"It's a wonderful night, the darkness becons me..."Neustedt prison and Niemann (Boris Karloff) and his hunchback assistant (J. Carrol Naish) escape in a storm. They hook up with a travelling freak-show and promptly install themselves as the owners by killing the previous incumbent! Niemann then wastes no time in travelling to his home town, to exact revenge on the burgermeister who had him incarcerated for merely following in Frankenstein's footsteps and trying to reanimate the dead. To do this one of the exhibits proves to be useful, the skeleton of Count Dracula (John Carradine), who he brings back to life to enact his plan. Unfortunately for Dracula he has lousey timekeeping and ends up as dust again. So the mad doctor moves on to another village and finds Laurence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), still tormented as a wolfman, and Frankenstein's creature (Glenn Strange). Niemann brings them both back to life and they inevitably run amok, though not at the same time, before the flaming torch brigade turn up to set fire to everything.
Some fabulous sets, and fantastic Gothic atmosphere fail to conceal the fact that Universal were reaching the bottom of the barrel. Still it is entertaining, if episodic, but on a lesser scale than previous films in the series.
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