Monsters in Cinema

With Halloween next week, the Horror Season in full swing, and Universal Studios still on the cusp of their 100th Anniversary celebrations, Movie Critic's Club is looking at monsters in the movies. These infamous characters ("Universal Monsters" as they have so admirably been dubbed) are not the modern blend of bloody and cheap thrills that recent monster flicks like Piranha 3D contain, but rather cold villains that still manage to scare audiences to this day. Happy Halloween, and welcome to the Monsters in Cinema.


In the early days of Universal Studios, horror-defining films Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Hunchback of Notre Dame gave way for the studio to finance more movies in the horror genre. After the success of The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney as the mysterious and tortured Phantom, Universal Studios jumped on the fast track for breaking the line on horror films.

Universal Studios continued their reign of horror films into the Great Depression and beyond, hardly slowing down even in the wake of horrible economic conditions. The 1930's-1950's featured large amounts of legendary monsters that were escalated by high success rates and several sequels. These monsters include:

• Dracula- The first in the long line of Universal Monsters, Bela Lugosi's now iconic performance of the demonic vampire impressed moviegoers even before the Twilight phase. He's still known for tempting his "children of the night" and sucking the blood from screaming women all over the globe. A Shakespearean-like villain, Dracula has since appeared in a few sequels and stands as #33 in the American Film Institute's list of the Top 50 Movie Villains of all time. 

• Frankenstein- The greatest amount of sequels comes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein film franchise, spearheaded by star Boris Karloff (who many of you will memorably know best as the Grinch from the animated classic Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas). The sequels were usually good, too, with Bride of Frankenstein still a standout among the horror genre. "IT'S ALIVE!" 

• The Mummy- Before the 90's turned it into a decent action franchise, Universal's The Mummy prompted fear in the dead Egyptian pharaoh. The Mummy was again portrayed by horror icon Boris Karloff.
• The Invisible Man- The Invisible Man was an intelligent film about science gone wrong. Insanity is the theme of this monster flick, and even though it does try and simply entertain the audience with a lot of scares, it still presents an interesting message on the morals of science.
• The Wolf Man- With the son of the Phantom himself, Lon Chaney, Jr., in front of the screen, this howling terror made viewers afraid of a full moon. Fun Fact: Unlike other horror actors like Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. continued to portray the Wolf Man through all of the character's films, unprecedented in the time of recasting cheaper actors for sequels. 
• The Creature from the Black Lagoon- The 1950's started to show Universal Studios slowing down in their output of monster movies. However, with the release of The Creature of the Black Lagoon in 1954, audiences showed the studio that they were still very interested in Universal Monster films. The audience surge promoted several re-releases in the theaters and the monsters appearances on TV stations across the nation.

Though the days of Frankenstein and Dracula eventually started to die down, and Universal Studios began to establish itself as a more "serious" film studio, there are still remnants of the Golden Age of Horror to this day. People cannot escape movie theaters in October without seeing ads for at least one new scary monster film. Children still dress up for Halloween as werewolves, vampires, and mummies. 

Universal Studios still outputs a great Universal Monster movie at least once a decade. They briefly left their Monsters during the 1960's when they contracted Alfred Hitchcock to produce horror films like Psycho and The Birds. But, they came back with a vengeance in 1975 when they financed Steven Spielberg's legendary shark movie Jaws. Spielberg crafted a classic horror film that became the first "true" blockbuster and a model for all subsequent thrillers. People still hum the theme song whenever they bravely step foot in the ocean. 

The 1980's saw John Carpenter's The Thing, the 1990's had Spielberg back for Jurassic Park, and the 2000's featured Peter Jackson's modern day facelift of King Kong. The bottom line is that Universal Monsters may not be seeing a new Frankenstein or Wolf Man movie every couple months, but the Universal Monsters still continue to leave an impact on the film industry to this day. 

Enjoy your favorite monsters in the movies, and come back next week as we celebrate Movie Critic's Club's Top 10 Movie Villains.