REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1939, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

‘•SON OF FRANKENSTEIN." The principal attraction at the Regent Theatre tonight will be "Son of Frankenstein.” Famed producers of the screen’s most notable shockers. Universal studios reassume the position as leader in the field of spine-tingling dramas with “Son of Frankenstein,” a new, powerful production which makes the flesh creep and at the same time emerges as a dramatic triumph. Basil Rathbone assumes the mantle of Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, possessor of the dread heritage of the family, a destructive monster. In one of his most difficult roles, that of a doctor torn between love of his wife and daughter and scientific fervor for his sinister experiments, Rathbone wins new laurels. The story, penned by Willis Cooper, opens when the new Frankenstein figure returns to his ancestral castle twenty-five years after his father’s death, as stipulated by the elder Frankenstein’s will. He stumbles upon his father’s grim creation, the hair-raising monster of destruction, played by Karloff. A terror-ridden populace sees the new baron arrive at the castle he has inherited and resume the experiments carried on by his father in his eerie laboratory. He finds the monster sick but not dead, as was supposed, and equipped with superhuman organs. He tries to revive it with electricity and feels that he has failed; but while he is absent the monster walks, under the direction of a crazed shepherd. Bela Lugosi takes the part of the shepherd. Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson, Emma Dunn, four-year-old Donnie Dunagan, and Edgar Norton are outstanding in supporting roles, Atwill as a police inspector whose arm has been torn off by the] monster and Miss Hutchinson as Fran-1 kenstein’s wife.