The fifth film in Universal’s Frankenstein cycle and the first in a series pairing two famous monsters, the film was intended as a sequel to both The Wolf Man (1941) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). Taking Expressionist cues from Whale’s style, the film sets the spooky mood with long, foreboding shadows and strikingly angular compositions, most of which are focused on the mysterious appearance of Lawrence Talbot, who has been thought dead for years. Out of the grave, he seeks a cure for his “lycanthropy”—a disorder characterized by an elegant transformation to a werewolf under the light of the full moon. An old gypsy woman directs him to the ruins of Frankenstein’s castle and, inevitably, the monster himself, whose part was minimized due to Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian-accented lines not making the cut. Nevertheless, the film manages to entertainingly and eccentrically blend the stories of these two tormented souls into one brisk tale primarily through the role of the doctor torn between the opportunity to create a supercreature or mercifully put an end to its unnatural existence.