Article
Universal Horror
- Posted by
- a.k.a. Vincent
- Article date
- Wednesday, January 10, 2001
Universal had always been one of the smaller studios. Founded in 1912 the studio specialized in westerns, and cheap ones at that. Things changed somewhat when the legendary Irving Thalberg became head of production in the early twenties. He was able to give the studio some stature and the films some class, but sadly for Universal he left for MGM after only a couple of years. Universal would remain a minor studio until they hit it big in the early thirties. The reason they hit it big was the success of their horror movies, which they would continue to produce for the better part of two decades.
Most people think that the Universal Horror began in the early 1930’s with the productions of Dracula and Frankenstein, but the studio produced some excellent horror films in the twenties. Most famous are the ones that starred Lon Chaney, productions like Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. These films are well known, based on popular material and still very watchable today, mainly for the great performances of the star. But the two most interesting films of that period are now all but forgotten. They were directed by a gifted man who came from Germany by personal invitation of studio owner Carl Laemmle. His name was Paul Leni.
He was to have a very short career in Hollywood because of an illness that cost him his life after only two years there. In the space of that time he made four films, the most important of which were The Cat and the Canary in 1927 and The Man Who Laughs in 1928. The latter in particular being a powerful film worthy of rediscovery. It deals with a man (Conrad Veidt) who as a child was tortured causing his mouth to be badly damaged. The only way to save it was through surgery, but this had a painful effect namely that his mouth is now always showing a broad smile. He now has no choice but to become a clown and finds this very hard especially when he falls in love with a blind girl. The picture has some similarities with Hunchback (they both are based on works by Victor Hugo), but The Man Who Laughs, in my opinion, works better and it is a shame that it is very difficult to get to see the film.
1931 would prove to be an important year for the Universal Horror. This was the year in which the two most famous studio monsters, Dracula and the monster of Frankenstein would first see the light of day. Both would be played by gentlemen who one would not normally associate with Hollywood, one a strange immigrant from Hungary and the other a very classy Englishman. Even though both stories had been told on the screen many times before in different forms (there was a version of Frankenstein as early as 1910) these versions would create the standard images for the monsters and would make stars out of the men who played them.
Universal had acquired the rights for a theater version of Dracula that had been very successful in the late twenties. In the title role it starred a man named Bela Lugosi, he was an actor with some character roles in film and theater to his credit but was still pretty much unknown. He therefore was not even considered to take the lead in the film version, which was to be directed by Tod Browning. The studio wanted to play it safe and cast one of the most popular actors around, Lon Chaney in the role. Chaney formed a successful team with Browning at MGM now where they mostly did horror pictures and both would be loaned by Universal. Sadly Chaney died before the production got underway and the role would have to be recast. Various names were considered, most notably Conrad Veidt, but in a pretty risky move the studio changed its mind at gave the role to Lugosi who was desperate for it and didn't let them down.
Looking at Dracula today is not as entertaining or scary as it must have been some seventy years ago. It looks pretty creaky at times, there is little music (though recently Philip Glass wrote a score for the film which works well) and Browning didn't add much visual flair to Bram Stoker’s most famous story, which isn't followed that closely. It begins well enough with Jonathan Harker (David Manners) visiting the count in Transylvania. These scenes still possess some eeriness but sadly they last very short and before you know it the Count is in London where he hopes to find the re-incarnation of his long lost love. It is in the London sequence in particular that the movie disappoints. These scenes seem to be merely a photographed version of the play and are in no way scary. The acting from the cast, excluding Lugosi, varies from wooden to way over the top. If Lugosi hadn’t given such a great performance as Dracula I don't think the film would have been remembered after all these years. Some cast members would later say that they didn't think much of the film when they were making it and that shows. It certainly doesn't hold up to the silent version made in Germany by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu.
Still at the time the film was very successful and made Lugosi a star. And thus when Universal made plans to film another horror story, this time Mary Shelley’s classic tale Frankenstein, he was naturally the first choice to play the monster. However he turned it down for the excellent reason that it is not a part befitting his new star-status. The role indeed calls for no dialogue, just some grunting and some jerky movements. He did film some tests that were directed by Robert Florey but these merely confirmed his doubts and both he and Florey were excused from the production. The studio approached contract director James Whale to take over the project. Whale, a W.W.I veteran, had enjoyed huge success in London's West End with a stage production of R.C. Sheriff's, Journey's End. He was asked the direct the play on Broadway and eventually to direct the film version for Universal in 1930.
The hiring of Whale was an excellent move. Not only was he a more capable director but also it was he who would come up with most of the look for the monster. He gave his instructions to make-up artist Jack Pierce who would later claim most of the credit. Also Whale suggested the casting of fellow countryman Boris Karloff. Karloff, real name William Henry Pratt, was a character actor if ever there was one. He had made some 80 films up to that point and in 1931 would appear in 12 alone. Whale of course was most impressed with Karloff’s physical presence but he must also have seen a good actor in him because though the monster is not a glamorous part it still remained a difficult role to play. For the central role of Henry Frankenstein, Whale suggested the actor who played in all of his Journey’s End productions, Colin Clive.
The movie holds up a lot better than the version of Dracula made that same year. Again it doesn't stick too close to the source material but there are many qualities here. The art decoration is first rate, and some scenes still have significant power, such as the creation scene, which is somewhat influenced by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the monster's encounter with a little girl and the finale in the burning mill. Also it would create the definitive look for the monster with the flat head and the bolts in the neck. The success of this film would prompt two direct sequels and a long string of horror movies produced by the studio.
Though it would seem logical to make the most out of the success by making sequels to Dracula and Frankenstein they wouldn't appear before five and four years respectively. Instead the studio created some new monsters, and searched for new material, though of course the two new stars would be in most of them. In 1932 there would be some interesting films which would have nothing to do with the earlier successes such as The Old Dark House, Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mummy.
The Old Dark House re-teamed director Whale with Karloff. Five travelers seek shelter from a storm in Wales one night and they wind up in a house inhabited by various creepy and eccentric people. The film mixes chills with laughs in a very accomplished manner, helped by a quite formidable cast which besides Karloff (as a mute butler) includes Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, Melvyn Douglas and Ernest Thesiger, who would feature prominently in the first sequel to Frankenstein in 1935. Whale was able to pay tribute here to German director Paul Leni whom he admired very much. Some scenes are clearly inspired by Leni’s The Cat and the Canary and there are some similarities in the story as well.
In The Old Dark House Karloff still had a supporting role, but he was given his first starring role a few months later in a film called The Mummy. The great German cameraman Karl Freund, who had a lot of experience in the UFA-studios in Berlin and was brought to America by Universal, directed it. He did the camerawork for the Lugosi version of Dracula and the studio offered him a chance as a director on the new Karloff project. The film is basically a retelling of the Dracula story, only this time it is an ancient mummy who comes back to life after 3000 years to look for the re-incarnation of a lost love. The studio probably got more than they bargained for because the film is a lot more artistic than Dracula and it relies more on atmosphere than on thrills. The lighting is quite superb and Karloff again gives a great performance. He was once more handicapped by a great deal of make-up (by Jack Pierce) but he was able to show a lot of emotion. The problem was that the film was totally un-commercial. It is a great achievement artistically and hauntingly beautiful but people were not standing in line to see craftsmanship, they wanted scares and The Mummy didn't have enough of them. It cut short a promising directing career for Freund who would be back behind the camera soon to shoot Lugosi’s first starring role in Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Based on the Edgar Allan Poe story, Murders in the Rue Morgue was a quite controversial undertaking. It deals with a mad scientist who has to find a bride for his pet ape, that alone would be enough to raise a few outcries. But the most fury came over a scene in which the girl is being tortured by Lugosi while hanging on a cross with very little clothing. Despite these intriguing facts the film is an enormous disappointment. Both Lugosi and the film's director, Robert Florey, were demoted from Frankenstein the previous year and both don't seem happy with the film they got instead. The budget is obviously limited and the screenplay has virtually none of the elements that were in the original story (something of a Hollywood tradition when it films one of Poe’s works). The look of the film is still somewhat impressive, thanks to cameraman Freund, but the acting is weak. Also the ape is so clearly a man in a suit that it ruins any tension that the film might have achieved. Financially the film faired quite well, thanks to the controversy no doubt, so Universal believed that there still was a lot of money to be made with horror films so they continued making them and in 1933 they produced the best one so far.
James Whale was again at the helm for an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ story The Invisible Man. A scientist invents a formula that makes him invisible but it causes him to go insane at the same time. After an attempt to reverse the effect fails he has to hide in the English countryside but every minute he becomes more dangerous to himself and the people around him. The only hope for him lies in his girlfriend and her scientist father, who can cure him.
The film is more science fiction than horror but I include it anyway because it was certainly the best of the bunch up to that time. There is plenty of room for comedy and the special effects by John P. Fulton now inevitably look a little dated but back then they must have seemed spectacular. In the title role Claude Rains makes probably the strangest debut in American film. He can only be seen for about a second in the last scene but he does a great job with only his voice.
The teaming of Lugosi and Karloff was inevitable and it would take place in the movie The Black Cat. Both actors were somewhat disappointed by the roles offered by Universal after their initial successes and they spent a couple a years working at other studios. But they returned in 1934 to make a bizarre film with an even more bizarre look. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, The Black Cat is not what one would expect. It allegedly is based on another of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories but as usual little of the original made it into the movie. The plot deals with a revengeful doctor (Lugosi) who wants to make an Austrian Architect (Karloff) pay for betraying his country during World War I. Things are made more interesting by the fact that Karloff is also a devil worshipper, Lugosi’s somewhat sadistic torturing techniques and the inclusion of something that can only be described as necrophilia. This all makes it sound like a most intriguing movie but just like with Murders in the Rue Morgue it is mostly rather dull, though it looks pretty good and Lugosi in particular is in fine form. It wouldn't be the last time that Lugosi and Karloff were paired together in a Universal movie but as exciting as the combination may have seemed it never resulted in a memorable movie. The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936) and Son of Frankenstein (1939) are hardly classics so perhaps The Black Cat is the best of the gruesome twosome's films together and therefore worth a look.
The studio had always wanted James Whale to make a sequel to Frankenstein but he had always resisted it. After four years he finally gave in but only after he had a good enough idea to make the sequel more interesting than the original. Released in 1935 Bride of Frankenstein would indeed be better than the original, but it would also be better than any other horror movie that Universal put out. Bride has a more sophisticated look and screenplay, some great moments of comedy and a couple of excellent supporting roles. Karloff was once again the monster and Colin Clive revived his role as Henry Frankenstein.
The story goes as follows: after barely surviving the confrontation with his own creation, Henry Frankenstein is visited by an old teacher of his, Dr. Pretorious (Ernest Thesiger) who has heard of his experiments and wants him to go further. He suggests creating a bride for the monster so they could have children. Henry objects to this of course but Pretorious has some convincing blackmailing tricks up his sleeve, namely the kidnapping of his fiancée, so in the end he cooperates. It hardly works out well because the bride (Elsa Lanchester) rejects the monster who then decides to destroy everybody.
I have described only the essential story above but the movies possesses some great sub-plots, such as some of Pretorious’ previous experiments and the monster's encounter with a blind hermit. It would also be the first in the line of horror movies that would look something like an A picture. It was the first one to have its own score (a great one by Franz Waxman), some dazzling sets and pretty damn good cinematography by John Mescall. Some care was given to the set-up of the story by adding an amusing prologue which features Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester again), her husband Percy and Gordon Byron. They sit around and give you the necessary information from the first movie, just in case you would have missed it, and explain that there was more to the story than was seen. This would be the high point in Universal horror and that of everyone involved with the movie. Some people say it was mistake to give the monster more human characteristics, like emotion and the ability to talk, but that is only a minor objection in a movie that is otherwise faultless. I only hope that the 15 minutes that were cut after the film's premiere still exist and will be restored some day.
After Bride of Frankenstein there was really only one way the Universal horror series could go; down, and it did just that, but probably faster than anyone could have expected. The following year would see only one interesting vehicle, Dracula’s Daughter, and the failure of that one would pretty much stop the production of horror movies for three years. Dracula’s Daughter was the sequel to the Lugosi movie, only he wouldn't play in it. The story instead deals with the Count's daughter, who decides to follow the trail of her illustrious father to England.
Though as I said the film was a failure it actually to my mind is a notch better than its predecessor. Gloria Holden in the title role is effective, but there is a great performance by Otto Kruger. The movie has more plot and turns into something of a detective story with a good deal of suspense. The direction by Lambert Hillyer, a complete unknown to me, is very accomplished. It was quite a scandalous movie at the time because it is clear that the Count's daughter is some sort of a lesbian. She only takes female victims and when she does this she shows more lust than brutality. This was not lost on those party-poopers at the Production Code, who ordered heavy cutting, but the movie you can see today is pretty much complete and well worth the effort.
It probably wasn't just the failure of Dracula’s Daughter which caused the temporary halt in horror movie production. Around this time the studio ownership changed hands from the senior Carl Leammle to his son, Carl Jr, who had his own ideas as to what course the studio should take. He believed in more family friendly material such as movies with Universal's answer to Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, and comedies with W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello. These weren't the successes that he hoped for and it was thus out of necessity that he returned to the formula that had proven successful earlier, namely scary movies. Though it would become clear during this period that the horror movie cycle was beginning to run out of steam it still introduced the last great monster to the audience and it would bring the last in the classic series of Frankenstein. But other than this it would only result in tired, formulaic movies, often with two or more of the classic monsters together, or paired with the “comedy” of Abbott and Costello.
James Whale had become outraged at Universal because of their interference in one of his most personal projects, The Road Back (1937) and he left the studio. So when the second sequel to Frankenstein was ready to shoot in 1939, Universal had to find a new director. They found him in Rowland V. Lee, probably because he had worked successfully with both Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in Tower of London that same year. The name of the film was Son of Frankenstein and Rathbone was the title character who wants to clear the family name by attempting the same experiment as his father but now trying to succeed where his father failed, namely in making the monster “good”. Needless to say this doesn't work out the way he had hoped.
Though not as good as Bride of Frankenstein, Son is not without its qualities. The sets are once again superb. It also features a good performance by Lugosi, who by now was reduced to supporting roles, as Ygor, who becomes the monsters only friend. Lionel Atwill is in the cast as well in the role of the police inspector with a past. The production has a classy look and feel to it, but it remains rather talky, though it is probably the main inspiration for Mel Brooks’ funny spoof Young Frankenstein (1974).
The Wolf Man (1941) would introduce to us the fourth and last of the Universal monsters. It starred Lon Chaney Jr., son of the great silent screen star. An impressive supporting cast was rounded up including Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi and Ralph Bellamy. The story told here was not new to Universal. The studio had produced a forgotten movie in 1935 called Werewolf of London which starred Henry Hull. The Wolf Man was to be a remake of that, just with some added star power. It concerns the story of an Englishman (Chaney) who returns home from the US only to be attacked by a werewolf (Lugosi), whom he kills but not after being bitten by the creature. He then comes to the realization that he is becoming a werewolf himself.
The film was a huge success and as a bonus to the studio created a new star to fill the boots of Karloff and Lugosi, who were about to leave the studio. Chaney would in the coming years appear as pretty much all of the Universal monsters. The Wolf Man would remain his best though. The film holds up pretty well today, and the make-up is impressive although it doesn't exactly make Chaney look like a wolf. The film introduced all the famous myths about werewolves to us, such as that when you are bitten you become one yourself, that they can only be killed by silver objects and that they come out at fool moon. The script by Curt Siodmak also features a piece of pop culture poetry, delivered by Maria Ouspenskaya:
Even a man who is pure of heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.
The Wolf Man probably marked the beginning of the end of the Universal Horror. Many more horror films starring the famous monsters would appear during the remainder of the 1940’s, but all of them are forgettable, with the possible exception of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and that is a comedy. I am not at all a fan of this duo but this film I find watchable. It features Dracula and the Wolf Man, both played by their most famous interpreters, Lugosi and Chaney, and the Frankenstein monster played this time by Glenn Strange. The screenplay is reasonably funny and the monsters play it straight, which is the right choice.
By the end of the forties it was clear even to the executives at Universal that the monster cycle had run more than a little out of steam. Titles like Ghost of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula, The Wolf Man Meets the Mummy were all as tired as their titles made them seem to be. What’s more, the youth of that age was beginning to get more excited about science fiction. So even the great Horror studio had to put its most famous stars, the monsters, to bed. They didn't die, after a while they just appeared at another studio. In the late fifties the British Hammer studio would breath new life into the creatures. They just shot them in color, which probably made them more acceptable to the new generation. The Hammer versions of Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy closely resembled to their predecessors from Universal, but it’s those old black and white versions which have proved to be the more popular.
Those glory days of Universal horror were probably the best days in the careers of everyone who was involved. Boris Karloff left the studio in 1940 but would spend the rest of his career, which was nearly 30 years, in B-movies. He would only become a star again after his death though at least he left the screen on somewhat of a high note in Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) in which he basically played himself.
The post-Universal days were even harder for Bela Lugosi. He left the studio at about the same time as Karloff and also had to appear in B or sometimes even C-movies, but it wasn't just his professional life that took a turn for the worst. Personally it would be even worse for him because of an addiction to drugs, which would make him virtually unemployable from the late forties on. He was taken from oblivion somewhat by legendary “filmmaker” Edward D. Wood, Jr. Lugosi would star in some of Wood’s most famous films like Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster. His last screen appearance Lugosi made in Wood's legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space, though his role is mostly played by a double because of his death during production. During his life Lugosi famously became somewhat obsessed with his most famous role (he even wanted to be buried in his Dracula cape). His demise is the most saddening of all the principles.
Director James Whale's life after Universal is pretty well told in the recent film Gods and Monsters (1998). After the row over The Road Back he went around working in Hollywood as a free agent but found little work (the best one is probably his version of The Man in the Iron Mask from 1939). He basically devoted the rest of his life, which would last until 1957, to painting. Some say the fact that he was a homosexual was the cause of his lack of work but I find this unlikely, after all George Cukor worked all his like in Hollywood, and it was well known that he preferred the company of men.
The people who made most of these movies were a colorful bunch, who on their own might never have made a name for themselves. But as a team they brought out something special in each other and produced cinema history.
Recent remakes of Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola and Frankenstein (1995) by Kenneth Branagh were more faithful to their source material but are unlikely to replace the old movies as the iconic images of their stories.
If you ask anybody in the world to draw you a picture of Frankenstein’s monster, nine times out of ten they will draw you the look of Karloff’s monster. Ask somebody to talk like Dracula and he'll talk with Lugosi’s accent. And everybody knows that you kill a werewolf with a silver bullet. All these facts are widely accepted even though you won't find them written in stone anywhere. It just shows us how big the influence is that the Universal horror movies had and still have. You might even conclude that their appeal is, dare I say it, universal.
*Selected Filmography:
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsely) - 1923
- The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian) - 1925
- The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni) - 1927
- The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni) - 1928
- Dracula (Tod Browning) - 1931
- Frankenstein (James Whale) - 1931
- The Old Dark House (James Whale) - 1932
- The Mummy (Karl Freund) - 1932
- Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey) - 1932
- The Invisible Man (James Whale) - 1933
- The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer) - 1934
- Werewolf of London (Stuart Walker) - 1935
- The Raven (Lew Landers) - 1935
- Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale) - 1935
- Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer) - 1936
- The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer) - 1936
- Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee) - 1939
- The Wolf Man (George Waggner) - 1941
- Ghost of Frankenstein (Erle C. Kenton) - 1942
- Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Roy William Neill) - 1943
- House of Frankenstein (Erle C. Kenton) - 1944
- House of Dracula (Erle C. Kenton) - 1945
- Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Charles Barton) – 1948
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