Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man the Talbot family crypt to open the grave of Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.), seeking valuables buried with him, on the night of a full moon. During the robbery, the thieves remove the wolfsbane buried with Talbot, and he is awakened from death by the full moon shining on his uncovered body. Talbot reflexively grasps the arm of the grave robber with a fur-covered hand, as the other thief flees. Talbot is found by police in Cardiff later in the night, with a vicious head wound (administered by his father at the end of "The Wolf Man"), and taken to
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Wolf Man" and "The Ghost of Frankenstein". Immediately following his success in "Dracula", Bela Lugosi had been the first choice to play the Monster in Universal's original "Frankenstein" film, but Lugosi famously turned down the nonspeaking, heavily made-up role: as conceived by the original director Robert Florey, the Monster was nothing more than a mindless killing machine and not suitable for Lugosi's rising stardom and career as a leading actor. After the change of directors to James Whale, along with a major script and conceptual revision, the virtually unknown Boris Karloff was then cast in his star-making role. (Florey later