The film was re-released in 1956 along with Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry, and in September 2007, Readers Digest selected the movie as one of the top 100 funniest films of all time.

Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello) work as baggage clerks in LaMirada, Florida. When Wilbur mishandles two crates belonging to ‘MacDougal’s House of Horrors’ museum, Mr. MacDougal (Frank Ferguson) demands that they deliver them in person so that they can be inspected by an insurance agent. MacDougal boasts to Wilbur’s girlfriend, Dr. Sandra Mornay (Lénore Aubert), that the crates contain “the remains of the original Count Dracula” (Bela Lugosi) and “the body of the Frankenstein Monster” (Glenn Strange).

Dracula awakens, hypnotizes Wilbur, and spirits away his own coffin (and the revived Monster) before anyone else sees them. MacDougal then arrives with the insurance agent. Finding the storage crates empty, he accuses the boys of theft and has them arrested.

Mornay receives Dracula and the Monster at her island castle. Sandra is a gifted surgeon who has studied Dr. Frankenstein’s notebooks, and has been posing as Wilbur’s girlfriend as part of Dracula’s scheme to replace the Monster’s brutish brain with one more pliable — Wilbur’s.

Wilbur and Chick are bailed out of jail and mistakenly believe Sandra to be their benefactor. Actually Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph), who also seems to like Wilbur, is responsible for the good deed. Joan is secretly working for the company that is processing MacDougal’s insurance claim, and hopes Wilbur will lead her to the missing ‘exhibits’.

Meanwhile, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) has taken the apartment across the hall from Wilbur and Chick. He has tracked Dracula and the Monster from Europe, and knows them to be alive. Talbot asks the boys to help him find and destroy the villains. Wilbur is amenable to the plan, but Chick thinks both of them are crazy. Talbot’s desperate insistence that he be locked in his room before moonrise impresses Chick even less. But unbeknowst to Wilbur and Chick, Talbot transforms into the Wolfman when the moon rises. When Wilbur brings over Talbot’s luggage that he forgot at their apartment, he is nearly killed by the Wolfman.

The following night, Wilbur, Chick and Joan go to Sandra’s castle to pick her up for a costume ball. Sandra has told Wilbur to come alone, and receives the extra guests rather icily.

While the ladies powder their noses, Wilbur answers a telephone call from someone wanting to speak to a ‘Dr Lejos’. It is Talbot, who informs them that they are in the “house of Dracula”. Wilbur reluctantly agrees to search the castle with Chick, and soon stumbles upon an underground passageway, complete with boat and dock. Behind a secret revolving wall, Wilbur again encounters Dracula and the Monster, but escapes. Wilbur’s every attempt to get Chick to witness the villains fails – thanks to the revolving wall. Meanwhile, Joan has discovered Dr Frankenstein’s notebook in Sandra’s bureau, while Sandra has discovered Joan’s employee I.D. in her bag.

Suavely reattired, Dracula (a.k.a. Dr. Lejos) is introduced by Sandra to Joan and the boys. He commends Sandra on her ‘choice’, expertly massaging the ego of Wilbur, who does not realize the true context of the remark. Also working at the castle is the naive Dr. Stevens (Charles Bradstreet), who questions some of the specialized equipment that has arrived. Dracula manages to deflect Dr. Stevens’ questions by pairing him with Joan and shooing off the ‘young people’ to their ball. Sandra claims to have a sudden splitting headache and will not be able to attend the event. When Dracula consults Sandra in private, she admits that Dr. Stevens’ questions, Joan’s insurance credentials and Wilbur’s inquiries have made her nervous, and wants to postpone the experiments. Impatient, Dracula asserts his will by hypnotizing her, and biting her in the throat.

At the ball, the boys encounter Talbot and MacDougal. Dracula arrives unexpectedly with Sandra, now under his spell. Dracula easily deflects Talbot’s accusations, making the man appear disturbed. Dracula takes Joan for a dance while Sandra lures Wilbur to a quiet spot. Just before she can bite Wilbur’s neck, Chick and Larry approach looking for Joan, and Sandra flees. As they search the grounds, Talbot transforms into the Wolf Man. Wilbur escapes, but the Wolf Man finds and injures MacDougal. Later noting that Chick is costumed as a werewolf, MacDougal concludes that Chick attacked him for revenge. (The fact that Chick is dressed like Talbot certainly does not help the situation). Chick manages to slip away, only to witness Dracula hypnotizing Wilbur. Chick becomes somewhat hypnotized himself, while Wilbur and an entranced Joan are brought back to the castle by Dracula and Sandra. The next morning, Chick is still on the lam when he finds Larry, who confesses that he was MacDougal’s attacker. Now finally convinced, Chick agrees to help Larry rescue Wilbur and Joan.

While Wilbur is being held in a pillory, Sandra finally explains to him the plan to transplant his brain into the Monster. She and Dracula leave him to prepare the Monster for the operation. Chick and Talbot arrive, free Wilbur, and head off to save Joan. Wilbur, meanwhile, is lured back to the castle by Dracula, who easily overpowers his mind.

While the Monster receives an electrical boost in the lab, Sandra is about to open Wilbur’s skull when Talbot storms in and casts her aside. Chick fends off Dracula with a chair, lifting it over his head to swing it at the vampire and inadvertently knocking out Sandra in the process. But just as Talbot is about to untie Wilbur, he once again transforms into the Wolf Man.

Dracula returns to the scene, only to have a tug-of-war with the Wolf Man over Wilbur’s gurney. Dracula flees, with the Wolf Man giving chase. Chick arrives to untie Wilbur just as the Monster, now fully recovered, breaks his own restraints and rises from his stretcher. Sandra attempts to order him back as Dracula does, but the Monster defiantly tosses her out a window.

Dr. Stevens, meanwhile, has managed to find Joan and gets her to the boat. Dracula, in an attempt to escape, transforms into a bat, but the Wolf Man snares him and both fall over a balcony and into the rocky seas below. Joan abruptly wakes from her trance, while the boys escape the castle and head to the pier, with the Monster in pursuit. Once again Chick and Wilbur encounter Mr. MacDougal, who still insists that he wants his exhibits. They loudly reply, “..here comes one of them now!” When the Monster appears, MacDougal and his partner jump off the pier. Chick and Wilbur attempt to escape in a rowboat that is securely tied to the pier. The Monster throws barrels at them, in a series of near misses. Wilbur finally unties the boat, while Stevens and Joan arrive and set the pier ablaze. The Monster turns around and marches into the flames, slowing and succumbing as the pier collapses into the water.

Just as Chick and Wilbur relax, they hear a disembodied voice (Vincent Price) and see a cigarette floating in the air: “Allow me to introduce myself, I’m the Invisible Man!” The boys jump off the boat and swim away as the Invisible Man lights his cigarette and laughs. (This scene presaged 1951′s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, though Price did not star, and all characters were different.

Phyllis Allenby is a young and beautiful woman who is soon to be married to lawyer and boyfriend Barry Lanfield. Phyllis is living at the Allenby Mansion without the protection of a male, along with her aunt Martha and her cousin Carol and the servant Hannah, and when the wedding date approaches closer, London is shocked from a series of murders at the local park, where the victims are discovered with throats ripped. Many of the detectives at Scotland Yard begin murmuring about werewolves, while Inspector Pierce believes the opposite and suspects of strange activity at the Allenby Mansion (which is near the park), where the “Wolf-Woman” is seen prowling from it at night and heading for the park. Phyllis begins becoming extremely terrified and anxious, since she is convinced that she is the “Wolf-Woman”, deeply believing in the legend of the so-called “Curse of the Allenbys”. Aunt Martha tries to convince Phyllis how ridiculous the legend sounds, while she (aunt Martha) and Carol are suspicious in their own ways. Phyllis each day denies of Barry visiting her, and when a suspicious detective is murdered soon after he visits the mansion is murdered in the same way of how the other victims were murder, Barry begins believing that something else is beside the so-called “Werewolf murders” and makes his own investigations both to the park and to the mansion.

The film focuses on the exploits of the vengeful Dr. Gustav Niemann, who escapes prison. He is helped by the hunchback Daniel, for whom he promises to create a new, beautiful body. The two murder a traveling showman and take over his horror exhibit. To exact revenge on Hussmann, who had once caused his imprisonment, Niemann revives Count Dracula. Dracula seduces Hussmann’s Granddaughter-in-law and kills Hussmann himself, but in a subsequent chase, Niemann disposes of Dracula’s coffin, causing the vampire to perish in sunlight. Niemann and Daniel move on to the flooded ruins of Castle Frankenstein, where they find the bodies of the Frankenstein Monster and Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man preserved in the frozen waters. Nieman thaws out the two and promises Talbot to find a cure from the curse. However, in fact he is more interested in reviving the Frankenstein monster and exacting revenge on two former associates than in his promises to Daniel or Talbot. Talbot transforms into a werewolf and kills a man, arousing the villagers.

Talbot is also envied by the hunchback Daniel as both love Ilonka, a gypsy girl. She has fallen in love with Talbot but is the object of Daniel’s affection. Daniel reveals Talbot’s curse to Ilonka but she is not deterred and promises to help him in fighting the curse.

Things enter a critical stage at night, as Niemann revives the Frankenstein monster and Talbot again turns into a werewolf. Talbot is shot by Ilonka with a silver bullet, thereby releasing him, but Ilonka is killed in the process. Daniel blames her death on Niemann and begins to choke him. The Frankenstein monster intervenes, throws Daniel out of the window, and carries the half-conscious Niemann outside, where the villagers begin to chase them and drive them into the marshes. There, both the monster and Niemann drown in quicksand.

This was the first film in which the monster is portrayed by Glenn Strange, of Gunsmoke fame. He received personal instruction from Karloff himself.

A Romany princess descended from Marie LaTour has the ability to change into a wolf at will, just like her late mother. When she learns that Marie LaTour’s tomb has been discovered, she decides to use her talent to kill everyone who knows the location, because it is a sacred secret that only her people are allowed to know.

Armand Tesla, a former Romanian scientist who became a vampire because of his obsession with the occult, moves to London. He has a werewolf servant named Andréas (Matt Willis), and preys on one family until he is staked in 1918. When his grave is disturbed by Nazi bombs during World War II, gravediggers who have to rebury the overturned graves decide not to bury Armand with the stake, pulling it out. He then claws out of the ground. He seeks out Andréas, who now, after being turned back by Armand, has the power to change form at will, and sets out to take revenge on the family that had staked him. In the end, Andréas is shot trying to give Nikki (the doctor’s daughter) back to Armand. The vampire tells the lycanthrope, “I no longer had need of you.” After changing back, Andréas, who finds a cross buried in corner of the church Armand has made a home, pulls it out and starts forcing Armand up the stairs toward the sun. A bomb dropped from a passing German bomber lands in the church causing an explosion, destroying the building. Andréas finishes the job by dragging Armand into the sun, finishing Armand and releasing Nikki of Armand’s spell. Then Andréas is finally dead of his bullet wound, resting forever in peace.

This is one of only three films in which Bela Lugosi played a genuine vampire, the other two being Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In Mark of the Vampire, Lugosi played a supposed vampire who turns out to be a fake. In Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, Lugosi played a mad scientist who has a delusion that he is a vampire.

Actor Matt Willis as the werewolf had a completely different portrayal than Lon Chaney’s in Universal Studios’ The Wolf Man.

Larry Talbot, the “Wolf Man”, is awakened from death by grave robbers. Seeking a cure for the curse that causes him to transform into a werewolf with every full moon, he goes to Frankenstein’s castle, as he hopes to find there the notes of Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein so he might learn how to permanently end his own life through scientific means, knowing now that being struck by silver was not the final cure the legend claims. By chance, he falls into the castle’s frozen catacombs and revives Frankenstein’s Monster. Finding that the Monster is unable to locate the notes of the long-dead doctor, Talbot seeks out Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, hoping she knows their hiding place. At this point, Universal felt the need to add a hokey musical number, which was a staple of many movies from this period. The long forgotten “Fa-Lo-Le Fa-Lo-La” enrages Talbot into a fit before the appearance of Frankenstein’s Monster. (It is rumored that this sheet music was published, with a “Frankenstein Meets Wolfman” cover, but one has yet to appear to be photographed.) After the Monster’s revival becomes known to the villagers, she gives the notes to Talbot and Dr. Mannering, who has tracked Talbot across Europe, so that they may be used in an effort to drain all life from both Talbot and the Monster. Ultimately, however, Dr. Mannering’s desire to see the Monster at full strength overwhelms his logic, and to Elsa’s horror he decides to fully revive it. (While the explanation of the Monster’s degree of incapacity was cut from the film, Lugosi’s portrayal clearly shows him to be blinded and stiffened by his ordeal.) As an unfortunate coincidence, the experiment takes place on the night of a full moon, and Talbot is transformed just as the Monster regains his strength. After the Monster lustfully carries off Elsa, the Wolf Man attacks him, she runs out of the castle with the doctor, and the two title characters perish in a flood that results after the local tavern owner blows up the town dam to drown the castle’s inhabitants.

The plot involves a scientist who has been discredited by his peers. He plans to kill them off by using a secret formula that has actually transformed his gardener into a wolf man.

The story begins on a fog-bound moonlight night in a swamp; a wolf howls. The scene shifts to a room where another wolf is being kept in a cage by Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco), who expresses his understanding that the wolf would rather be out howling at the moon like the other wolf is but he adds that this caged wolf is serving the cause of science. Dr. Cameron walks over to the other side of the laboratory where his uneducated but strong gardener, Pietro (Glenn Strange) is strapped to a couch. After talking sweetly with the gardener, Dr. Cameron gives him an injection. Pietro succumbs to slumber and a transformation occurs: he grows fur and fangs and develops a vicious, snarling personality. Cameron row regards him as a Wolfman and no longer a human being.

Dr. Cameron then turns to an empty table and visualizes his four former colleagues sitting there—the Professors Blaine, Fitzgerald, Warwick and Hatfield. Dr. Cameron recalls how they ridiculed his theories of using blood transfusion to give a human being wolf-like traits, and how the scientific community, the press and the public joined in a resounding chorus of ridicule, which cost Cameron almost everything that mattered to him. Most notably, he lost the esteem of the scientific community and his position at the University.

Addressing the spectral professors, Cameron declares, “Right now, we’re at war. At war with an enemy that produces a horde that strikes with a ferocious fanaticism.” Cameron proposes to giving these wolfman traits to the entire army. He feels that an army of such creatures would be invincible. This suggests the story is taking place during World War II. The images continue to argue and Cameron points out what Pietro has become is real. He then says that his original goals matter no longer; he is now going to having his wolfman killed by each one of his former colleagues.

The scene ends when Cameron gives Pietro the antidote, transforming him back into a human. Pietro wakes up not remembering anything and Cameron sends him on his way. Cameron leaves the laboratory and visits his daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) in the main part of the house. The audience learns that Cameron has bought an isolated house in a swampland area and that Lenora misses her boyfriend Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs), a newspaper reporter. Cameron says that he understands that but he remains in the house in order to finish his work. The following night, Cameron turns Pietro back into a wolf and sends him single to the swamp. The next scene is at a local inn where we see a little child playing with a ball. The child is seen requesting her mother to play for a few more minutes. The child is seen alone in her room who is completely unaware that Pietro is opening the window and approaching her. The child’s ball is seen rolling into the next room but he is not seen again. A minute later, her mother is heard screaming.

Cameron hears about the little girl’s fate the next day from the locals and now knows his formula works. He turns to his real priority which is destroying the scientists who ruined his career. Cameron can only do that by seeing to it that Pietro is alone with each scientist when he becomes a wolf. The rest of the film involves Cameron setting up elaborate scenarios to make that happen. The rest also involves Cameron finding out that he really can’t control Pietro in wolf form and that Pietro becomes wolf without his knowledge. Tom Gregory, Lenora’s newspaper man boyfriend, begins to suspect Cameron as the being behind the slayings.

Cameron’s first attempt at revenge is to take Pietro along with him when he visits Professor Blaine. He tells Pietro that he is being rewarded for his assistance by being taken to the city. Cameron tells Blaine that he will see proof of a scientific breakthrough if he receives himself and Pietro as guests. Once they are in Professor Blaine’s house, a prearranged phone call gives Cameron an excuse to leave Pietro alone with the Professor. Blaine agrees to give Pietro a second combined dose of the two injections if Cameron does not return at midnight. Though Cameron failed to do so and that incites Blaine to give Pietro the injection. Pietro becomes a wolf which is the ultimate end of Professor Blaine.

Professor Fitzgerald accepts Cameron’s invitation to come and to have a talk with him at his home. The two scientists quarrel and Professor Fitzgerald says “It’s not my fault, only the public gave your theories the ridicule they deserved.” The professor gets ready to leave the house but he, unwisely, agrees to give Pietro a ride. During the ride Pietro becomes wolf and in a panic Fitzgerald crashes the car. The unconscious scientist is found by the people of the town and by Tom Gregory, who are searching for the little girl’s killer. The Professor is taken back to Cameron’s house. Once Fitzgerald is there and all but the reporter has left, Cameron finishes him off with a lethal injection. By this time Pietro, still in his wolf form, has returned to the house.

While all this is happening, a thunder and lightning in conjunction with rain and storm begins and a bolt of lightning sets some of Cameron’s laboratory chemicals on fire. It is then that Lenora finds Pietro, still in wolf form, in another part of the laboratory. Pietro chases her and Tom all over the house. The couple escapes and Pietro turns on and kills Cameron instead.

After Pietro does that, the completely ignored fire brings the house down on both Pietro and Cameron. Tom goes back into the house just long enough to see that they are both dead. Lenora is left crying in the rain as the story ends.

A remake is due in 2009.

Lawrence Stewart “Larry” Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales to reconcile with his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). While there, Larry becomes romantically interested in a local girl named Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. As a pretext, he buys something from her, a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. Gwen tells him that it represents a werewolf (which she defines as a man who changes into a wolf “at certain times of the year”.)

Throughout the film, various villagers recite a poem that all the locals apparently know, whenever the subject of werewolves comes up:

Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.

That night, Larry attempts to rescue Gwen’s friend Jenny from what he believes to be a sudden attack by a wolf. He kills the beast with his new walking stick, but is bitten in the process. He soon discovers that it was not just a wolf; it was a werewolf, and now Talbot has become one. A gypsy fortuneteller named Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) reveals to Larry that the animal which bit him was actually her son Bela (Bela Lugosi) in the form of a wolf. Bela had been a werewolf for years and now the curse of lycanthropy has been passed to Larry.

Sure enough, Talbot prowls the countryside in the form of a two-legged wolf. Struggling to overcome the curse, he is finally bludgeoned to death by his father with his own walking stick. As he dies, he returns to human form.

The poem, contrary to popular belief, was not an ancient legend, but was in fact an invention of screenwriter Siodmak. The poem is repeated in every subsequent film in which Talbot/The Wolf Man appears, with the exception of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and is also quoted in the later film Van Helsing, although many later films change the last line of the poem to “And the moon is full and bright”.

The original Wolf Man film does not make use of the idea that a werewolf is transformed under a full moon. Gwen’s description and the poem imply that it happens when the wolfbane blooms in autumn. The first sequel, though, made explicit use of the full moon both visually and in the dialog, and also changed the poem to specify when the moon is full and bright. Presumably this is what popularized the full-moon connection in the 20th century. The sequel visually implies that the transformation occurs as a result of direct exposure to light from the full moon. Other fiction has assumed the transformation is an inescapable monthly occurrence and does not examine whether it is caused by light, tidal effects, or some cycle that happens to coincide with the moon’s phases.