring just a few hours later – and indeed the entire novel takes place over the course of this single day. Despite having the knowledge of how to revive the Bride, Marya basically rests during the day – after putting the captured Glendon the Third through a few tests. This being the last night of a full moon, she wants to test out his werewolf powers or something. Like all the other characters, Marya has nothing in common with her filmic ancestor: this Marya is a sleek beauty with some sadistic tendencies. Whereas the Marya of Dracula’s Daughter struggled with her vampiric condition, this one revels in it. She’s also presented as a much more, shall we say, hot babe, given to waltzing around her domain in “knee-length red-leather high-heeled boots.” She enjoys taunting the captured Glendon the Third with how he will become her loyal servant; curiously Glendon shows nothing but revulsion for the hot vampire queen, whereas I’d at least try to hit on her a little if I were in his position. I mean when it comes to hot evil babes, vampire chicks are at the top of the heap. The one thing I wanted from this trilogy was monsters having sex with each other, but dammit it’s the one thing we don’t get! 

This opening sequence gives us a taste of what we’re in for: an overlong action scene that doesn’t go anywhere, and ultimately comes off as pointless. Marya, instead of reviving the Bride immediately, instead taunts Glendon a bit, then has her various scientist underlings test him as he turns into a werewolf. Then she sets him loose on a captive local babe. But a big difference between Glendon’s “werewolf” and Larry Talbot’s “wolfman” is that Glendon is a thinking creature, not just a blood-driven beast. Jacobs again capably relays this from Glendon’s point of view; he thinks of himself as “Glendon,” remembers things from his human life and retains all his human knowledge – it’s just that he is no longer burdened with Glendon’s moral fiber and thus can kill whatever he wants and eat whatever he wants (the monsters are very fond of eating people, this time around). He’s able to escape, after mauling a few of Marya’s kevlar-suited guards; he even captures Marya herself, using her as a shield, but she turns herself into a giant bat-woman and flies away. Jacobs continues to make novel refinements to the Universal monsters; Glendon is also capable of shape-shifting, elongating his forearm to escape a pair of manacles. 

But here’s the thing – Glendon escapes, and the last we see of him he’s set fire to an orphanage to cause a distraction. However, the next time we see him…it’s the next morning, he’s back in human form, and he’s once again a captive of Marya. It’s like that throughout The Devil’s Night: elongated sequences that bear little impact on events. This sequence alone goes on for like 50 pages, with absolutely no plot-relevant outcome. Instead of doing something with all his assembled monsters – I mean for once in the trilogy, Jacobs has Dracula, the Monster, the Bride, Dracula’s Daughter, and a friggin’ werewolf, all together in the same location at the same time – our author doesn’t even deliver on the promise until like the last couple pages. And blows the opportunity once again when he does. It’s maddening in a way. Though still not as maddening as Rovin’s tiresome first installment, which wasted pages on incidental stuff, like about what happened to the characters Abbott and Costello played. 

Meanwhile on Isla Morgana it’s the morning after the zombie massacre which climaxed The Devil’s Brood. Jacobs here introduces a group of new characters who will take up the brunt of the narrative, all of them members of Marya’s cult: Jax Breen, foppish but merciless leader of the group; Julia Evans, “full-bodied Amazon” who serves as the muscle; and Kearney, “skull-faced” sadist whose most memorable moment has him happily gunning down some rioting natives with a .50 caliber machine gun. Breen gets the most narrative focus; his mission is to collect the “corpses” of the Monster and Dracula and transport them immediately to Visaria – indeed, to get them there that very night. That Jacobs chooses to focus more on these characters than Marya or Glendon – not to mention Dracula or the Monster – tells you all you need to know about his narrative approach to the trilogy. But still I say again: I enjoyed both his novels more than Rovin’s. 

The initial portion of this has Breen et al gunning down the restless natives, who understandably are a little freaked given the zombies, giant vampire bat, and giant monster that ran roughshod over the populace the night before. Julie blows away a few of the rioters, and as mentioned Kearney guns down more, but it’s all just so pointless given the denoument of the previous book: readers don’t want this, they want the revived Bride that was promised at the climax of the previous book, not to mention all the assembled Universal Monsters. But we get lots of stuff with Breen plotting with Obregon, leader of Isla Morgana’s “paramilitary” police force, as they get down beneath the ruins of Baron Latos’s castle to find the Monster and Dracula – as we’ll recall, the castle collapsed over the two at the climax of The Devil’s Brood. It takes quite a while to get there, though, but when it happens we have some memorable stuff, like Breen goading a local Christian into placing his cross on Dracula’s coffin to imprison him, and Breen’s men pouring noxious “plastigoo” onto the Monster, which forms into a huge block of plastic the creature can’t break out of. 

Dorian and Soto only feature a little in the narrative; Dorian just shows up, captured lurking around the grounds, and Breen sneers at her for Uncle Basil’s failure, previous volume, and says he’s now taking her back to Visaria for Marya to deal with. But as mentioned Dorian is a pale reflection of the character from the previous book. As is Soto, who only appears over a few pages. He’s a zombie, seems pretty unfazed about it, and while directionless initially he starts to feel pulled in various directions. This is because one of the characters is using him as an undead vassal, which is a pretty cool and subtly-developed subplot from Jacobs. Soto’s sudden penchant for one-liners only furthers the strange, sardonic tone of The Devil’s Night. Soto engages in a few battles, getting parts of him shot off, including one of his eyes; late in the book he commandeers a jeep from some horrified soldiers and tells them, “Zombie squad, official business.” That said, there’s a cool, gore-strong bit where Soto takes on Obregon’s military cops. 

I forgot to mention the part where the Monster is captured; before the “plastigoo” is dumped on him, the Monster is freed from beneath the collapsed castle and goes wild on Breen’s forces. As stated the monsters are particularly violent this time around, especially the Monster, who as we’ll recall is now fueled by black magic, courtesy Uncle Basil’s witchcraft last volume. In fact it’s hypothesized by Breen (the characters all spend most of their time talking about the monsters, by the way) that a demon might even posses the Monster. Well anyway this sequence, while good so far as the monster action goes, is another indication of the repetitive nature of the novel; the Monster raises hell, breaks free, escapes into Isla Morgana…then turns around and heads back for the castle…where he’s promptly captured by Breen’s men. Again, an overlong action bit that has no outcome on the plot – the Monster is still captured, regardless of the havoc. 

As for Dracula, he really gets narrative short shrift. After his Blob-to-Mothra transformation last time, wherein he regained his full vampire form at novel’s end (just in time for Latos’s castle to fall on him), he’s now in his coffin resting – and stays that way until page 209, when Jacobs finally returns to him. Throughout Dracula’s been stuck in the coffin, due to the cross Breen used to trap him there. Breen also devises outrageous means to subdue Dracula on the flight to Visaria: massive banks of high-power ultra-violet lights, which are so strong that humans break into a sweat mere seconds after stepping beneath them. But Breen is a moron, as he’s also placed the Monster, in his massive plastic square of a prison, in the same chamber…and the heat begins to melt the plastic. This leads to a suitably nightmarish scenario, as both Dracula and the Monster free themselves as the plane comes in for a landing in Visaria. Jacobs here proves how easily he’ll dispatch major characters, at least doling out memorable sendoffs: Dracula melts the cross with his own hand and shoves the molten metal down one character’s throat. 

And so now here they all are. Dracula and the Monster call off their battle as the plane lands; Dracula flies off as a bat and the Monster charges through the streets of Visaria after him. Meanwhile Marya is finally ready to bring the Bride to life. And here it all happens…like five pages before the book ends. Rather than reap any of the opportunities he has created for himself, Jacobs instead rushes through everything like a true contract writer with a deadline fast approaching. Dracula and his daughter meet and engage in casual conversation, despite this being the first time they’ve been together in the entire trilogy. But again, these characters bear little resemblance to their film counterparts; one could not see Bela Lugosi as this particular Dracula, who has none of Lugosi’s suave mannerisms. He’s a bloodlusting fiend, as is his daughter. Oh and by the way Glendon is here, the friggin Werewolf of London – but for some inexplicable reason Jacobs sets all this the night after the last full moon of the month, so he’s stuck in human form! 

The reviving of the Bride is pretty cool, but again seems lifted from The Bride of Frankenstein, save for the fact that the Bride is nude here. Plus we’re told in no uncertain terms she’s got a helluva body, though one that’s ruined by all those pesky surgical scars. But curiously the one thing these monsters lack is a libido; the Monster is about the only one who seems to want something more than just blood and death, and when he shows up on the scene he starts chasing the Bride around…again, all just like the ’35 film. But as a laughing Glendon – who’s a scientist, of course – relates, now that the Monster and the Bride share the same charge, they can’t attract, as only opposites extract. So as the Monster tries to touch the Bride, electricity shocks him. Dracula gets a good laugh out of this, making some of his own sarcastic comments, spoofing the situation – another indication of how no one takes anything seriously in the novel, which sort of ruins it for the reader. 

It gets worse. Spoiler alert for this paragraph. The Monster knocks the Moon-Ray device down, and it hits Glendon, who promptly turns into a werewolf. And folks, get this…it’s like a page and a half before the end of the book. So instead of having the giant monster fight we’d expect – I mean all the monsters are here, right now, in full force – Jacobs instead dispenses with everything in the most rushed manner possible. Werewolf Glendon hops over to the Moon-Ray device and starts shooting its beam across the dungeon, killing everyone. Dracula and Marya turn into bats to escape, but the ray hits them, turning them into “moon dust.” Soto even jumps into the ray to dispose of himself. As for the Monster and the Bride, Jacobs is so half-assed he doesn’t even mention what happens to them! Last we see of them the Monster’s chasing after her, and this is before Glendon gets hold of the Moon-Ray. The implication is that they all go up in the Moon-Ray…I mean all of them just disposed of in less than a full page. The end. Talk about one hell of an anticlimactic finale.  

In a way though, this rushed, piss-poor finale harkens back to those Universal classics, which also saved the monster fights for the final few minutes. But that’s no excuse for Jacobs to do the same thing! Just so much potential, squandered. Jacobs does try to incorporate a theme, baldly exposited in the final paragraph: that the monsters are really just reflections of the evil nature in the hearts of humans, only taken to ludicrous extremes. The theme comes off as lame, though, given that Jacobs has only presented human characters who are either warlocks, witches, Mafia thugs, or sadists. Even Glendon seems rather comfortable with his werewolf alter ego, which eats people. 

Regardless, this was it for the Universal Monsters Trilogy, and what a sad end it was. Actually, The Devil’s Brood and The Devil’s Night could’ve just been edited into one novel, making for a better read. So much of this one was padding, and it took way too long to pick up on the events that concluded the previous book. Again, Jacobs’s contract writer roots show strongly here. Perhaps the publisher should’ve just gone with yet another writer for this third book. Personally I would’ve done a sort of “Harold Robbins take on the Universal Monsters” thing, with coke-snorting, high-libido versions of Dracula, the Wolfman, and Dracula’s Daughter engaging in some Satanic depravity. Hell, maybe I’ll just write the book anyway.

The Devil's Brood (Universal Monsters Trilogy #2)

The Devil's Brood, by David Jacobs
June, 2000  Berkley Boulevard

Two years after Jeff Rovin* published Return Of The Wolf Man, the Universal Monsters trilogy continued with this sequel courtesy David Jacobs, which takes its title from the original script treatment that eventually became the 1944 film House Of Frankenstein. Providing perfect Halloween reading, Jacobs accomplishes in The Devil’s Brood what Rovin did not – be drags the Universal monsters kicking, screaming, and clawing into modern pulp horror, with all the mandatory gore and sadism one could want.

Not that I hated Rovin’s novel; I just didn’t enjoy it. It was a little too hamstrung by Rovin’s clear enthusiasm for the monsters, and also by his fan fictionish penchant for chasing various “who cares?” leads from old Universal movies. I mean when you have pages and pages devoted to what happened to the characters Abbott and Costello played, you know you’re in trouble…not to mention that 30 or so-page sequence devoted to the inspection of the haunted castle the novel’s irritating heroine inherited.

Speaking of that irritating heroine, Jacobs must’ve disliked her, too, as she’s gone without a trace in The Devil’s Brood, and so much the better. In fact, none of the characters from Return Of The Wolf Man are here! I’ve seen reviews from fans who raved about Rovin’s novel complaining that in this sequel Jacobs only delivered “second stringer” Universal monsters. This is ironic, given that Rovin killed off all the main monsters in his novel!!

So Jacobs, showing true creativity, goes for the less famous Universal monsters, and to tell the truth that’s fine with me. To be noted, though, the (amateurish) cover art is very misleading: the Mummy does not appear in this novel, sad to say, and neither does the Wolf Man. The Frankenstein Monster eventually shows up, and as for Dracula…Jacobs does some truly novel things with the character, turning him into a sort-of vampiric Blob! Otherwise, the monsters in The Devil’s Brood are Dracula’s Daughter, The Bride of Frankenstein (who spends the entire novel comatose), and the grandson of the Werewolf of London, not to mention a ton of zombies from the non-Universal picture White Zombie. There are also tie-ins to ‘30s Universal horror films like The Invisible Ray and The Black Cat, but never once does it come off like the connect-the-unrelated-dots fan fiction of Rovin’s novel.

Dracula’s Daughter is for the most part the protagonist of the novel, while at the same time serving as the main villain. Jacobs’s version of the character is a bit more evil than the character in the understated ’36 film, not to mention described as being sexier (though she does retain her preference for female victims, as in the film). She’s also much more comfortable with her vampire nature and indeed is looking to assert herself as the queen of the underworld, now that daddy Dracula is dead – the novel opens with this crazy Satanic rite where Dracula’s Daughter, aka Countess Marya Zaleka, leads her coven of cultists in an art deco chamber somewhere in Eastern Europe, where they channel the blood of sacrificed virgins into an orb that turns into a veritable supernatural television. Here Jacobs relays the climactic moments of Rovin’s novel, and Marya learns that Dracula is dead. 

This stellar sequence is just the first instance where Jacobs capably captures a horror vibe, with the red glow of the orb, the deep black shadows of the chamber, and even with Marya pulling on a robe and hood like in the famous expressionist sequence in Dracula’s Daughter where she attempted to cast off the spirit of Dracula. It also proves posthaste that this isn’t Rovin’s book, which was married a little too faithfully to those Universal classics. Marya here is openly Satanic, her followers are too, and theirs is a nightmarish world of blood and death.

As this is occurring on the same day that Return of the Wolf Man ended, Jacobs jumps over to Isla Morgana, the Caribbean isle upon which White Zombie took place and, per Rovin’s novel, was eventually taken over by Dracula (another of Rovin’s incessant in-jokes, Bela Lugosi having played both Dracula and Baron Latos, ie the villain of White Zombie). Here Jacobs delivers a regular zombie massacre, with hordes of the creatures, freed from their bondage to “Baron Latos” now that Dracula is dead, setting upon their tormentors. It’s very much in the EC Comics mode with the zombies getting revenge on the sadists who tortured, raped, and/or killed them – Baron Latos’s men, we learn, also ran a lucrative sex-slave trade, turning some of their female victims into zombies when they were done with them.

Jacobs also quickly proves he won’t be bound by tradition. This is nowhere more evident than in what he does with Dracula, who as we’ll recall was staked by the Wolf Man at the end of Rovin’s novel. He’s dead for sure when The Devil’s Brood opens, but a “hate cloud” of the vampire lord’s spirit remains behind. Retaining its vampiric tendencies, the cloud eats the green blood of the Frankenstein Monster’s corpse (which itself was gutted by wolves in Rovin’s novel), becoming a “blood-slug.” Jacobs captures an Aurora model feel here (and throughout the book, really), going on about the greenish luminescence of the creature, which to my mind brought forth images of glow-in-the-dark toys and models.

The blood-slug, which Jacobs dubs “Drakon” (Jacobs by the way has a sometimes-annoying tendency to lecture the reader via an omniscient narrative tone), is the Blob-like entity mentioned above. Sounding truly gross, it slithers across Isla Morgana, seeking out human prey – and it ingests humans directly into its luminescent, translucent skin, so witnesses can see the bodies quickly digesting within; Drakon sheds the slimy bones and undigestable innards, and it’s growing larger and larger with each human it eats.

In the other novels I’ve read by Jacobs, he generally proves himself more of a “dialog and characters” writer and not so much a “plot” writer. Which is to say, the books of his I’ve read have started off promising but quickly derailed with new character after new character popping up out of the woodwork and clouding the overall story. This doesn’t happen quite so much in The Devil’s Brood, proving that Jacobs became a more skilled craftsman in time. However, that isn’t to say a reader new to Jacobs’s work might not get a little annoyed with the seeming lack of a main character, particularly given the almost-endless tide of one-off characters in the opening half who become zombie or Drakon victims. But compared to the other Jacobs books I’ve read, this one is downright streamlined.

With the presence of Steve Soto, an American underworld type on Isla Morgana on “business,” the reader thinks he has finally come upon the protagonist. But Soto will come and go in the narrative. I was fine with this, as he seems to have stepped out of a ‘30s Warner Bros. crime movie, and he gets to be annoying; despite the movie occurring in the “present day” of the time of publication, Soto talks like it’s 1939. He’s apparently a Mafia bigwig, though still young, and has a torpedo and an underling with him. He happens to be in Isla Morga when the zombies begin attacking; during this Soto befriends Basil Lodge, an old lush with arcane knowledge, and Dorian, Lodge’s hotstuff young niece with “high breasts.”

The two main plots gradually coalasce as we learn that both Marya and Basil Lodge are seeking the Frankenstein Monster, which is now anyone’s for the taking given that Dracula is dead. Lodge hires Soto to serve as a strongarm on a looting expedition to the ruined plantation which was owned by “Baron Latos,” while meanwhile Marya astrally connects with Wilford Glendon III, the grandson of the Werewolf of London. Another character who could lay claim to the “main protagonist” tag, Glendon is a wealthy London-based professor who has a way with women (his intro opens with a good-looking babe in his bed, though the novel has no sex scenes). He doesn’t realize that he has inherited his grandfather’s curse of lycanthropy.

Jacobs indulges in his own bit of Wold Newtonism by linking Werewolf of London with The Invisible Ray, The Black Cat, and even The Bride of Frankenstein. Glendon’s grandfather, the hero of Werewolf of London, was colleagues with Bela’s and Boris’s characters from the first two films, and Dr. Petronius from the third film; Marya has learned by strange means (namely, slicing off the head of a dying mad scientist servant and then bringing the brain to life via dark magic!) that the Bride can only be resuscitated via the “moon-ray,” ie artificial moonlight.

Glendon’s grandfather created a device which replicated moonlight, the Moon-Ray Projector, something which we’re informed Dr. Petronius employed when he helped Henry Frankenstein create the Bride. This is why no one has ever been able to bring the Bride back to life – and who those other would-be Bride revivers were, Jacobs doesn’t elaborate. At any rate the Bride, despite being blown up at the end of her film, is whole in one piece, and spends the majority of the narrative lying asleep in a glass coffin in Marya’s massive headquarters – Jacobs again delivering on the lurid horror with the tidbit that the Bride is fully nude, her otherwise-lovely body horrifically scarred from its patchwork construction.

Marya’s goal is to use the Bride and the Monster to propagate a new super-slave species or somesuch, so first she needs to awaken the Bride, and for that she needs Glendon. By visiting him in his dreams, she subconsciously prompts Glendon to travel to Visaria, the fictional Bavarian country in which the Frankenstein movies took place. Glendon as mentioned doesn’t know he’s a werewolf – there are times throughout where he changes, and Jacobs skillfully writes the scenes from Glendon’s perspective, with him chasing after people (even killing some would-be robbers in one memorable sequence) and not realizing anything strange is going on…and then not remembering anything when he wakes up the next day.

In the final quarter Basil Lodge raids the Baron Latos plantation, taking along Soto, his underlings, and some dirty Isla Morgana cops, as well as Dorian and a mother-son pair of “witches.” (Oh and meanwhile Soto’s scored with Dorian, but Jacobs keeps it all off page, dammit.) This sequence features Dracula’s three undead brides (like Dracula’s daughter, given sexier makeovers in this modern novel, down to the detail that they wear lingerie!), his wolves, and his bats, not to mention more of those damn zombies. Jacobs gets wild again with Lodge using black magic to resuscitate the Frankenstein Monster – his goal by the way is to make the Monster a zombie! – capped off with the memorable image of Lodge shoving a still-beating human heart into the Monster’s mouth.

In fact, there’s a lot of good horror stuff throughout. The zombie massacre in the opening is so “EC Comics” it could’ve been illustrated by Johnny Craig or Graham Engel. There’s a nice part where Marya and her mad scientists try to bring the Bride back to life while a supernatural thunderstorm rages, and Marya’s salvaging of one underling’s brain – turning him into a sort of oracular severed head – is very cool. Throughout Jacobs does his best to capture the Universal feel, greatly setting up each and every scene, as if this were the novelization of a real film (if only!). That being said, some of it can be overdescription at times, with Jacobs occasionally being guilty of dragging scenes on past the breaking point.

Jacobs takes unexpected directions with the final quarter. For one, the fate of Steve Soto, which isn’t anything like I expected. Skip the paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers. Anyway, during the raid on the plantation, Soto is killed – shot several times by his own lieutenant, who lusts for Soto’s power in the Mafia. But Soto somehow keeps walking and talking, despite being dead. Turns out Lodge’s spell affected him, as well, bringing life not only to the Monster but Soto. He helps Dorian escape; no idea if she appears in the sequel. However I have a feeling that’ll be it for Soto.

In the final several pages we get a return of Dracula – Drakon it turns out wasn’t just a Blob riff, it was also a Mothra riff, as the “blood-slug” has secreted itself into one of Dracula’s hidden coffins, beneath his castle on Isla Morgana…and that very night the coffin bursts open and Dracula comes out, “more powerful than ever.” Jacobs again demonstrates how his monsters are more cruel than the versions in the original films, with Dracula, in giant bat form, spending the entire night feasting on humans, killing scores of them, usually for no other reason than the sport of it.

Jacobs pays tribute to the climax of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, with Dracula running into the reborn Monster, which has now broken free of Dracula’s decades-long mental control. The Monster by the way is apparently possessed by demons now, or something, Lodge having broken the “magic circle” that surrounded the Monster during the rite, thus resulting in a blood-crazy, demonic Monster, one who even rips off human heads (including the spinal columns!). It’s a brief fight between the two main Universal monsters, ending with them both buried in the rubble of Dracula’s collapsing castle, but there of course will be little surprise when they each return next volume.

Marya again proves herself as the main character in the finale, chaining the captured Glendon to several corpses and performing yet another black magic rite. She summons the ghost of Glendon the first, ie the original Werwolf of London, and badgers him into providing the secret to his Moon-Ray Projector, which Marya needs to reawaken the Bride, and thus “spawn a race of super-slaves.” And here The Devil’s Brood ends, with Glendon III the unwilling colleague of Marya, and a reborn Dracula over on Isla Morgana looking to reclaim his title of Lord of the Underworld.

As yet another too-long review will attest, I really enjoyed The Devil’s Brood, and I eagerly look forward to reading Jacobs’s sequel, The Devil’s Night, which was published a few months later and wrapped up the trilogy.

*Imagine my surprise when, shortly after I finished reading this novel, Jeff Rovin himself popped up in the news, as yet another footnote in the crazed story that is the 2016 Presidential Election; turns out Jeff Rovin claims he worked as a media “fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton!  I haven't read too much about this story (and admittedly it’s only the right-aligned news outlets that have even reported on it, which in itself isn’t surprising), but still I thought it was a crazy little bit of synchronicity.

Return Of The Wolf Man (Universal Monsters Trilogy #1)

Return Of The Wolf Man, by Jeff Rovin
October, 1998  Berkley Boulevard

In 1998 Universal decided for whatever reason to bring back their old movie monsters – but this time in a trilogy of paperbacks that took place in the modern day. There was no series title or volume numbers, but this was the first of the trilogy, and the only volume to be written by Jeff Rovin. (The other two were written by David H. Jacobs.) This is also easily the rarest of the trilogy these days, going for stupid prices from online booksellers.

Rovin is clearly a fan of those old Universal monster movies, and who can blame him? I recently rewatched all of the major franchise films in a sort of chronological order,* so it was the perfect time for me to finally get around to reading Rovin’s novel, which begins immediately as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein ends. But unfortunately Rovin’s own enthusiasm undermines Return Of The Wolf Man, as he’s too eager to pepper the book with in-jokes and references to old monster movies. In a way it makes the book come off like fan faction – which, I guess, is exactly what it is. But still, the in-jokery gets old fast.

Our author is also very concerned with tying up loose ends – even if they’re ones that happened in other Universal franchise films (like what exactly happened to the Invisible Agent, or, uh, Abbott and Costello in their other movies!) To prove this, the first 47 pages of Return Of The Wolf Man are a prologue set in 1948 in which Rovin documents the final few minutes of Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and then tells what transpired after the film’s end.  The reader is much encouraged to watch that movie before reading this book; another indication of the novel’s fan fiction vibe.

Anyway, fans will be happy to know that the fall out of the castle and into the ocean at the climax of the movie did not kill Dracula or the Wolf Man, who were engaged in mortal combat at the time. Dracula escapes, and the Wolf Man is left to pull himself out of the ocean and go back to the castle – Mornay Castle, owned by the beautiful, evil, and now dead Dr. Sandra Mornay, killed by the Frankenstein Monster at the climax of Meet Frankenstein. We’re in LaMirada, Florida, on the little island of La Viuda, upon which Mornay’s castle looms.

The Wolf Man, driven to fury to kill (Rovin introduces the interesting concept that, if the Wolf Man doesn’t kill, Larry Talbot’s human mind retains a stronger hold on him), ends up feasting on Professor Charles Stevens, good looking young dude who, when last we saw him in the film, was about to walk off into a “happily ever after” with hotstuff 27-year-old insurance investigator Joan Raymond! Avoiding the girl, who as we recall from the film is dressed in a gypsy disguise (due to the costume party at Mornay Castle), the Wolf Man goes after Stevens. This is another nice bit from Rovin; the werewolf avoids Joan due to her gypsy outfit, which reminds him of Maleva, the kindly old gypsy who helped him in the earlier films.

Rovin has no qualms with exposition; after the Wolf Man turns back into his human form, “stocky” Larry Talbot (aka “Mr. Potato Head” himself, Lon Chaney, Jr.), he relates to Joan his long, troubled history. It all culminates with Talbot finally attempting suicide to end his misery, and Joan assisting, helping him jam a shard of silvered glass through his heart. She pulls his corpse into the castle’s basement and calls the police to come clean up Dr. Mornay’s corpse, out in the marshes – the Frankenstein Monster, meanwhile, has been burned and dumped in the moat, and Dracula has taken off for points unknown.

Finally we move to the “present,” aka 1998. Joan we’re informed long ago bought the Mornay Castle, which she renamed The Tombs. Rovin also fills in other little blanks, like the fact that James McDougal, the host of the House of Horrors who was bitten by the Wolf Man in Meet Frankenstein, has himself become a werewolf, where he feasted on the locals for several years before heading off to Tibet – yet more in-jokery, with the Tibet stuff an obvious call-out to the 1935 Universal movie Werewolf Of London; but it’s also just more fan fiction-esque stuff, as McDougal’s fate would only be wondered over by die hard fans of the film.

But anyway Joan, who became a successful horror author, has recently died, and has willed The Tombs to her attractive grand-niece, Caroline Cooke. The next thirty or so pages are given over to the pointlessly-drawn out story of Caroline’s first view of the castle, accompanied by a lawyer named Henry Pratt; they’re here to show the place to a government assessor named Porterhouse. Seriously my friends, so much time is devoted to this whole “the government wants to assess the previously-sealed-off basement of the castle, Caroline, and I did all I could to stop them” garbage that you want to bang your head against the wall.

I mean, let’s say Universal gave you the go-ahead to write a novel based on their franchise of classic horror monsters. Would you devote 20-30 pages to pointless bickering between a lawyer and a government assessor?? As I read this banal stuff, it occurred to me that perhaps this was the reason Rovin did not return to write the next two volumes of the trilogy; maybe someone at Berkley or Universal realized that there was more potential to be reaped from these characters than just needlessly-elaborated stuff about building foreclosures and local politics.

But anyway, Portherhouse manages somehow to resuscitate the Wolf Man, who promptly kills him off, as well as Pratt, but it all happens off-page. But the werewolf’s locked in a little dungeon, and a crying Caroline sits out front of it, only to be confronted by a confused Larry Talbot the next morning. Here Rovin actually has Talbot relay his story again, even though he just told it all to Joan in the 1948 prologue a mere 70 pages ago. But yes, you do read practically the same story again, with Caroline just as thunderstruck and disbelieving as her great aunt had been.

And I have to say, I really disliked Caroline Cooke. Rovin seems too eager to create a “strong, modern woman” in the character, to the point where Caroline comes off like an unlikable smart-ass, constantly pissed off about something or bickering with someone. This becomes evident quite soon, which makes it all the more unfortunate that she will be our main protagonist for the duration of the 339-page novel. I don’t know about you, but I could only wonder how much more enjoyable Return Of The Wolf Man would’ve been if perhaps Larry Talbot had been the main protagonist. You know, the dude whose werewolf half is proclaimed in the book’s title.

Regardless, Caroline takes center stage for the most part, escorting Larry Talbot into the modern world, making for a sometimes bumpy ride. (At one point she calls him “politically incorrect,” and not in a joking manner – what more proof do you need that this novel is a product of the 1990s?) First though they must escape the just-awoken Frankenstein Monster, who apparently was stuck in the ocean beneath the basement and dislodged by a jackhammer used when the assessor was breaking open this closed-off portion of the castle. The Monster comes after Talbot, still acting on Dracula’s orders from the climax of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein – Dracula had been in the attempt of making the Monster his faithful servant in that film.

The Tombs is destroyed in the process, burning down in a fire started as Talbot and Caroline escape the Monster – so much for those 30 pages devoted to assessing the place! This not-very-exciting sequence culminates with the Monster once again knocked into the ocean, and then Talbot and Caroline call the local cops, where Talbot once again explains his background, making the third time in a row in less than a hundred pages. Now Caroline is determined to use modern medical science to “cure” Talbot of his condition, which she’s certain is at least partly psychological. Yes, friends, we are once again in a horror story in which the protagonists are unwilling to believe that they’re in a horror story.

Things finally improve with the introduction of Dracula, almost always referred to as “Count Dracula” in the narrative and dialog, likely due to that being the name Universal has trademarked. Since 1948 Dracula’s lived on Marya Island, which we’re told is “midway between Key West and Havana.” He runs a plantation in “the jungle-thick footholds of Mount Hood,” where eleven zombiefied locals serve as his henchmen. Yes, this is all yet another in-joke/reference, all of it taken from Bela Lugosi’s 1932 film White Zombie; Lugosi’s character is even referenced in the text, and we’re informed that Dracula, when he came to the island, killed him and took over the place.

Dracula still wants the Monster to be his servant, to help guard him against those who seek to destroy him, such as the Wolf Man. When Dracula learns through supernatural means that the Monster has reawoken, he activates a sort of “sleeper agent:” none other than Dr. Sandra Mornay, who we learn was in fact turned into a vampire at the climax of Meet Frankenstein. Rovin really captures the eerie vibe as Mornay comes back to life, which climaxes with a fun sequence of her bringing down a Medevac chopper that’s carrying off the Monster, the paramedics unwittingly trying to revive the unliving creature. But talk about lots of buildup with no payoff…Mornay’s killed off like a few pages later, when the Wolf Man breaks free of his jail cell.

This is another sequence that plays off more on dialog than action (there’s a lot of dialog in the novel, most of it of expository nature), as Talbot turns into the Wolf Man in front of a few witnesses, Caroline among them, and then Dracula gets himself invited into the jail, where he taunts the werewolf with death from a silver sword. Instead they engage in close-quarters combat, with Dracula escaping with a mind-controlled Caroline (thankfully, she shuts up at last) and the Wolf Man running amok. This leads to another fight, down on the La Mirada docks, with the Wolf Man tossing Dr. Mornay onto an errant hunk of wood that serves as a makeshift stake.

I haven’t mentioned yet the violence/gore factor (as for the sex factor, forget about it – there was more sex in the actual ‘30s and ‘40s films, believe it or not!). While Return Of The Wolf Man is indeed violent, the impact is minimized, because for whatever reason Rovin describes the gore with clinical or medical terms, as if instead of just writing “Dracula ripped the man’s guts out” he chose to consult a copy of Gray’s Anatomy:

Dracula looked at him. He didn’t answer. Instead, the vampire reached his right arm across his own waist and sunk it into the folds of his cloak. A moment later he withdrew his ancient smallsword and slashed backward, cutting the officer’s subclavian artery and up through the trachea and esophagus. Clyde fell to the floor, clutching under his chin and gurgling as blood cascaded from the wide, gaping wound.

It all builds to a slow-burn climax in which a now-human Talbot (after again explaining his backstory to disbelieving cops) teams up with yet another lawyer, this one a ponytailed dude named Tom Stevenson. (Rovin peppers the novel with a host of “in-jokes” with characters named after horror movie actors and characters – Billy Bevan, Dr. Wedergast, Trooper Matt Willis…even Ludwig and his little daughter Marilyn…and yeah, it gets very distracting and very annoying very fast.) Together they fly on over to Marya Island to save Caroline and to finally destroy Dracula and the Monster.

It isn’t a big climax by any means; Talbot openly declares himself to Andre, Dracula’s main zombie henchman, and thus he and Stevenson are escorted onto the vampire’s estate shortly before nightfall. They just sort of roam around, finding the unconscious form of the Monster; there’s a goofy part where Talbot tries to revive the creature using Stevenson’s cell phone, as Talbot has heard that these strange devices emit power. (Later Stevenson revives the Monster, using an old piece of machinery called a “Strickfadden,” yet another tiresome in-joke in a novel too filled with them.)

So how does it all wrap up? Skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers. Basically it escalates into an oldschool monster rally, and thanfully Rovin, unlike those old Universal screenwriters, actually has his monsters fight each other. First the Monster turns against Dracula, only to be torn apart by Dracula’s loyal wolves – an ignoble end for the Monster indeed. Then the Wolf Man and Dracula go after each other, with the Wolf Man scoring 2 for 2 when he hurls Dracula and once again inadvertently stakes a vampire on an errant stick of wood. Then the Wolf Man goes after a now-sane Caroline (Stevenson meanwhile having been killed by Andre the zombie, who is later killed by the Wolf Man), and she beats him to death with a silver candalarbum, Talbot speaking through the werewolf’s mouth as he dies, thanking her.

And that’s that; Caroline returns to the now-rebuilt Tombs and decides to live there. Rovin ends the tale so that the novel is self-contained, but drops enough hints for a sequel. Thankfully it appears that David Jacobs did not bring Caroline Cooke back for the next volume, however he did pick up the major development Rovin ends on – namely, that the grandson of the Werewolf of London has just discovered the existence of the Bride of Frankenstein and is now determined to find her and bring her back to life.

So, while I definitely appreciate Rovin’s enthusiasm for the Universal films and characters, I just felt that Return of the Wolf Man was a missed opportunity, filled with unlikable characters who blathered at each other in the baldest of exposition. Worse yet, not much happened, and when it did happen it got repetitive fast – it seemed like the Wolf Man and Dracula got in a fight every other page, and as mentioned above, the fights were always the same. (Not to mention that both vampires in the tale met their ends exactly the same way!)

Strangely enough, Rovin’s novel is beloved by most monster kids, whereas Jacobs’s two volumes are for the most part derided. I have a feeling though I might prefer his books – after all, Jacobs is the guy who was able to salvage the loathsome Tracker series!

*The Universal horror movies are notoriously vague when it comes to when the stories take place, and continuity is not a strong suit – just try to explain why Dracula and the Wolf Man are around in House Of Dracula, given how House Of Frankenstein ended. Universal clearly didn’t care to explain it!

Here is the “order” I came up with to view the films, an order not based on date of release but on when I think each movie takes place. I followed this order for my most recent viewing of the movies, and it actually worked out pretty well:

1. Frankenstein
2. Bride Of Frankenstein
3. Dracula
4. Dracula’s Daughter
5. Son Of Frankenstein
6. The Wolf Man
7. Ghost Of Frankenstein
8. Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man
9. Son Of Dracula
10. House Of Frankenstein
11. House Of Dracula
12. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein