The Mummy from 1932 is a classic. A flawed classic for sure, but a classic nonetheless. There are parts of this film that are truly brilliant and there are parts that are…well…not. To be honest this is one film that I have had mixed feeling for. I want to love it. I do. But then
Frankenstein is one of the few classic monster movies that I did not see on a Saturday afternoon on a UHF channel. No, this film was played in prime time. It was a special movie-of-the-week. A re-showing of a classic film on “regular” TV. It was a big deal. I sat with my mother,
An invisible man must be one of the more bizarre choices for a monster. First of all it’s not really a monster, not in the classical sense anyway. He is, after all, just a man. A deranged man, sure, but just a man nonetheless. There is nothing supernatural about him, no unnatural resurrection or
Tod Browning’s 1931 adaptation of Dracula is the granddaddy of them all, the film the launched the Classic Monster films of Universal. The Universal cinematic universe if you will. I try not to judge these old films by modern standards or how a film has come to be perceived over the decades. I attempt,
By 1941 Universal had been making monster movies for over a decade. It had now become a well-oiled machine and while not quite formulaic just yet was well on its way to becoming so. The Wolf-Man still retains the moodiness and the harsh shadows emblematic of German Expressionism that characterizes the earlier films. But
Picture this: the year is 1984 and you are an impressionable youth watching an episode of Three’s Company or Little House on the Prairie when during a commercial break this comes on the TV: Obviously after this there was no going back. Your childhood was over, years of therapy ensued, and
As a kid I loved monsters. Not the ones that hid under the bed or lived in the closet obviously - those were terrifying and nightmare inducing if one actually managed to get to sleep - no, the ones I loved were the safe ones. Your Draculas and your Frankensteins* and your Wolf-Mans (Wolf-Men?),
In 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, the comic book industry was under scrutiny for being a corrupter of youth and an inciter of crime. And according to the book Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Werthram all of the issues of teenage delinquency could be traced back directly to the reading of comics. Senate
As a kid, I was a big fan of Godzilla movies. They were a mainstay on weekend afternoon television while I was growing up and they were always a treat. Sure, they were cheap, often silly, but there was an inherent charm to them. They were captivating and enjoyable in only a way a guy
Growing up my Saturday afternoons would be spent with creatures, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, murderers, and mad scientists. Beginning around one o'clock I would settle down in front of our 17" Sony Trinitron (complete with simulated wood grain plastic sides) with a soda (typically Frank's grape or ginger ale) and a bowl of buttered macaroni noodles
