An Abrupt Ending
I was watching The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) again this evening and it reminded me of just how abrupt the endings to these old forties horror movies could be. In this case, the monster goes berserk, the castle catches fire and collapses, burying him and Dr Frankenstein under the rubble before the obligatory mob of villagers with blazing torches shouting 'Kill the monster' can get to them, we get a quick shot of Frankenstein's daughter embracing the hero who has just saved her from the fire, then the credits roll. Accompanied by a surprisingly jaunty piece of music, in view of what had preceded it. Contrast this with the preceding film in the series - Son of Frankenstein (1939) (the titular character being the older brother of the son of Frankenstein in Ghost) - where, after the monster's demise in a sulphur pit and Bela Lugosi's Ygor being filled full of lead, we get a reasonably lengthy final scene with Frankenstein and his family catching the train out of the village, but not before giving a speech to by the now grateful villagers and police inspector, who are there to wave him off. Here, the jaunty music over the credits seems justified as we've just witnessed a happy ending, rather than the somewhat nihilistic denouement to Ghost.
Abrupt endings, of course, were pretty much de rigeur for B-movies, due to low budgets or simply the fact that they usually had to pack their plot into a running time of just over an hour, leaving them little time for scenes that didn't move the story along. Significantly, Ghost of Frankenstein marks the point at which Universal's Frankenstein series ceased to be A-features. From now on, the pictures would be churned out annually, in contrast to the first three, which had appeared, widely spaced, over an eight year period. Whereas Son of Frankenstein had a running time of around ninety minutes, the longest of the subsequent movies was seventy five minutes. The lowering of their budgets was reflected in an increased use of recycled sets, music and stock footage. They also combined Frankenstein's monster with other members of Universal's monster menagerie in scenarios that frantically scrambled through their running times to abrupt and apocalyptic endings that, nonetheless, always left some room for a sequel. (The various writers' showed a commendable fidelity to the continuity of prior entries in the series).
Of course, Ghost of Frankenstein wasn't quite a B-movie, but rather a 'second feature' that could either headline a double bill of such films in B-circuit cinemas, or act as support to a bigger feature on the A-circuit. The studio certainly felt it prestigious enough to star Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Frankenstein's second son, perhaps to compensate for the fact that, for the first time, Karloff wasn't playing the monster. Instead, their new horror star, Lon Chaney Jr, who had scored a hit in the title role of The Wolfman (1941) the previous year, took on the role (for the only time in the series). Bela Lugosi, as Ygor, was retained from the previous film to help give the cast a weighty feel. Nevertheless, the production values are noticeably lower than in the preceding films and the script thinner. But it all felt a bit stodgy - the subsequent three films might have been closer to true B-movies, with even lower production values and budgets, but they were also a lot more fun, while still retaining those abrupt endings.