Thank you for this topic, tripwire! I
love the Universal monster movies and make sure to watch them every year around Halloween. Even though the acting may not be the best and the plots have enough inconsistencies to rival DS, the films are still a lot of fun.
I never cared much for the Frankenstein monster, and though Dracula is a lot of fun, I think my favorites from the series are the wolfman and the mummy. I seem to really favor shapeshifters (in addition to
The Wolfman,
Werewolf of London and RKO's
Cat People are among my favorite classic horror films.) They're so much more sympathetic than the other monsters. As humans with an unwanted and dreadful fate unfairly forced upon them, they seem more deserving of appreciation.
I really enjoy the mummy series, even though Kharis is basically the Frankenstein creature (mindless monster on killing rampage) in Egyptian trappings. The mythology surrounding this mummy and the progression of its story are enough to off-set the unimaginativeness of the character. On the other hand, Karloff's mummy Im-ho-tep was much more active, cunning, and evil.
The Mummy was one of my favorite movies in the 6th grade and still ranks on my list as one of, if not the best of the monster pictures. I recently read that
The Mummy was a remake of
Dracula though with an Egyptian setting, but I don't believe it. The story was sufficiently original enough and intriguing enoguh to set it apart and (I feel) even above the earlier film.
The one thing I could never figure out is how did it always catch Evelyn Ankers? Even though she ALWAYS wore high-heels and ALWAYS managed to trip at least a half-dozen times, that thing would amble along at a pace that would shame a snail, while she ran like the dickens. And yet, Kaopectate or whatever managed ending up with her passed out in its arms. Go figure.
Very true. What bugs me is that the while the mummy is six feet away and slowly staggering along, the Mapleton bumpkins, instead of running while they have the chance, always simply stand and shoot repeatedly at the thing to no effect until it eventually wrings their necks. They always look so shocked when the monster finally gets them too...
Two other monsters not on the list that I really enjoy wtaching are the invisible man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. For the time that it was filmed,
The Invisible Man has some excellent special effects. The original film with Claude Rains, though departing from the novel, was very suspenseful and the 'monster' believably threatening. (For different reasons, its sequel is also very good, and perhaps better.) IMHO,
Creature from the Black Lagoon is another of the better B-movies. One of the things that I appreciate about the original film is that the characters are not helpless victims who sit around waiting to be picked off. Rather, both monsters and people work to outsmart each other.
ProfStokes
