So last weekend I had a couple of friends over and we had a mini-marathon of a few select films from Universal Classic Horror movies. There were three of us and we each selected one film from my new 8 movie Blu-ray boxed set.
Watching in release order we started with Frankenstein (1931).
The second classic horror film produced by Universal Frankenstein followed the boffo box office hit Dracula. Boris Karloff, a working actor at Universal found his star making role in his mime performance as the monster. Possibly more than any other production this film set the image in people mind’s of the sympathetic monster. Tormented by the lab assistant Fritz (Not Igor, Ygor was not to appear for another two films.) the monster is presented as being placed in a incomprehensible world of cruelty and persecution. One elements I do wish other filmmakers take away from this production is how quickly it gets into the meat of the story. When we meet Henry Frankenstein at the films start he is already in the grips of his obsession. We do not waste a quarter or more of the screen time explaining why he has the obsession, exposition that only drags back the force of modern production.
The next film up was The Mummy (1933)
Another franchise launching film again staring Karloff, now billed as Karloff the Uncanny, The Mummy stands apart as a movie monster that is not in someway based upon old European myths. The nation, nay the world, had been gripped by Egyptian fever in the 1920s and this fascination had yet to die away at the start of the sound era. In 1999 Universal re-launched this franchise with a remake which relied heavily on elements from this film and to a lesser degree from the original sequel The Mummy’s Hand. While the 1999 film presented things with a large dose of camp and world threatening danger, the 1933 film is more tightly focused dealing with danger to just one person and an atmosphere of danger and horror rather than action and effects.
We finished with Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
My favorite of the classic Universal Horror movies, Creature is the most recognizable as a modern monster/horror film. Presented without the gothic overtones found in the other movies, this is a tale of scientific exploration and evolution’s dead-end branches. Chasing an amazing fossil find a small team of scientists quickly finds themselves trapped in the South American Jungle, somehow with an always heard and never seen kookaburra that must have gotten lost from Australia, fighting for their lives against a amphibious humanoid with deviant tastes.
