Look what I found hidden down the back of the sofa, like a lost five pound note: the long overdue third part of my exploration of the classic Universal Monsters. This was a feature which I started in 2013, forgot about, went back to in 2015, and then forgot about again. I'm like one of those ditzy parents who let their kid get eaten by Dingoes.
It's not all bad though: I did attempt to write this piece in 2017. I know this because it featured the line: "At the time of writing the Tom "Running Man" Cruise starring reboot of The Mummy is in cinema".
Cast your mind back to that film, if you can, which was widely regarded as one of the worst things to happen to Egypt since the Arab Spring. In the last entry in this series I discussed The Mummy as a franchise and came to the conclusion that the story only works as a 1920's/30's period piece. I'd rather watch Brendan Fraser's Indiana Jones lite, than Tom Cruise aimlessly sprint through an urban jungle like someone who has realised he's left the stove on but has forgotten where he lives.
The Mummy sucking does, however, set me up nicely to slip back into this third part of my retrospective. With The Mummy, Universal were seemingly seeking to set up a 'dark' shared universe featuring their most iconic horror creations. Think Penny Dreadful meets the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For me though, that comparison is akin to two people you know (but don't like) getting together and fucking.
Unfortunately, we've already done most of the best Universal Monsters. I've put together a list of the rest which are worth talking about, the others are pretty lame (The Mad Doctor of Market Street) or the movie equivalent of 'click-bait'. I'm looking at you Curucu, Beast of the Amazon.
The Wolf Man
Ever since the first man forgot to shave, werewolves have been a 'thing'. You can trace the concept of the werewolf, or the Wolf Man, all the way back to the Iron Age. The earliest mentions of lycanthropy in literature can be found in the Classical Era in Virgil, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Petronius' Satyricon. It seems that in the late Middle Ages, werewolves were feared and persecuted in much the same way as Witches. Now there's a tale as old as time: idiots blaming their first-world problems on imagined phantoms.
We have Universal to thank for the now iconic depiction of 'The Wolf Man'. 1935's Werewolf of London is considered to be the first mainstream werewolf movie, and features the general framework which subsequent films would follow and build upon. Its protagonist Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) is attacked and bitten by a werewolf in Tibet, which transfers the curse to him, and from here Glendon goes between his world-renowned botanist persona and a dangerous werewolf who stalks the foggy streets of London. Hull's depiction is closer to Fredic March's performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) than Lon Chaney, Jr's more iconic turn six years later.
There a few oddities in the Werewolf of London - like how normal bullets can kill the werewolves, the Glendon wears clothes in werewolf form - but it's pretty close to the mark; making a more effective werewolf story than overly-romantic, new age trash such as Twilight. The Wolf Man (1941) is Universal's best known werewolf film. It's not to be confused with the 1924 silent film of the same name, mind, about a wannabe rapist in a cabin. The 1941 film stars Chaney, Jr as the titular Wolf Man, and transplanted the urban horror of the 1935 film into more of a folklore tale - with spooky swamps, strange gypsies, and little flourishes like silver working as a sort of werewolf kryptonite.
Though The Wolf Man was endlessly milked for sequels, Chaney unfortunately never again got to be the bride, but had to be the bridesmaid to Frankenstein, Dracula, and (inexplicably) Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Regardless of Hollywood's desire to turn everything into a franchise (how times change), The Wolf Man still sits comfortably alongside Werewolf of London as a classic of the genre. The way I see it is that we have two different but similar depictions of the same story, an approach which can still be seen.
An American Werewolf in London/ Paris, for example, adopted the fish-out-of-water style of Werewolf of London by plonking the creature into an urban setting. John Landis also kept the focus on the horror of the werewolf curse - as anyone who has seen the painful body-horror transformation scene can attest. 2010's The Wolfman, meanwhile, focused on the mythological aspects, with director Joe Johnston doubling down on the raw, primal horror of the werewolf itself. Both this and An American Werewolf are getting reboots, so film makers will probably continue with the two differing styles. Which is fine, just as long as no one ever makes The Wolf-Kin of Tumblr.
The Invisible Man
If you ask 1000 people what superpower they wish they could have, I can guarantee what the top four would be. Super strength, flight, the ability to turn invisible, and the power to stop time and have sex with random beautiful women without them ever knowing. That's right: I know, you filthy bastards.
Really, invisibility makes for an interesting examination of human morality. For to go truly unseen by society is to truly free oneself from the restraints of that society. People always want invisibility to hang out consequence free in the changing rooms, or to rob a bank. Remove the fear of getting caught from an immoral action, and you'd be surprised at just what people would do. Invisibility has been around in fiction for centuries - usually associated to some magical item or trick of the gods - is always used for devious ends.
But what is interesting about invisibility in modern fiction is that often, the characters who champion it are scientific geniuses simply bent on pushing the limits of physics. It's only once they're stuck with invisibility, and drunk on the power such a gift offers, that they start all the murdering, raping, and pilfering. Oftentimes, they are already a little crazy with megalomaniac tendencies - but shit, they're scientists, it's in the job description. This is the ultimate extension of the question Plato posited in the Ring of Gyges (Republic: Book 2): would an intelligent person act morally if they did not have to suffer consequences for their actions? The answer that text, and every other similarly-themed fiction, is no, of course the fuck not.
The Invisible Man, a 1897 novel by H.G. Wells, the first modern depiction of such an individual. It features a brilliant scientist whose adventures in optics experimentation leave him invisible with no way of reversing the effect. Whilst he works at reversing the invisibility, he lives an itinerant lifestyle of petty theft and casual violence. He interacts with the visible by covering himself in bandages and wearing gloves, long coats, and thick-brimmed hats, like some poor 1950's CIA disguise. As his mind deteriorates, he becomes more reclusive and violent, and is eventually murdered by angry mob.
Wells' book was adapted into the 1933 Universal film, The Invisible Man, with Claude Rains as Griffin, the titular hard-to-see man. It's a more or less faithful adaptation of the text, with the biggest change being that the physicist Griffin is now a chemist who gets his powers from the same source as rock stars - drugs. Griffin also has a financee, Flora (Gloria Stuart), and his assistant Kemp (William Harrigan) is actually a scientist too, rather than some tramp Griffin picked up off the street. Griffin himself is less mysterious travelling 10am Weatherspoons drinker, but a sympathetic character with real ties to the world.
Wells' book was adapted into the 1933 Universal film, The Invisible Man, with Claude Rains as Griffin, the titular hard-to-see man. It's a more or less faithful adaptation of the text, with the biggest change being that the physicist Griffin is now a chemist who gets his powers from the same source as rock stars - drugs. Griffin also has a financee, Flora (Gloria Stuart), and his assistant Kemp (William Harrigan) is actually a scientist too, rather than some tramp Griffin picked up off the street. Griffin himself is less mysterious travelling 10am Weatherspoons drinker, but a sympathetic character with real ties to the world.
The Universal film is known for its groundbreaking visual effects by John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams, and for codifying the design of Griffin's disguise - particularly the suits and the sunglasses. The visual effects team employed everything from wires, to black velvet suits against black velvet backgrounds, to lab treatment, to depict Griffin's invisibility in scenes where he de-robes or a hat without his bandages.
As with The Wolf Man, the 1933 film saw endless sequels - The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Woman, Invisible Agent, and The Invisible Man's Revenge - with varying degrees of success. The problem is that the Universal film is based off Wells' well-crafted, thoughtful source material. Once they burnt through that, they had to write their own plots. And the invisibility became the same thing that the 1980's slasher villain became: a gimmick. The plots retread old ground or became a vehicle for more convoluted plots that got further away from the original tale of morality. And there are further films that have covered Wells' original idea: Hollow Man, John Carpenter's Memoirs of An Invisible Man, etc).
Returns is probably the best of the Universal sequels as it features Vincent Price. The Invisible Woman is more of a comedy - the biggest joke in it being that the Invisible Woman needs a man to invent the formula for her (and they want equal rights, amirite 1940's society?).
Hi, I'm a big-shot Hollywood producer circa the 1930's. I'm enjoying all this opiate money we're raking in from films like Dracula and Frankenstein. Oh no, we've killed off all of our villains, and since they were based on the works by long dead writers, how else are we going to top up the drugs fund? I know, we'll make the same film again, with a near identical antagonist, and we'll just say it's his son or daughter. That'll do. Choo-choo! All aboard the opiate train. I hope there's not another war.
Thus, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and Ghost of Frankenstein, were made.
Dracula's Daughter (1936) begins immediately after the first film ends. Van Helsing is arrested for murdering Dracula, and uses the amazing defence of 'well, he was already kinda dead anyway'. Meanwhile, Dracula's daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), steals Dracula's body and burns it. She hopes that in doing so, she will be released from her vampire curse. She's not, and though she does try to do it the hard way by going cold turkey, she eventually gives up on this idea entirely and decides simply to be a bastard. From here, the movie is the same basic plot as Dracula: she dicks about in England, kidnaps someone the protagonist knows, and is killed in Dracula's castle in Transylvania.
Though it is supposedly based on Dracula's Guest (the original first chapter of Bram Stoker's novel) the film is far closer to Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla. Countess Zaleska is a sexy vampire, who seduces her way through high society, and her interactions with the female characters have distinctive lesbian undertones. Whilst not as classic a character as Dracula, Countess Zaleska is far more nuanced, and can stand on her own merits - which she proves by symbolically burning the corpse of Dracula early on in the film.
In my estimation they should have just called this film Countess Zaleska. I find her a highly interesting character that they could have done more with. Zaleska represents female autonomy and empowerment, trapped by the sins of her father, all of which gets sidelined for the generic vampire film stuff later on. She's a lot like the Red Woman from Game of Thrones, a hard-faced cow who manipulates everyone around her by wearing a robe that has her tits on display.
This film has what I call the Halloween 3 problem. A Good film ruined by the expectations caused by tacked-on name recognition.
Son of Dracula (1943) (not the 1974 Ringo Starr musical) continues the trend of making us wonder how exactly Dracula's love spuds work. Are these the children born from traditional means, or through vampiric means? A Hungarian count called Alucard (played here by Lon Chaney Jr - who has less of a smooth foreign devil vibe, and is more ageing gentleman's club owner) heads to the States to do what vampires do best: annoy the locals somewhat.
Whilst the film is called Son of, Alucard is actually Dracula. In fact, this twist leads to one particularly amazing bit of detective work: Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven) realises Alucard is Dracula because he reads the novel Dracula and works out that Alucard is just Dracula backwards. Bravo.
Given that Alucard is actually Dracula, I can't really treat him as a separate character. This film is just Dracula 2.0. But it's worth mentioning because the film is the first to use the name Alucard (this will later become a staple of Castlevania and Japanese anime), have Dracula visit the US, and feature Dracula turn into a bat and a cloud of mist. Yeah he can do all that, but he still can't come up with a better alias than his own name backwards.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) are essentially the precursors to the logic that runs through the minds of the Corporate overlords in the Alien films. That reckless belief of 'well, it didn't work out every single previous time, but it's bound to work this time'. None of them bring anything particularly new to the table - they're all just variations on the same theme of man playing god. Excluding The Bride, it's not even a different monster: the Son refers to Dr Frankenstein's own son and the Ghost is more of a metaphorical thing.
What's worse, Bride of Frankenstein opens with a scene featuring Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron during that infamous stormy night when the original book was written. Mary Shelley states she has more of the tale to tell. By doing so, the film makers are explicitly saying that Victor Frankenstein did all that stuff with his previous creation, learnt the value of the human soul and that playing god only gets people killed, and then decided to not only bring his creature back but make it a mate. And then the Mary Shelley character has the balls to tell us that 'her intention was to impart a moral lesson'. What lesson? If at first you don't succeed? Well, it worked for Herbert West.
These three films are little more than another stab at the story beats of the original film, in lieu of originality. What's interesting, however, is that The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) has become something of an iconic character - in spite of never really having that big of a part. Here is The Bride's involvement throughout this centuries' old story:
As you can see, The Bride never gets to do an awful lot. She lacks agency, and exists to merely be a goal for The Monster and a reminder of his inhumanity. Her only real options are be destroyed or sexual servitude to a monster.
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Dracula's Daughter (1936) begins immediately after the first film ends. Van Helsing is arrested for murdering Dracula, and uses the amazing defence of 'well, he was already kinda dead anyway'. Meanwhile, Dracula's daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), steals Dracula's body and burns it. She hopes that in doing so, she will be released from her vampire curse. She's not, and though she does try to do it the hard way by going cold turkey, she eventually gives up on this idea entirely and decides simply to be a bastard. From here, the movie is the same basic plot as Dracula: she dicks about in England, kidnaps someone the protagonist knows, and is killed in Dracula's castle in Transylvania.
Though it is supposedly based on Dracula's Guest (the original first chapter of Bram Stoker's novel) the film is far closer to Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla. Countess Zaleska is a sexy vampire, who seduces her way through high society, and her interactions with the female characters have distinctive lesbian undertones. Whilst not as classic a character as Dracula, Countess Zaleska is far more nuanced, and can stand on her own merits - which she proves by symbolically burning the corpse of Dracula early on in the film.
In my estimation they should have just called this film Countess Zaleska. I find her a highly interesting character that they could have done more with. Zaleska represents female autonomy and empowerment, trapped by the sins of her father, all of which gets sidelined for the generic vampire film stuff later on. She's a lot like the Red Woman from Game of Thrones, a hard-faced cow who manipulates everyone around her by wearing a robe that has her tits on display.
This film has what I call the Halloween 3 problem. A Good film ruined by the expectations caused by tacked-on name recognition.
Son of Dracula (1943) (not the 1974 Ringo Starr musical) continues the trend of making us wonder how exactly Dracula's love spuds work. Are these the children born from traditional means, or through vampiric means? A Hungarian count called Alucard (played here by Lon Chaney Jr - who has less of a smooth foreign devil vibe, and is more ageing gentleman's club owner) heads to the States to do what vampires do best: annoy the locals somewhat.
Whilst the film is called Son of, Alucard is actually Dracula. In fact, this twist leads to one particularly amazing bit of detective work: Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven) realises Alucard is Dracula because he reads the novel Dracula and works out that Alucard is just Dracula backwards. Bravo.
Given that Alucard is actually Dracula, I can't really treat him as a separate character. This film is just Dracula 2.0. But it's worth mentioning because the film is the first to use the name Alucard (this will later become a staple of Castlevania and Japanese anime), have Dracula visit the US, and feature Dracula turn into a bat and a cloud of mist. Yeah he can do all that, but he still can't come up with a better alias than his own name backwards.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) are essentially the precursors to the logic that runs through the minds of the Corporate overlords in the Alien films. That reckless belief of 'well, it didn't work out every single previous time, but it's bound to work this time'. None of them bring anything particularly new to the table - they're all just variations on the same theme of man playing god. Excluding The Bride, it's not even a different monster: the Son refers to Dr Frankenstein's own son and the Ghost is more of a metaphorical thing.
What's worse, Bride of Frankenstein opens with a scene featuring Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron during that infamous stormy night when the original book was written. Mary Shelley states she has more of the tale to tell. By doing so, the film makers are explicitly saying that Victor Frankenstein did all that stuff with his previous creation, learnt the value of the human soul and that playing god only gets people killed, and then decided to not only bring his creature back but make it a mate. And then the Mary Shelley character has the balls to tell us that 'her intention was to impart a moral lesson'. What lesson? If at first you don't succeed? Well, it worked for Herbert West.
These three films are little more than another stab at the story beats of the original film, in lieu of originality. What's interesting, however, is that The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) has become something of an iconic character - in spite of never really having that big of a part. Here is The Bride's involvement throughout this centuries' old story:
- In Shelley's novel Dr Frankenstein is cajoled into making The Monster a bride. He does but destroys the creation before completing it - out of the fear of there being baby Monsters. Why Frankenstein gave the Monster working gonads in the first place, is beyond me.
- In this film, The Bride rejects The Monster, so he decides to kill them both and destroy Dr Frankenstein's lab, which has to be the worst reaction to being friend-zoned.
- The Bride (1985) (the one with Sting as the mad doctor) has the usual set-up of The Bride rejecting the monster, but then she later changes her mind. Women.
- In Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film The Bride is Dr Frankenstein's own wife, who has been re-animated. The Monster kidnaps her, but she sets herself on fire rather than be a monster or with the man who turned her into one.
As you can see, The Bride never gets to do an awful lot. She lacks agency, and exists to merely be a goal for The Monster and a reminder of his inhumanity. Her only real options are be destroyed or sexual servitude to a monster.
But we all know what she looks like: the conical hair, with white lightning streaks running up it, the scars that make her seem as though she's half way through a face transplant. Quite hot in a The Munsters or Adams Family kind of way. It's as iconic a design as Karloff's Frankestein's Monster, with its massive square head and bolts in its neck. There was a kid who looked like that at my school.
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