General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Son of Frankenstein

Son of Frankenstein is a 1939 American horror film produced by Universal Pictures, directed by Rowland V. Lee, and the third entry in the studio's original Frankenstein series, following Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).¹ It stars Basil Rathbone as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, Boris Karloff in his final appearance as the Monster, and Bela Lugosi as Ygor, the broken-necked shepherd who becomes the creature's keeper.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 13, 1939 (United States), Universal Pictures; production completed January 4, 1939¹
Director and producer	Rowland V. Lee; screenplay by Willis Cooper¹
Principal cast	Basil Rathbone (Baron Wolf von Frankenstein), Boris Karloff (the Monster), Bela Lugosi (Ygor), Lionel Atwill (Krogh), Josephine Hutchinson (Elsa), Donnie Dunagan (Peter)¹
Running time	99 minutes³
Production cost	Final cost $420,000, up from an initial budget of $250,000²
Karloff's farewell	The last film in which Boris Karloff played the Monster²
Critical standing	95% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 38 reviews⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Baron Wolf von Frankenstein returns from America with his wife Elsa and young son Peter to claim his late father's estate in a European mountain village whose residents still fear the man-made monster.¹^•⁵ In his father's records Wolf finds Henry Frankenstein's notes on the source of life, and in the abandoned laboratory he discovers the Monster, comatose but alive, having survived the explosion at the end of The Bride of Frankenstein and a lightning strike.⁶

Hoping to clear the family name, Wolf revives the creature and attempts to rehabilitate him.⁵ His efforts are circumvented by Ygor, a mad shepherd who had robbed graves for the elder Frankenstein and was hanged for it, and who now sends the reanimated Monster on a spree of murders against the jurors who condemned him.²^•⁵ Wolf is investigated by Inspector Krogh, a one-armed police official who had been mauled by the creature as a boy, and the two men maintain a wary, sympathetic connection despite their opposing roles in the plot.²^•⁷

Production background

Universal's horror cycle had lapsed after the studio's founder Carl Laemmle was ousted in a 1936 takeover, and the new management initially distanced itself from the gothic films that had been so profitable.² In 1938 a Los Angeles theater ran a triple bill of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Son of Kong and drew crowds that stretched around the block, prompting a successful national reissue of Dracula and Frankenstein and the green-lighting of a follow-up to The Bride of Frankenstein.² A scholarly account of the horror cycle records that when the genre revived after its two-year hiatus, Son of Frankenstein took in the "biggest take in weeks" across the United States, according to Variety in 1939.⁸

Casting changes. Universal originally planned to team Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre; the deal collapsed when Lorre rejected the role, saying he had left the "menace" field to star in the Mr. Moto series.¹ Director Rowland V. Lee, who had arrived at Universal after costume dramas for Fox and RKO, steered the studio away from Lorre and lobbied successfully for Basil Rathbone, whom he had directed in Love from a Stranger (1937).²

Ygor's expanded role. Once Karloff was locked in as the Monster and Lionel Atwill cast as Inspector Krogh, Lee still had to find a part for Lugosi, who was already under contract, so together with Willis Cooper, the film's screenwriter, he built up the character of Ygor, a shepherd with a broken neck who had robbed graves for the elder Frankenstein and grown into the Monster's only companion.² Universal sought to humble the horror-typed, struggling Lugosi by halving his salary and requiring his scenes to be shot within a week; Lee responded by keeping Lugosi on set for the duration of the shoot.² The role is widely regarded as one of Lugosi's finest performances, shading menace with mordant wit.²^•⁹

Production and style

Filming at Universal Studios ran from November 9, 1938 into December, and Lee finished the final scenes in the early hours of January 5, 1939.¹⁰^•¹¹ Universal rushed the editing to meet the January 13 release date.¹

The budget grew as Lee pushed to upgrade the production, from testing for Technicolor to abandoning the original script on the eve of shooting; the final cost reached $420,000 against an initial allotment of $250,000.² The money shows on screen in the imposing sets designed by art director Jack Otterson, which evoke German expressionist filmmaking, and in George Robinson's high-contrast cinematography, with angular shadows of columns and stairways cast against the walls.² The HISTORY timeline describes the film's jagged, high-contrast visuals as reminiscent of the German expressionist masterpieces of the 1920s.⁹

Makeup artist Jack Pierce, who created the Monster, estimated in a New York Times interview that transforming Karloff took four hours.¹ Karloff gives a sympathetic characterization of the menacing, lumbering brute, though the Monster here functions largely as an instrument of Ygor's revenge rather than a tragic figure in his own right.¹¹

Release and reception

The film opened on January 13, 1939.¹ Contemporary notices were mixed to favorable: The Times of London called it "a workmanlike essay in synthetic horror" and noted that Rathbone entered "with relish into the spirit of it," while Basil Wright in The Spectator judged it "a missed opportunity for all save the most unsophisticated."⁴ Modern aggregate scores are strong, with a 95% Tomatometer from 38 reviews and a critics consensus describing Karloff's final appearance as the Monster as "a fitting farewell before the series descended into self-parody."⁴ The Turner Classic Movies profile credits the film with giving "a reviving jolt to a genre that had reached a cyclical nadir by the late '30s," and one modern critic has called it "Universal's last great horror film."²^•⁴

The film's 99-minute running time is the longest of any entry in the Universal Monster series.³^•¹² It was followed by The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), in which Lon Chaney, Jr. took over the Monster, and the series continued through the 1940s crossover films.¹³^•¹⁴

Legacy

Influence on parody. The film's plot was an obvious influence on Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974), and many of its elements are parodied there, including the return of the heir to the ancestral castle, the hunchbacked assistant, and the mannered one-armed inspector later lampooned by Kenneth Mars.⁹^•²

Karloff's departure. The film is remembered above all as the last in which Karloff portrayed the Monster, the role that made him a household name.⁹^•² It also stands as the third and final installment of the Karloff Frankenstein trilogy, and it remains in circulation in a 4K restoration within the Frankenstein: Complete Legacy Collection.⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026