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The Corpse Vanishes (1942) R-1949

#the corpse vanishes #bela lugosi #luana walters #tristram coffin #elizabeth russell #joan barclay #angelo rossitto #1940s horror #1940s movies #1942 #wallace fox #classic horror #movie posters

Dracula vs. Frankenstein | 1971

#Dracula vs. Frankenstein #dracula #frankenstein #Al Adamson #Regina Carrol #Angelo Rossitto #Gary Graver #Lon Chaney Jr.#Russ Tamblyn #Greydon Clark #Forrest J. Ackerman #horror #horror movies #hammersmith horror #film stills

The vampire and his dwarf partner in crime:

Left: Lon Chaney and Harry Earles — Right: Bela Lugosi and Angelo Rossitto

This one might take some explaining.

Lon Chaney (“Sr.”), Harry Earles, Bela Lugosi, and Angelo Rossitto all acted in films directed by Tod Browning between 1929 and 1932, but never all together.

Chaney and Earles first appear on-screen together in the 1928 silent film While the City Sleeps before starring in The Unholy Three, first the 1925 silent, then the 1930 “talkie.” In fact, they were the only two actors from the original to return for the remake (which was Chaney’s final role and his only talkie film), and the movie would not work without both of them. Of the three movies, only the 1925 silent was directed by Browning.

Bela Lugosi and Angelo Rossitto also made three films together: Spooks Run Wild in 1941, The Corpse Vanishes in 1942, and Scared to Death in 1947 (with the latter being Lugosi’s only* color film)… although none were directed by Browning. Rossitto appeared alongside Earles in Browning’s Freaks (1932), but the previous year saw the release of Browning’s most famous film as a director and Lugosi’s most famous film as an actor…

Dracula

Browning was chosen to direct because Universal wanted his long-time collaborator Chaney for the title role, and it only went to Lugosi after Chaney’s untimely death from lung cancer.

It wouldn’t be the last time Lugosi filled Chaney’s fangs in a Browning film, either.

Got all that? Good, because things are about to get much more confusing.

In the belated sequel to Dracula, Son of Dracula (1943), the vampire is played by the son of Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr. (real name Creighton Tull Chaney). The year before, he’d played the Creation in The Ghost of Frankenstein opposite Lugosi as Ygor. The pair had previously worked together in The Wolf Man the preceding year, which had made Chaney (Jr.) a horror star.

The immediate sequel to both The Wolf Man and The Ghost of Frankenstein was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Since Chaney obviously couldn’t play both title characters, the role of the Creation went to the sixty-year-old Lugosi in a moment of majorly ill-advised casting. Its sequel, House of Frankenstein (1944), recast the Creation with Glenn Strange and added Dracula to the mix, as well as J. Carrol Naish as a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant. Just as he couldn’t play the Wolf Man and the Creation in the ‘43 film, Chaney likewise couldn’t play the Wolf Man and the count, but rather than fill the latter role with Lugosi (now freed from playing the Creation and who was the Dracula to both contemporary and modern audiences), Universal gave it to John Carradine. This film and its sequel, House of Dracula (1945), would be the first and second of five total times Carradine played the count for various productions.

It's a story of diminishing returns.

Although House of Frankenstein’s title and casting teases a potential showdown between the Count and the Creation, the former is “defeated” and gone from the film before the latter even appears. The two characters do eventually square off as promised, however, in the climax of Al Adamson’s 1971 trainwreck Dracula vs. Frankenstein, which features Naish as a mad scientist—the last of the Frankenstein family, no less—with Rossitto and Chaney as his assistants. Additionally, Adamson wanted Carradine to reprise his role as Dracula, but the production couldn’t afford him.

To summarize a long, meandering story, Chaney Sr. and Earles worked with Browning, who worked with Lugosi, who worked with Chaney Jr., but Junior didn’t work with Browning and Senior didn’t work with Lugosi, and yet Rossitto worked with all five, making the diminutive actor the central node of this horror sextet.

Raise up a cup to the Short King!

*Viennese Nights (1930) features Lugosi, but only in a bit part, and it’s an early Technicolor film, rather than “modern” color used in Scared to Death.