The Raven (1935)

Film: The Raven (1935)

Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lester Matthews, Irene Ware, Samuel S. Hinds

Director: Lew Landers

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

As you'll see below, we have covered a lot of ground when it comes to classic horror films, and as we are on our final season of Classical Hollywood-focused horror (never say never, especially with the sequel-prone horror genre, but we will definitely not be doing this at least next year, as we'll go to a different era or style), I wanted to start with something big.  The problem is that most of the classics we have left are not from the 1930's, and since we are doing these chronologically I struggled to come up with the perfect solution until it hit me (like a bolt of lightning, mwahahaha!).  We have had throughout this series two primary mascots: Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff, who starred in many of the below films & launched the characters behind even more of them.  While we have covered all of the Universal Monster incarnations of these two men, we haven't gotten to all of their films, or even all of their films together, and so we will be kicking off our season with these two headliners, taking on their best (loose) version of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not, it's worth noting, an adaptation of Poe's classic poem (the 1930's Poe films rarely had anything to do with the horror author).  Instead, it's about a mad scientist named Richard Vollin (Lugosi) who has been pulled out of retirement by Judge Thatcher (Hinds) to save the life of his beautiful daughter Jean (Ware).  While Vollin initially refuses, he is convinced, and soon becomes obsessed with the lovely Jean, with whom he shares a love of Edgar Allen Poe's works.  Unfortunately for Richard, Jean is engaged to another man, and this makes Judge Thatcher warn Vollin to stay away from Jean.  Of course, Vollin being a raving mad scientist, he decides he needs revenge on all involved, and gains help with the assistance of an escaped convict named Bateman (Karloff).  Bateman requests a new face so that he can live in peace (since he's an escaped convict), but Vollin instead purposefully deforms him, and says he will only return his face to normal if Bateman helps Vollin kill Judge Thatcher.

It's at this point where arguably the most famous part of The Raven comes out, and the one part of the film that actually relates to Poe.  Vollin has a giant torture chamber in his basement (cause, like, who doesn't?) that is inspired by different works from Poe.  There's a "Sword of Damocles" style device from The Pit and the Pendulum, and while it's not specifically-mentioned there's a clear nod to the Cask of Amontillado where Jean & her fiancee are sentenced to a crushing fate until Bateman saves them.  This is also the best part of the movie-it allows Lugosi to camp it up to the hilt, espousing on how much he loves torture, and has some really fun set design.

The film itself is fine-it's not a classic or a truly great horror movie like Bride of Frankenstein (not enough humor) or Creature from the Black Lagoon (which is just outright spectacular), but it's fun.  If you're into this style of movie (which you might be able to tell, I am), I love this campy motif & the bad side acting & the wonderful plot holes-it's without pretension, and it's always a good time.  One thing to note here-Lugosi is better than Karloff in this movie.  Not only does he get the better (and larger, despite the billing from Universal) part, but he takes more time with it & seems to relish it.  I have listened to the Bela & Boris season of You Must Remember This more times than I can count (it's an annual tradition for me at this point), and this was not oftentimes the case as the two men had a professional rivalry, and Lugosi was jealous of the fact that Karloff was the more natural actor (particularly in English), something I've echoed oftentimes on this blog, but that's not the case with The Raven.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Film: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya
Director: Roy William Neill
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

The Frankenstein movies might be my favorite franchise of the Universal Monsters (I also love Creature from the Black Lagoon, but haven't gotten to a lot of the sequels), but weirdly I skipped this movie the last time we did an October Horror Month on the blog, heading right into House of Frankenstein, the sixth movie in the series.  As a result, we're going to backtrack a little bit before we go forward (this will not be the final appearance of Frankenstein before our season is over), moving into a story that began the 1940's real cache of teaming up the monsters from multiple different pictures, something that would continue for the bad (some of the mid-1940's sequels left something to be desired) and the glorious (the genius Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, out-and-out the best film in the whole Universal canon).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, though it involves Frankenstein, really centers on the Wolf Man, who at this point had not had another sequel to the launch of the franchise in 1941.  The movie takes place a few years after that film, with Larry Talbot (Chaney) dead, and surrounded by wolfsbane, which is keeping him so.  When grave robbers take his body out, he returns, and of course there's a full moon, so he kills these men & starts terrorizing the countryside.  The Wolf Man knows what he's doing is wrong, and tries to stop himself by finding a cure, seeking out the gypsy woman Maleva (Ouspenskaya) who knows of Larry's curse, as her son Bela made him a werewolf.  She sends him to the home of Ludwig Frankenstein, whom she thinks might be able to help him, and though he's dead he comes across his monster (Lugosi), who is then unleashed & causes havoc upon the village, with the aid of another curious young doctor (Knowles) who is also treating Larry, and on the night of a full moon, both monsters are unleashed quickly.  The two face off in the final moments of the film, while a flood comes to rush & destroy the Frankenstein Castle, presumably sweeping them away to their death (but we, of course, know better).

The Frankenstein sequels, like all of the Universal movies, can be watched out-of-order without issue-they're isolated tales, and the plot is pretty easy to follow even if you watch them out-of-sequence.  However, they are all the same spectacular story, which makes Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man so odd because of the previous casting decisions.  Chaney, for example, plays Larry Talbot here, but he'd also just played the Monster in Ghost of Frankenstein (at one point Universal considered putting Chaney, the film's biggest star at the time, into both roles but Chaney refused considering the demands on him in terms of the makeup chair), so the Frankenstein role is one he had just played in the previous film.  Even stranger is that Bela Lugosi was also in that film, playing Igor, and at the end of the film Frankenstein's brain is switched with Igor's but his face was not so now he looks like the previous film's Igor as Frankenstein.  And even more bizarre, Lugosi is also in The Wolf Man, playing the role of Bela, so between these three films in the franchise, Lugosi is playing three different parts (and since in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein Lugosi is brought back in the form of Dracula, four characters in the original Universal Monster multiverse are played by Bela Lugosi).

If you found that paragraph geekily delightful, then you'll probably like this movie, which I did.  Neither Chaney nor Lugosi are as good of actors as Boris Karloff, but this is Chaney's best character in the canon, and the script isn't too demanding on his acting abilities.  The same is true for Lugosi (wasted as the monster), but the script hums, and there's a perverse pleasure in seeing the Universal Monsters' lives start to be interwoven into the same narrative.  It might not be masterful moviemaking, but it's fun & quick & hit the right balance between camp & thrills.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

The Black Cat (1934)

Film: The Black Cat (1934)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

Throughout their careers, Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff appeared in eight films together, the size and scale of which changed dramatically depending on the movie.  There are a lot of old-school Hollywood rumors about Lugosi & Karloff's relationship, ranging from them being friends to being mortal enemies, and the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle.  Lugosi clearly resented Karloff's success (once Frankenstein was released, there was never really a point in Karloff's career where Lugosi was close to usurping it, even if in Son of Frankenstein Lugosi got the better reviews), but they worked together regularly.  Part of Lugosi's problem was that he never really translated into non-horror films in the way that Karloff did, and also because he never played Dracula again after 1931 until Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.  In 1934, though, they would have been at least somewhat in the same vicinity of stardom, and so getting them in a movie like The Black Cat is a bit of a coup, and shows both actors toward the peak of their horror powers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Black Cat cites the Edgar Allen Poe short story as inspiration, but it has nothing to do with that tale (and as that might be my favorite Poe story other than "The Tell-Tale Heart," I have read it many times) other than both featuring a black cat .  The movie is instead about Peter (Manners) and Joan Alison (Bishop), a handsome young newlywed couple who are on a train, and share a cabin with a psychiatrist named Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), who has just left a prison camp in Siberia after 15 years (super common, obviously-this always happens to me on public transit too).  He is set to visit his "old friend" Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) and when the bus that is carrying all three breaks down, the couple have to visit him too.  Once there, Werdegast confronts Poelzig over his treachery during WWI, and of killing his wife.  It turns out he didn't kill her, at least not at first, but married her, and then after she died, married Werdegast's daughter, who is still alive.  As the film continues, we find out that Poelzig is a member of a satanic cult, and wants to sacrifice Joan to Lucifer.  In the end, Joan & Peter escape, but Werdegast is not able to save his daughter, who is murdered by Poelzig, whom Werdegast then skins alive, and eventually blows up the building they're in (when Joan & Peter have fled), killing all of Poelzig's satanic cult along with Poelzig& Werdegast themselves.

That's a lot of plot for what is a 70-minute movie (plot is never in short supply in old-school Hollywood horror).  Yet it works really well-there were only a couple of moments in the script where I was a bit lost (specifically around the daughter-it wasn't clear initially who she was, though you figure out after a second).  As a result, this is a brisk, really well-kept horror film, and one that's genuinely creepy (if not downright scary).  Poelzig is a disgusting, tortured man, and Werdegast is played with enough malice that his true intentions are not always known (this is a weird comparison, but I kept thinking he had a similar morality to Sweeney Todd in that he's fine with people dying to get an answer to what happened to his wife-and-daughter).  And this film, while obviously not showing some of the scenes (you did not see Karloff skinned alive, obviously), it finds a way to throw incest, necrophilia, and torture all into one little pre-Code movie.

As for the two leading men, I have to say Karloff's better, and not necessarily because he gets the better part.  Lugosi's final scene is really good, some of his better acting outside of Igor (for my money, his best character even if it isn't his most iconic), but Karloff just nails this devious man.  The best scene of the movie is him playing chess with Lugosi, whose Werdegast is trying to win Joan & Peter's freedom from Poelzig.  The way that Karloff says "even the phone is dead" is dripping with terror & camp, and it's marvelous (hopefully this link is still valid when you read this review).  All-in-all, a great outing between the two actors/rivals.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Film: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Stars: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, Vincent Price
Director: Charles Barton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

A few months ago, we did a series highlighting the horror/monster films of the pre-1970 era of cinema, and one of the pictures I was most hoping to highlight was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  It was, in fact, the movie I was expecting to cap off the series with, considering it was largely the end of the first batch of Universal monster movies, but sadly Netflix decided it wasn't time for me to get that disc (I'm never going to complain about my little red envelopes too hard since, thanks to the demise of FilmStruck, Netflix discs are the best spot for actual movie-lovers and not just streamers who want to watch TV, but it is a bummer that it feels so arbitrary over which of your Top 5 films will actually come to you next, especially when you're planning a series).  However, by chance I caught this movie over the Christmas break (because who doesn't associate such a film with Christmas?), and didn't want to wait a full year to share my thoughts on the picture, so let's include it as an honorary member of the series.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film stars Abbott and Costello as Chick and Wilbur, respectively, but let's be real here-every Abbott & Costello movie stars them as themselves.  The two are baggage clerks charged with moving two items for a House of Horrors exhibit, a Frankenstein's Monster (Strange) and the remains of Dracula (Lugosi).  What of course we know and the duo soon realize is that these aren't just dummies for a horror show, but in fact the actual Frankenstein and Dracula.  They eventually meet up with Larry Talbot aka the Wolf Man (Chaney) who had warned them about the dangers of Frankenstein & Dracula, and wants to find a way to destroy the monsters.  Wilbur's girlfriend turns out to be in cahoots with Dracula, and is trying to seduce him to steal his brain to give to Frankenstein's monster.  A wild series of antics ensues at the castle, including a number of madcap chases, before all three of the monsters are destroyed, and Wilbur & Chick make out on a boat, claiming they want to be done with such adventures, only to be joined in a brief cameo by Vincent Price as the Invisible Man, lighting a cigarette on the boat.

The movie is silly fun, but man is it fun.  For those who haven't seen an Abbott & Costello routine or movie, it's usually predicated on Costello seeing and trying to explain something ridiculous to Abbott, usually without success.  The entire sequence where Lugosi and Strange come to life is a riot, as Costello keeps finding ways to just miss the monsters rising from their coffins, clearly seeing them but never catching them in the act when Abbott is there.  The duo had their struggles late in their careers, but here they have never been better, and it's easy to understand why this is regarded as their finest hour.  Costello has rarely been funnier, and it's a thrill to see them play opposite Lugosi, Strange, and Chaney, all taking on their iconic roles for the last time.

This feels like a fitting end to the horror icons of the monster movies.  We profiled so many of them in October it feels a bit wistful to bid them adieu in such a way, but the movies were increasingly played for laughs as the series' continued (look at Lugosi's Igor in the later Frankenstein pictures, for example, who regularly has dastardly intentions that even in the 1940's felt more parody than actually terrifying).  This was weirdly the only time other than the original Dracula where Lugosi would play his most iconic creation onscreen-the sequels either skipped Dracula entirely or had a different actor (like John Carradine or Lon Chaney Jr) play the part.  It's a joy to see Lugosi, who would never appear in another major Hollywood studio film again & would instead be in truly horrible films for Ed Wood (while dying of a methadone addiction), get to have one last hurrah with the character.  Abbott & Costello are the obvious stars here, but I've become attached to Lugosi over our series and as a result he became something of a sentimental favorite with this picture for me.

Every October we do a recurring series of Monster Films, looking at pre-1970 horror/thriller films.  While it's not October, I still thought it'd be fun to add this movie to the list considering its important position in the horror film canon:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Freaks, The Ghost of Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, The House of Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, The Masque of the Red Death, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

Film: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Evelyn Ankers
Director: Eric C. Kenton
Oscar History: No Nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horror frights with yet another trip to Frankenstein's castle, our fourth this month (in many ways this has more become the month of Frankenstein, as we will definitely be visiting the castle at least once more before Halloween on Wednesday).  This installment is unique compared to our other three visits, though, as we for the first time are going without Boris Karloff.  Karloff, fearing that there was nothing left to say about the creature, decided to quit playing the character, and wouldn't revise the role until the 1960's in an episode of Route 66.  As a result, while we have the return of Bela Lugosi's Igor, we are instead treated to our first visit from Lon Chaney, Jr., another major star of the Universal Horror films, albeit one that I'm less thrilled about than Karloff or Lugosi.  Because while Ghost of Frankenstein has its moments (and arguably the most famous call sheet we've seen on one of these movies), it's by-far the least of the movies in the series thus far and doesn't bode well for House of Frankenstein, our next visit in this series with the monster.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts, once again, with a group of angry villagers complaining about Frankenstein's monster (Chaney) cursing their land and causing them hardships.  Despite being, well, dead, they claim that Igor (Lugosi) is still at the castle, and as long as the castle stands, they will continue to endure troubles.  The village elders (several of whom died in the last film, perhaps the picture's most notable continuity error), eventually give in to the mob, and they storm the castle, tearing it apart brick by brick.  Igor is there to fortify it, but once he sees the monster come alive from the rubble, he flees the castle with him in tow, trying to track down Dr. Frankenstein's other son (the one that isn't Basil Rathbone's Wolf, and has conveniently never been mentioned until now), played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who is at first reluctant to try to help the monster but haunted by his father's memory, he sets about trying to correct the monster, making him be a decent human being through a brain transplant of one of his recently-deceased colleagues.  Eventually Igor manipulates himself into getting the brain transplant for himself, becoming the monster but then going blind because he isn't the right blood type, eventually burning down the house with Ludwig and the Ygor-Monster inside.  There's also, like most of these films, a subplot involving a beautiful woman (Ludwig's daughter, played by Ankers), and a local lug (Ralph Bellamy once again coming to the rescue), but even by horror movie standards this feels a bit tacked-on and unnecessary.

The Universal horror movies always lived-or-died based off of the charisma of the actors playing the monsters and the cheap thrills that they're able to elicit.  This film is an odd juxtaposition in that regard, since Lugosi's Igor is such a sturdy creation, a more impressive achievement, in my opinion, than his Dracula (it stands out in a stronger way).  The plot lines revolving around Igor are ridiculous-that he's able to continually manipulate everyone around him as if he's simply a normal human being, rather than a scheming man and murderer rubbing his hands together offscreen while mumbling his plan, is beyond absurd, but beneath the makeup you can tell that Lugosi was a strong stage actor as he hams it up wonderfully for the camera.  Honestly-Igor is a more terrifying creation than the monster ever could be, since he walks among us and seems to always be hatching a plan to create more violence and chaos.

But Chaney's creature is an enormous step down from Karloff's monster.  Karloff was an accomplished film star, one who never would have taken off were it not for his work in the Universal horror films, but was an actor with skill who always brought something to his performances.  Lon Chaney, Jr., well, had a very famous father.  Chaney's monster has none of Karloff's soul or tenderness, making him appear a sympathetic-but-complicated figure, and instead has him lumbering like a giant doll the whole film, with his arms outstretched (I believe this is the first time we see this now iconic image of the monster with his arms out-stretched, his wrists limp, marching forward).  Chaney's performance is, well, terrible, not just because it pales in comparison to Karloff's because it's not that good on its own.  Thankfully Universal didn't start with him in this role, because it wouldn't have had such strong franchise films up until this point in the series if they had.  Lugosi's Igor makes this film worth checking out, but it's not very good, and despite real actors in the supporting roles (Hardwicke was a knight, for crying out loud!), Lugosi is the only reason this film should exist.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Freaks

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Film: Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Stars: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horrors with a film that made it on the marathon partially because it was already on my Netflix queue, but mostly because I was so shocked when researching this article how the studio system, while it was generally unkind to actors such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi when they stopped being bankable, also didn't exploit them as ferociously as I would have expected.  In an era when, say, Myrna Loy and William Powell were playing Nick & Nora every year, stars like Karloff & Lugosi didn't continually reprise their most iconic characters, instead only playing them a few times.  Karloff, for example, only donned the Frankenstein makeup thrice-first for his two classic outings (reviews listed below) and then one last time after Universal, who was suffering after ousting the Laemmles, wanted to take advantage of a recent revival in theaters of Frankenstein movies (a bankrupt LA theater ran Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong as a Hail Mary to make money and the gimmick worked, leading to a second wave of horror movies from Universal).  Son of Frankenstein would not be Karloff's last outing in a Frankenstein picture (he'd appear as a mad doctor in House of Frankenstein, which we'll get to later this month), but it was his last time in the monster's getup, and is famously considered the final "A-Grade" horror movie of its era, as soon the Universal horror films were being made cheaply and more generically.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around, as the title suggests, the son of Frankenstein, named Wolf (Rathbone), who has come back to his father's castle to claim his inheritance, the estate and, most specifically, the laboratory.  The people in the local village loathe Wolf, as they view he and his family as bad omens, and so the only friend to Wolf, his wife Elsa (Hutchinson) and son Peter is a local lawman, Inspector Krogh (Atwill), who lost an arm to the monster as a child.  Despite clear reasons not to do so, Wolf is set to avenge his father, trying to prove his place in scientific history by reanimating the monster (Karloff), with the help of Ygor (Lugosi), who has taken control of the monster and is using him to murder members of a jury that once tried to have Ygor hanged.  As one could expect, Wolf's plans go awry as the monster kills and terrorizes the surrounding countryside, but is ultimately saved by Inspector Krogh, with the monster and Ygor dying while the Frankensteins leave the village, presumably forever (or at least until the next sequel).

One of the harder things about reviewing older movies is trying to figure out what is being played for laughs and what is genuinely supposed to be terrifying.  A contemporary review of the film at the time called it "the silliest picture ever made," but that's hard to digest since many of the horror movies of that era play for camp to modern audiences.  Still, you can see the way that articulate, Shakespearean-trained Rathbone feels a tad ridiculous as Wolf von Frankenstein.  The way that he descends so quickly into the same madness that doomed his father feels hackneyed and preposterous, but it's also quite fun.  Rathbone has such a theatrical flare that he fits right in and feels like an appropriate offspring of Colin Clive (it's alive, it's ALIVE!).  Atwill is a strange oddity in the film (and also feels weird when you think of the chronology of the picture as he feels too old to have been hurt as a child by the monster), and Hutchinson is as generic as you can get as Wolf's clingy, wispy wife.

But the whole point of these films is the monsters, and weirdly it's Lugosi's Ygor and not Karloff's Frankenstein that stands out in a major way here despite Karloff generally being the better actor.  Lugosi basically steals the picture, as Karloff's Frankenstein has been muted and is less defined than in the previous iterations of the series.  Ygor, though, is cruel, funny, and played as much for laughs as he is for fears.  It's hilarious to think that this creepy, nasty guy would so easily fool Wolf, and it's practically like he's breaking the fourth wall with his "behind Wolf's back" sorts of grimaces.  All-in-all, it is, as the Times put it, quite silly, but it's also more fun than I was suspecting, especially as Wolf goes mad, and not a bad way to spend a cloudy afternoon.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love

Dracula (1931)

Film: Dracula (1931)
Stars: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward van Sloan
Director: Tod Browning
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

At this point in my film-viewing education, there aren't a lot of out-and-out classic films that I haven't seen.  I've completed the AFI List, I've seen a cursory amount of classic foreign films, most of the requisite highlights of Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa, and have watched 84% of the Oscar Best Picture winners.  As a result, I was thinking the other day "what is the most important film classic that I've never seen?" and while I pondered everything from Fight Club to Airplane! to The Band Wagon (don't worry, I'll get to all three at some point), my mind settled upon Dracula as the movie that I admittedly had never seen.  It in fact dawned on me that not only had I never seen Dracula, I'd also never seen a number of the original Universal Movie monster classics (with three exceptions seen here and here and here).

That all changes this October as we endeavor on our first theme month in a long while.  Starting today with Dracula, and until Halloween, I'm going to be filling all of the major gaps in my horror movie classics list, watching the remaining titles of the "Big 8" horror films of the Universal Era that I have yet to see, as well as seeing some of the other major pre-1970 horror films that I've never caught on the big (or small) screen.  There are classics of the horror genre post-1970 that I haven't caught yet, and maybe we'll do that next year, but this month I want to focus more on the campier and humbler pictures that began the horror genre in a major way, and hopefully by the end of the month we'll have roughly a dozen new horror screenings/reviews for your perusal.  If you're so interested, play along and fill in the gaps of movies you also need to see, and if you're already an expert, join me in the comments and list out the lesser-known pictures of the era I should check out.  In the meantime, let's get to Tod Browning's classic that started an empire at Universal, Dracula.

(Spoilers Ahead) Weirdly enough, I've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and while I'm familiar with the myth in terms of ways that it has permeated pop culture, I genuinely don't think I've seen a big-screen telling of this story before now.  This was exciting for me as I found the film more original than I had initially anticipated for a tale that is so entrenched in movie lore.  The film, of course, centers around Count Dracula himself (Lugosi), a creepy, ridiculous sort of man whose title and charm bring him in contact with London elites after largely being a recluse in his home country (implied to be Transylvania, but I don't believe it's ever mentioned by name unless I missed that clarification).  He takes a young solicitor named Renfield (Frye) as his captive, making him into a blood-crazed lunatic, and then slowly starts killing the young women of London, eventually settling on Mina (Chandler), a young woman who is recently engaged.  After killing Mina's friend and turning her into a vampire, Dracula bites Mina, and she starts to exhibit the traits of a vampire.  Thankfully, Professor Van Helsing (van Sloan) is an expert in vampires and able to find tricks to stop Dracula, and kills him in the end to save Mina from completely turning into a vampire, ending up happily-ever-after.

The movie surprised me in a few ways.  For starters, it's better-acted than I expected.  Helen Chandler's Mina is eerie when she's possessed, and Frye's Renfield is a campy delight, in many ways the equal of Igor, his Frankenstein counterpart.  Lugosi has caught lots of flack from film historians when compared to someone like Boris Karloff, who was a considerably better actor (and far smarter with his money/script choices, which is why he had a far more traditional career with more opportunity than Lugosi...plus, English was his first language & Lugosi never shed the accent).  Still, Lugosi lands this part very well, and has an eeriness that is undeniable.  He never blinks in the picture, and while the hamminess of his thick accent, melodramatic line readings, and of course that menacing glare have been done to death by virtually every actor who has taken on the role since, it works and has a calming horror in the movie; there's a reason he created the Dracula prototype.  He's better than I expected, far stronger than the few other films I've seen of his, and I'm excited to see a couple other major pictures of his before this month is done (I've got at least two more on the schedule for our theme marathon), to see if this was the only trick in his acting arsenal, or if he was an under-appreciated actor of his day.

It has to be said, though, that it's the sets that were truly the star for me on this picture.  Dracula's castle and later Carfax Abbey are stupendously designed, with high vault ceilings that add to the drama of the movie.  I read afterwards that the sets were used in multiple other pictures, as they cost too much to just use in Dracula, and I'd believe it-the climactic scene where Dracula, feeling betrayed by Renfield, murders him on a winding staircase is the closest the film comes to real chills for a modern movie audience, and a lot of that has to do with the genuine fear of such a clearly dangerous, terrifying drop for the actors below.  It's usually an insult to call the sets the best part of a movie, but here it aids the story so splendidly it's impossible not to be impressed.  Like Dracula itself, it's extra and overdone, but is filled with enough awe and shockingly big touches you don't really care.

The Wolf Man (1941)

Film: The Wolf Man (1941)
Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers, Bela Lugosi
Director: George Waggner
Oscar History: The Best Makeup category didn't come around until 1981, so Jack Pierce's iconic work in The Wolf Man didn't end up with a trophy that it surely deserved.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is watching old horror movies, something I don't get to do very often as they're not nearly as featured on Turner Classic Movies in recent years (it used to be you couldn't turn on the channel without Vincent Price bellowing into the night).  But it's October, and Halloween approaches, and as a result they're looking through the Universal vault this month which led me to finally see one of the remaining Universal monster movies that I haven't caught.  I've long thought it was essential that you eventually see all seven of the biggest headliners of the Universal collection's origin stories (the seven being Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy), but for some reason The Wolf Man is missing on Netflix DVD so I have been patiently waiting for TCM to show it.  Thankfully last week they rewarded me, and so I got to catch this oft-imitated original.

(Spoilers Ahead) Nothing thrills me more than finding out a genuinely unknown fact during the TCM intros, and I had never realized how much of werewolf lore (like being killed by a silver bullet and turning into a werewolf if bitten) wasn't from centuries of stories about lupine men, but in fact came straight from the script of Curt Siodmak.  Kudos have to go to Siodmak for so well-establishing something that would be central to dozens of other movies (though the full moon bit would come from the next Wolf Man picture, as it's less clear what drives the transformation in this film), and for creating a story that feels cliched by the time you finally watch it, you know the picture by heart.

The film centers around Larry Talbot (Chaney), a man who has returned home for his brother's funeral at the behest of his distant father Sir John (Rains).  Larry hears tale of werewolf culture from a beautiful girl named Gwen (Ankers) whom he meets, well, stalking her (seriously-the most shocking thing about this movie may have been that they tried to romanticize Larry pulling a Peeping Tom routine on Gwen that turns into a burgeoning flirtation).  Gwen is engaged, but still drawn to Larry, and they go out one night with another of her friends, meeting a fortuneteller named Bela (Lugosi, in a brief part), who bites Larry after he transforms, leaving him the Wolf Man.  Unable to control his urges, he kills (though almost always men who are largely inconsequential to the actual plot), and is haunted by what he's become but unable to stop it.  Eventually he tries to get Gwen to flee, as she bears the mark of the werewolf's next victim, and is killed by his own silver walking stick by his father, Sir John, who looks on in horror as his son is transformed back into a man, and we're left to wonder if Sir John has been bitten, thus carrying on the curse.

The movie is short, clocking in at 70 minutes, a brief interlude of a picture which saves it as the clunkier parts (namely anything involving the doomed romance between Chaney and Ankers) doesn't have much time to simmer.  If you're able to appreciate the film as both a pretty universal metaphor (homosexuality and alcoholism seemed most obvious, but I'd buy nearly anything you hid about yourself) or just as sheer camp, it's quite fun to watch.  The makeup effects are still pretty fresh if admittedly not insanely lifelike, and the film's supporting players like Lugosi and Ouspenskaya are creepy enough that you actually might get a scare or two as you're watching the dated effects unfold (also cinematographer Joseph Valentine does an ace job with mood lighting for a B-Picture...he's clearly an underserved talent who would eventually graduate to the movies of Alfred Hitchcock and win an Oscar for Joan of Arc).  Plus, the ending is actually solid-I didn't entirely expect the Wolf Man to die, assuming he'd be just left-for-dead to provide sequel fodder, but Universal wasn't shy about killing off their monsters (though they knew reincarnation was always an option).  All-in-all, it's worth an investigation, particularly if you're at home on a Saturday night and want a scare (but not a big one).

Those are my thoughts on this screen classic-how about yours?  Anyone seen The Wolf Man for the first time recently?  And if you've seen al seven-who is your favorite Universal monster (I'm still finishing up the list on my end)?  Share your thoughts down below!