rixrex — 14 years ago(July 23, 2011 11:32 PM)

For those of you who hope one day to see the deleted scenes in a restored to original script version of Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, well, you're probably going to be waiting a long time because they likely do not exist. Yes, it's a terrible thing, but this is not a matter of a lost film where a print might exist in an old ditribution warehouse or vault, like Mystery of the Wax Museum, but it was an intentional removal of material prior to public release.
However, the actual storyline is available, and it explains the reason why Lugosi was selected to play the monster and why the monster is a lumbering giant.
The most pertinent missing scenes are these:
Early on, the Monster and Talbot (Wolfman) have a sit-down chat, where the Monster speaking with Lugosi's Ygor voice explains the terrible circumstances that led to his brain being placed in the Monster. The lying and sinister Ygor tells it in a way to seem sympathetic to Talbot, and Talbot sees Ygor as the Monster as akin to the Wolfman, helplessly trapped in the body of a creature. This scene is most important as it establishes the rapport between the two, explains the Monster's blindness (carried over from Ghost of Frankenstein) and lets us know why the Monster is lumbering and clumsy with outstretched arms.
Later on Ygor, as the Monster, speaks with the attending Dr. Mannering that while it's okay to drain the Wolfman of life, as Talbot wants, the Dr. should do everything he can to keep Frankenstein's creation alive. Remember, Ygor had a manner that allowed him to be sympathetic and to manipulate others without showing his true nature and intentions. Mannering agrees.
In the climactic lab scene, Ygor regains his sight after being strengthened by Mannering's procedures. He makes this known and reveals his real intentions to go back and murder all who treated him poorly, which leads to a reversal of Mannering draining the life from the Wolfman, and strengthening the beast in order to battle the newly able-to-see Ygor Frankenstein Monster.
There you have it, and now it should all make sense.
Many see this as a much better plot from writer Curt Siodmak, who knows what he's doing, than the eventual chopped-up film that we now have from a committee of Universal execs. Their reasoning was to improve pacing, so they said, but there were many who felt that a Frankenstein Monster with a lucid mind, even though still murderous, would be a mistake and would remove all possible sympathy for the creature (like that really mattered). And still others thought it was too weird to have the Monster speak with what was recognizable by the public as the voice of Dracula.
For whatever reasons they did it, with perfect 20-20 hindsight we can now say that they shouldn't have done it, because the Monster with the brain of Ygor would've been a real terror.
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