Dwight Frye

Come up with a very similar premise, use as much of the original cast as possible to remind the audience of what they already enjoyed once, and count on goodwill and familiarity to do a lot of the work of getting people invested.

So instead of filming a stripped-down stage version of Dracula, they would film a stripped-down stage version of Frankenstein that was just as loose in its treatment of the source material, and they would put Lugosi, Van Sloan, and Dwight Frye in it so everyone would understand it was a spiritual sequel to the movie that packed in fans just ten short months ago.

Although, honestly, this adaptation is much looser than Dracula.

In the novel, the creature is intelligent, learns not just how to talk, but how to read and write through a series of contrivance that feel a bit absurd to modern audiences, and makes the conscious and purposeful decision to destroy his creator's happiness when it becomes clear that Victor Frankenstein has abandoned him to a life of isolation and constant prejudice due to his refusal to take responsibility for the man he made.

He's got a body on the table, surrounded by banks of advanced technological equipment.

This was all made by Kenneth Strickfaden, who went on to become one of the premier set designers in Hollywood, and all I'll say now is take a good long look at this stuff because we will see it again, and he's mere minutes away from raising the body up to the roof and bringing it to life when someone comes knocking on the door.

Man, isn't that always the way of it? Frankenstein sends Fritz down to get rid of the unwanted visitors, and I think this is my favorite bit of business from Dwight Frye because he's just so charmingly irritated by the nerve of their unwanted guests, but when Frankenstein finds out that it's his own fiancé out in the middle of the howling rain, he decides to grant them access.

He's goaded into showing them his experiment by Victor's assertion that he's gone crazy, and practically everything about the iconography of the mad scientist is born in this single sequence.

Dracula and his wives, they leave their coffins at night and they feed on the blood of the living.

Renfield, played by Dwight Frye, is a British solicitor sent to finalize the sale of Carfax Abbey to the mysterious Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman.

After receiving the somber warnings of the local village folk, Renfield travels to Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains, where he meets his sinister host in the tumble down moonlit castle.

I am Dracula.

First to destroy it, then recreate it.

There you have his mad dream.

Also making the journey from Castle Dracula to Castle Frankenstein is Dwight Frye.

Again, the drooling lunatic, only this time with a hunched back.

Yep.

And so the investigator's having a, a meeting, and he says, like, "20 people were killed, 100 from the train." And then all of a sudden, who appears and asks him a question as a reporter? Dwight Frye.

Oh, Jesus.

I knew...

I knew I knew that face.

Yes.

The Ballad of [laughs] Dwight Frye.

The, yep.

We also have another, like, returning player from [laughs] the Universal horror franchise.

Dwight Frye is back.

Uh, Dwight Frye, you'll remember, played Renfield opposite Lugosi in Dracula and pops up in s- bits, sometimes almost invisible roles in other pictures.

Here, he plays a character named Rudy, who's just kind of one of the vocal townspeople, right?

Yeah.

He's only got a few lines.

Mm-hmm.

But when he, when he does speak, though, he has that, that signature Dwight Frye kind of live wire energy, so-

I'm gonna get that, and that's exactly what I want." That's the type of, like, feeling that you get from the actor, and even when he pulls it up and he's tired because he's been, you know, he's been digging up the grave once again w- there with Fritz.

And even Fritz, his facial expressions, uh, you know, that are going on in the little scene that's there, and that happens to be Dwight Frye who plays Fritz in this movie.

And, like, how he just seems to want his master's, you know, I would say affection, but acknowledgment in the way that he's doing things.

Like, how it was, "Oh, w- I'm doing a good job? Am I doing a great job?" Like, that's the look on his face that he has there.

Yep.

Uh, Dwight Fry as Fritz.

Now, Fritz would've been the Ygor character-

Yes.