Universal Monster History

 

 

Universal Monster History

 

by

 

Rodford Edmiston

 

 

 

 

This was assembled from a combination of watching many hours of old movies and talking about them with like-minded folks, as well as searching online. Corrections, additions and opinions are welcome. 

 

 

1880s Heinrich (Henry) von Frankenstein completes his medical studies in Ingolstadt and returns to the ancestral castle home in the Swiss Bavarian village of Frankenstein, near the German border. 

 

1890s Henry - bored with the local politics and unable to practice medicine - begins researching the origins of life. He builds a modern (for the time) laboratory in an old watchtower near the castle. 

 

1898, Spring The Monster is created. (Frankenstein)

 

1898, Summer Henry and Elizabeth marry. The old Baron dies, and Henry inherits the title. 

 

1899, Spring Henry's old teacher - Dr. Pretorius - arrives in Frankenstein and encourages his student to continue his work by creating a mate for his Monster. The Bride homunculus is created, then destroyed by the Monster, along with Dr. Pretorius and the watchtower. (Bride of Frankenstein)

 

1905 Wolf von Frankenstein born. Lawrence (Larry) Talbot born.

 

1906 Ludwig von Frankenstein born. Later inherits the family estate in Vasaria, Austria.

 

1923 Larry Talbot leaves his family home to go to the US, where he eventually becomes an accomplished telescope maker and technician in Los Angeles.

 

1928 Wolf von Frankenstein marries American heiress Elsa. They meet while he is studying medicine in the US. She is of Swiss descent, from a disentitled but wealthy branch of a noble family. Wolf's younger brother Ludwig later names his eldest child in honor of his mother's aunt. This daughter later inherits her father's titles and properties. 

 

1929 Henry dies, and is buried with his experimental records in a secret crypt under the ruined watchtower. These include his work with Dr. Pretorius on the creation of the Bride homunculus and what survived of the documents Pretorius brought with him.

 

1930 Elizabeth moves the family to Vasaria.

 

1931 A vampire identifying himself as Count Dracula arrives in London. (Dracula)

 

Countess Marya Zaleska arrives to claim her father's body and attempt to break the family curse. (Daughter of Dracula)

 

Though she cremates his body, this is on an open funeral pyre and she leaves quickly, before the body is completely consumed. Afterwards someone discovers Dracula's skeleton, which is not only still intact but articulated, with the stake and Dracula's distinctive ring in place. Somehow, the skeleton is later acquired by a showman. 

 

Dr. Gustav Niemann - inspired by the accomplishments of Henry von Frankenstein - attempts the first known brain transplant. This fails, disastrously. He is subsequently sentenced to prison. (Dr. Niemann is the brother of Henry Frankenstein's assistant, Fritz Niemann.)

 

1935 Werwolf of London

 

During the next decade the supernatural and bizarre seem to be stimulated by the world's descent into war. 

 

1937 Mad shepherd Ygor hung, but survives. Begins living in the watchtower. Discovers and befriends the Monster.

 

1939 Wolf von Frankenstein returns to his ancestral home. (Son of Frankenstein)

 

Following these events, Wolf gives Ludwig both his notes on his study of the Monster and many of the records from their father's library. He may be unaware of the journals and notes interred with his father. 

 

1940 Ygor takes the weakened Monster to Vasaria to seek the aid of Ludwig von Frankenstein. (Ghost of Frankenstein 1943) 

 

After he is badly injured by the Monster, Ygor's brain is transplanted into its body. Shortly after - during a confrontation between the Igor Monster and Ludwig - he falls into a glacial cavern beneath the hospital. 

(Both Vasaria and the cross-border sister town of Visaria are a three-day wagon ride from Frankenstein village.)

 

1941 Larry Talbot returns to his family home in Llanwelly, Wales. There he becomes the Wolfman and is apparently killed by his father. (The Wolfman)

 

Sometime during this period, traveling showman Bruno Lampini acquires the staked body of "the original" Count Dracula.

 

1943 (Son of Dracula)

 

1945 With the War over, Europe tries to settle into a period of recovery. However, it was not to be, at least on the monster front. 

 

The tomb of Lawrence Talbot is violated by grave robbers. Revived by the full Moon, the Wolfman kills both of the men who disturbed his rest. Larry Talbot is later found wandering the streets with a severe head wound and amnesia. He comes under the care of surgeon and psychiatrist Frank Mannering. Eventually, he reconnects with Maleva. Together, they travel to Vasaria and Talbot finds the Monster frozen in glacial ice under the wreckage of the hospital. Dr. Mannering arrives and agrees to help cure or kill Talbot. Larry lures Baroness Elsa Frankenstein back to Vasaria, and convinces her to help him, as long as that includes destroying the Monster. She reveals the hiding place of Ludwig's notes. Eventually, both the Wolfman and the Monster are washed back into the ice cavern when the dam is blown. (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman 1943)

 

Dr. Niemann and Daniel are freed from Neustadt Prison in a freak thunderstorm. 

 

Niemann and Daniel travel to the ruined Frankenstein castle in Vasaria, hoping to find Ludwig's lost records. They discover the Monster and Talbot frozen in ice in the cavern below. Talbot finds Ludwig's records and the group (which by now included the Rom woman Ilonka) travels to Niemann's old lab near Visaria (not Vasaria; a city with a similar name just across the border in Germany). During the second full Moon after their arrival Ilonka shoots the Wolfman with a silver bullet, dying in the process.

 

Alarmed by the horrible events of the past few weeks (Wolfman murders, kidnappings, strange doings at the old lab) villagers storm the lab. Niemann is injured and the Monster carries him into the grassy bog, but the villagers set fire to the grass. The Monster moves deeper into the bog - ignoring Niemann's warnings of quicksand - until they both sink into it. (House of Frankenstein 1944)

 

1947 Dr. Franz Edelmann purchases Niemann's laboratory and - with his assistants Milizia and the hunchbacked Nina - turns it in to a medical research and experimental treatment institution.

 

Dr. Edelmann has been working on a mysterious fungus, the clavaria formosa (One wonders what connection this might have with the elusive Mariphasa lumina lupina plant. Perhaps the fungus infested the plant or its soil, unknown to Dr. Glendon and Dr. Yogami?) to produce extracts which have the ability to reshape bone structure. What he does not know is that the same fluid can temporarily prevent werewolves from transforming.

 

Roughly a year later, a mysterious man calling himself Baron Latos arrives. He tempts Edelmann into delving into more arcane areas by pretending he wants to be cured of his vampirism. He also claims to be Dracula himself, though he provides little support for this. Lawrence Talbot arrives not long after, also seeking a cure. At one point, despairing of a cure before the full Moon rises that night, Talbot throws himself off a cliff. Seeking him, the Doctor finds both Talbot and the Monster. The latter was carried into the caverns by the quicksand, and though quiescent is still alive and holding the skeleton of Dr. Niemann. 

 

Exactly what Latos's original plans are is uncertain, but among other things he contaminates Dr. Edelmann with his blood. Despite this, Edelmann, Talbot and Milizia destroy the vampire with sunlight. Soon after - even though he is periodically transforming into his own monstrous form - Edelmann manages to temporarily cure Talbot. Villagers - believing the monstrous form of Edelmann is the Wolfman - follow him to the laboratory. Edelmann revives the Monster, but it is very weak. Edelmann kills Nina and fights the police and Talbot. Larry grabs a gun and shoots Edelmann. A fire starts, and the Monster is trapped inside; Talbot and the surviving attackers flee. (House of Dracula 1945)

 

1948 Larry Talbot discovers a plot by Dracula to revitalize the Monster in the United States. (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein)

 

This is apparently the "real" Dracula, or at least the individual who appeared in London in Dracula. Talbot identifies him as Dracula, but makes no mention of Baron Latos, his presumably only previous encounter with Dracula. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Klausenburgh is a Romanian city in the Carpathian Mountains not far from Castle Dracula

 

Transylvania was the home of a 10,000 year-old werewolf queen known as Stirba. (The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf)