Son of Frankenstein

The third film in Universal's Frankenstein series and the last in which Boris Karloff played the monster. Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, played by Basil Rathbone, returns to the family castle to clear his father's name, finds the monster comatose, and decides to revive and tame him. The real gain is Bela Lugosi's Ygor. Hanged for stealing corpses and surviving with a broken neck, he uses the monster for his own revenge, sending him to kill the jurors who convicted him. It is generally counted among the best performances of Lugosi's career and stays in the memory longer than the monster does across the rest of the series. Karloff is given far less to do than in the earlier films, and, believing the character had gone as far as it could, he vowed never to play him again. For critics who took the series seriously, this was the last instalment. Rowland V. Lee directed. Who it is for: viewers who love the Universal horror classics and Lugosi. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the poetry of the first two films, since this is more a thriller built on its sets.