In praise of MMA: Mixed Monster Adversaries (Part One)

You can’t convince a kid that less is more. Try telling an eight-year-old that instead of getting into that awesome [fill in the blank] costume and driving to the neighborhood where they give out full-size candy bars, the family will be going over to grandma’s for Halloween, where she keeps a bowl of dusty, 20-year-old Werther’s candies for all her visitors. See how that goes over.

Monsters are like candy bars. One is nice, but there’s nothing like emptying out a full bag of candy at the end of a great night of trick or treating. Sure, you can parcel out your monster enjoyment one solitary vampire, werewolf or man-made abomination at a time. But throw them all together in a single film, and you’ve got a party like no other, the monster equivalent of Friday Night Smackdown.

I was a greedy little kid as far as my monsters were concerned. The local Saturday night horror show, Gravesend Manor, introduced me to the Universal monsters (and appropriately enough, it featured not one horror host, but a whole cast of macabre zanies). Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Mummy were revelations to the 10-year-old me. But my little heart really got racing when I realized that there were films out there featuring not one, but two or even more of the beloved classic monsters.

Watching the monster combos on TV -- Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein -- inspired me to round up neighborhood friends and put on short plays in the garage featuring my favorite fiends. By the time I was in high school, I’d seen each monster rally multiple times.

Of course, much has been written, especially in the snobbier critic and fan circles, of the exploitative cheapness of the rallies, especially in comparison to the Golden Age films of the 20s and ‘30s that started everything. (I think we forget that the original classics were considered cheap and exploitative when they first debuted.) They aren’t great movies, but they are a lot of fun when you’re in that “more is more” frame of mind.

Let's be honest, Bela Lugosi as the monster in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) is anything but frightening. So much footage of Lugosi ended up on the cutting room floor that the film is disjointed in places (all of the excised scenes were of Franken-Lugosi speaking in his inimitable Hungarian accent, which had the production execs nearly “convulsed with laughter” when they ran the dailies.) [ Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas, Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946, Second Edition, McFarland, 2007, p. 327]

But Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) has never been more angsty, and the old gypsy woman (Maria Ouspenskaya) from the original Wolf Man is there to provide gravitas. And you just know that Larry’s doctor, mild-mannered Dr. Mannering (Patric Knowles) -- full of good intentions at the beginning -- is going to be seduced into dabbling with things better left alone, like revving up Frankenstein’s monster and seeing what he can do.

Next, the monsters went house hunting. House of Frankenstein (1944) is also disjointed, playing much like a series of vignettes organized by the wraparound story of mad Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) and his loyal hunchback assistant Daniel (J. Carrol Naish). And John Carradine’s suave Dracula is ridiculously easy to defeat, hardly sticking around long enough to make an impression.

But Daniel’s unrequited love for the gypsy girl Ilanka (Elena Verdugo), and Ilanka’s dangerous love for Larry Talbot, is truly heart-rending. Plus, there’s something satisfying about Boris Karloff coming round full circle to play the umpteenth doctor to revive the monster that he immortalized.

Did you know? The success of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man got Universal execs thinking that if two monsters in a film was good for the box office, three (or even more) would be that much better: “On June 7, 1943, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Universal was developing a new shocker entitled Chamber of Horrors with an all-star cast of goons including the Invisible Man, the Mad Ghoul, the Mummy and ‘other assorted monsters.’ George Waggner was named as the ringleader of this three-ring circus of horrors. The cast read like a Who’s Who of cinemacabre: Karloff, Chaney Jr., Lugosi, Lorre, Rains, Zucco, Hull and … James Barton (!).” [Weaver, Brunas & Brunas, p. 448]

Chamber of Horrors never saw the light of day (or the full moon for that matter), but the monster rally concept was soon realized by House of Frankenstein. See my post, “What Might Have Been: The Universal Monster Rally You Never Saw,” which lays out an imaginary Chamber of Horrors film with the original slate of monsters.

And then there’s House of Dracula (1945). Universal was in no mood to mess with a winning formula, so the unholy trinity of Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster are back (I guess including the Mummy would have been too much of a good thing). To complete the deja vu feeling, there’s a reprise of the kindly, serious doctor who turns mad midway through (Onslow Stevens as Dr. Edelmann), and yes, there’s another hunchback, this time in the form of a female nurse/assistant (Jane Adams as Nina).

When I first saw House of Dracula, I was turned off by Edelmann’s prosaic, scientific explanations of the “curses” inflicted upon the Count and the Wolf Man: the former supposedly suffering from a parasite in his blood, the latter from pressure on the brain (!?). Supernatural monsters should be just that -- super - natural, beyond conventional scientific reasoning. When you explain away the mystery, it just becomes a sort of dull, pedantic science fiction.

So House of Dracula became my least favorite monster rally. But subsequent viewings have given me a new appreciation of the film. John Carradine’s Dracula is much more of a malignant presence in this one.

In a great, understated scene, the Count seduces Edelmann’s beautiful assistant Milizia (Martha O’Driscoll), who is playing a haunting, elegiac piece on the piano:

Miliza: "You like it?"
Count Dracula: "It breathes the spirit of the night. They played it the evening we met at the concert."
Miliza: "I'd forgotten... until I saw you again."
Count Dracula: "Perhaps I wanted you to remember."  [IMDb]

As an added bonus, Onslow Stevens gives it his all playing perhaps the maddest of all doctors in the Universal canon -- the result of an attempt to cure Dracula with a blood transfusion, but which instead infects Edelmann’s blood when the conniving Count reverses the transfusion machinery.

1948 saw the release of the greatest monster rally of them all, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I know a lot of people don’t appreciate mixing comedy with horror, but I find that A&CMF threads the needle masterfully, not overdoing the duo’s routines that in other movies overstayed their welcome, while juxtaposing clever sight gags with effective chills.

If memory serves, I first saw A&CMF sometime after the original Draculas, Frankensteins and Wolf Man, but somehow, the 1948 film seemed entirely fresh, even though it repeated the monster combo from the two "House of" films. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Bela Lugosi was there, resplendent in cape and formal wear, reprising his signature role.

I remember being just as creeped out by Larry Talbot’s transformation into the Wolf Man in this outing, and alternately bemused and on the edge of the couch as Wilbur (Lou Costello) blundered his way around the screen, narrowly missing falling into the clutches of the various monsters.

One of the great laugh out loud moments is when Wilbur, exploring the dark dungeons underneath the castle, stops to rest for a moment in a large chair and ends up in the Frankenstein monster's lap -- only realizing his situation when he looks down at his own hand and sees two there.

The addition of Vincent Price’s voice as the Invisible Man at the very end of the movie was an inspired comic version of a “shock” ending.

Did you know? “The original working title of the film was The Brain of Frankenstein. Aside from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man, the Mummy was also to be worked into the script, but was eventually eliminated. [Editor’s note: the Mummy could not catch a break!] The script evolved into the Wolf Man (in his sane moments) trying to prevent Dracula’s attempt to transfer Costello’s brain into the Frankenstein creation. … To keep the actors happy, the studio hired comic Bobby Barber (who also played a role in the film) to act as court jester, thus speeding up the shooting schedule. Practical jokes occurred all the time, including the comedians throwing pies at each other during dull stretches between scenes.” [Richard Bojarski, The Complete Films of Bela Lugosi, Citadel, 1980, p. 223]

In Part Two, the classic monsters go up against masked Mexican wrestlers, and meet a guy by the name of Waldemar Daninsky. Don't miss it!

Shockcessories: Motivational Posters for Classic Monsters

It’s not easy being a Universal monster. Some of them have been performing for over 90 years. First there were theater revivals, and then the Shock Theater TV package made them stars of the small screen. Since then, they’ve shown up in every form of media imaginable, been transferred onto innumerable VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-ray discs, stand ready to perform on demand for streaming services across the globe, and even today are booked for special event theater screenings. These loyal employees of Universal Studios have worked very hard for many decades.

Back in December of 2020, in an alternate universe where monsters rule, Films From Beyond introduced the inaugural Shocking Image Holiday Gift catalog for the mad scientist who has everything. This year, FFB and The Shocking Image is launching Shockcessories, a line of posters designed to celebrate the contributions of the classic monsters to our collective nightmares and to motivate them to work even harder in the 21st century. Even monsters need a little inspiration now and then. (Click on a poster to see the larger version.)

I Can’t Believe My Parents Let Me Watch That, Part Two

Way back in February 2020, I wrote about how grateful I was that my parents looked the other way when, as a pre-teen, I stayed up on Friday and Saturday nights to watch my beloved sci-fi flicks and Universal horrors.

I’m sure they had some mild reservations about my viewing choices, and they weren’t above occasionally using TV privileges as a disciplinary tool, but at the same time, the attitude clearly was “so he’s watching old reruns of Dracula and Frankenstein-- how harmful can that be?”

And most of the time, they were right. By the time I started collecting copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, paging through the dogeared issues while eagerly awaiting the next installment of the local creature feature, I was too old to be frightened by the classic monsters. It was a lot of fun watching them chase their victims around creepy cobwebbed castles and retro laboratories, but really scary they were not.

The Jasons, Freddies, and Michael Myers had quite a few more years to wait before a more relaxed, “oh, whatever” society allowed them to slice and dice their way across movie and TV screens.

When I was a kid, I was allowed to watch my late night monster
movies on one condition: I had to watch them in the basement.

By contrast, the classic monsters were born in an age of moral panic. In the 1920s, when Lon Chaney was thrilling audiences with his portrayals of The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Universal’s first horror cycle, studio moguls were worried that too many thrills -- especially in the form of Hollywood sex and murder scandals, played against a backdrop of scantily clad flappers -- were turning uptight mainstream America off of their products.

Even as Universal was gearing up for its second horror wave featuring Frankenstein and Dracula, Hollywood was attending to its image problem by developing the Motion Picture Production Code to stake out what was permissible and what was not for U.S. audiences. (The code was popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.)

By the time the Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Daughter were done strutting their stuff, the Code was in full effect, and Universal took a few years off from monster-making before the lure of profits brought the monsters back in the form of Son of Frankenstein in 1939. The Code’s finger-wagging lasted until 1968, when it was replaced by the Motion Picture Association ratings system, which is still in force.

It’s testimony to the genius of the folks at Universal that they were able to navigate the moral panics and the Code to produce a series of horror films that were long on atmosphere but hardly contained a drop of blood, mostly suggesting violence rather than splashing it on the screen. Even in today’s over-the-top entertainment landscape, the relatively understated Universal monsters are still revered by some and recognizable to almost everyone.

I was barely a teenager when the MPAA ratings were introduced in 1968. Along with a cartoon, theatergoers at the time were treated to a short introduction to the new system, which replaced the Code’s pre-censorship of content with a scheme that theoretically prevented children from being exposed to rough content that was increasingly becoming the norm. The very first letter ratings were:

• Rated G: Suggested for general audiences.
• Rated M: Suggested for mature audiences - Parental discretion advised.
• Rated R: Restricted – persons under 16 not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian.
• Rated X: Persons under 16 not admitted. [Wikipedia]

By 1968, there was plenty of rough content to be protected from. It was the beginning of the of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll era, with a good amount of blood mixed in. Independent filmmakers were finding that almost any kind of transgressive, youth-oriented subject matter translated into box office gold, so theater and drive-in screens started filling up with hot stewardesses and nurses, drug-crazed motorcycle gangs and LSD trips.

On the horror front, Hammer Films had spent the past decade spicing up the classic monsters with heaving bosoms and technicolor blood. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead upped the ante even further, introducing mainstream audiences to zombies munching on human body parts, forever changing what was acceptable to show in your neighborhood theater.

As with most revolutions, it only seemed like propriety and the conservative status quo had been toppled overnight. In reality, there were all kinds of rough and shocking scenes in movies leading up to the late ‘60s that made their way past censors, decency leagues and concerned parents, and eventually wound up on my cherished creature features.

The following are a few more examples of shocking scenes that I watched late at night, and paid for with fitful sleep and a few nightmares. They may not seem much by today’s horror standards, but each was a sort of building block leading to today’s “freedom” of expression. I survived them, and I’m better for it (I think).

Cosmic Monsters (aka The Strange World of Planet X; 1958)

At the time, Cosmic Monsters seemed like a perfectly innocuous big bug sci-fi movie, produced by the Brits on a nothing budget, and starring American C-list actor Forrest Tucker (who around the same time starred in such UK productions as The Abominable Snowman and The Crawling Eye).

The highlight of Cosmic Monsters features scenes of soldiers shooting at supposed giant insects, which consisted of insert shots of actual insects doing insecty sorts of things. However, two scenes grabbed my attention. In the first, protagonist Michele Dupont (Gaby André) gets tangled up in a giant spider’s web -- which of course had been done before, but in this version, the filmmakers cleverly integrated shots of Gaby with an actual spider jerking its legs around in real spider-time (not a lame-looking, slow-moving puppet), making for a more shuddery effect.

In the second, a large centipede-looking thing attacks a soldier and chews half of his face off -- needless to say, that got my attention. The only copies of the movie I’ve been able to find show only the aftermath of the giant bug attack, but my memory might not be so shaky after all. According to the movie’s IMDb page:

"The film was originally released in the UK in 1958 with an uncut 'X' certificate as 'The Strange World of Planet X (1958)'. It was then cut down to an 'A' certificate in 1960 and released as "The Strange World", and was missing some shots of Michelle trapped in a giant web and a dead man's face being eaten by an insect."

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

Speaking of getting caught up in a web of sci-fi intrigue, 20 years before Alien, Beast from Haunted Cave captured hapless humans and spun them up tight in huge webs in order to drain their lifeblood a little at a time.

The first time I saw the scene below, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end (see my full review of Beast here). Beast from Haunted Cave was shot quick and cheap, but also delivered the stuff of real nightmares.

The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

While The Monster of Piedras Blancas is a poor man’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, it is far from the worst Creature imitator. In spite of the low budget, the producers managed to get Jack Kevan, who had worked on the original Creature suit, to cobble together the Piedras Blancas monster from parts scavenged from other productions (see more about how the suit was created here). The end result is pretty effective.

Nevertheless, the filmmakers decided that they needed something more than a cool suit to lure jaded teenagers to the drive-in, so they gave their creature a predilection for **GULP** decapitating its victims before feasting on them.

The Hypnotic Eye (1960)

This one is really rough, and in retrospect, it’s amazing that by the time I turned 13, I had seen Hypnotic Eye at least twice. The disturbing plot revolves around women in deep trances mutilating themselves with common household appliances and chemicals. Investigators find a common thread: they all had attended a stage hypnotist show and were volunteer subjects.

The film immediately gets down to business with one such incident. It’s perhaps all the more disturbing that, despite the low budget, the movie is well made, with more than a few stylishly suspenseful moments.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

In addition to adding copious amounts of blood and boobs to cinematic vampire lore, Hammer Studios transformed Dracula from a smooth, refined nobleman who patiently lured his victims into his trap like a human spider, to a frenetic, bloody-eyed monster who could scarcely wait to put the bite on his prey.

The culmination of Hammer’s feral Dracula was Prince of Darkness, in which Christopher Lee plays the part with silent ferocity, stalking his unwary guests more like a wolf than a spider. The way in which the Count is resurrected was a big eye-opener for me, the first time I had seen a human being trussed up like a side of beef and sacrificed in such a horrific way.

Happy Halloween 2020!

 

It's nice to celebrate with old friends...

Sideshow Collectibles figures representing all of Universal's Frankenstein monsters (portrayed by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., & Glenn Strange), plus the Bride (Elsa Lanchester) and Ygor (Lugosi).

Sideshow figures of Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera and Lugosi's Dracula, plus a Phantom retro model kit and Mr. Hyde from Abbott and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Battery-powered Frankenstein monster and Dracula, with Sideshow's Little Big Head Universal Monsters, Silver Screen Edition.