Hello again! It’s been a couple of weeks, I know. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted by work and new fandoms and the like, but today I return to discuss our last official Year of Monsters movie: The Wolf Man. This is one of the few Universal films I’ve actually seen before, although not since high school. At the time, I’d found it very boring.
This time, well. Maybe a little bored? But also amused, surprisingly sad, and–in one noteworthy scene–downright incredulous.
Well, it’s our penultimate movie, folks, and the oldest Year of Monsters film selected. It also happens to be the first vampire movie ever made, not to mention a completely unauthorized retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that, due to a lawsuit, was nearly wiped out of existence. It’s hard to overstate the influence of Nosferatu; this movie is legend. It is quintessential horror film history.
So, I kinda wish I had more to say about it.
When I started compiling this list of classic monster movies and creature features, it only seemed right to throw at least one giant bug movie into the mix. (Please don’t comment just to tell me that arachnids aren’t bugs. I know. We all know.) Of course, many people consider Creature From the Black Lagoon to be the last great Universal monster movie, but come on, a story about a gigantic tarantula skittering around the desert, destroying everyone and everything in its path? I mean, how could we not watch that?
Have I mentioned that Mekaela and I both absolutely despise spiders?
Yup. Happy Birthday, Mekaela!
I should probably state upfront that I was kinda doomed to dislike this movie.
I tried to read The Phantom of the Opera in high school when the library finally got new books. I can’t say I gave it a particularly fair shake, just realized I was bored and didn’t really like anybody and quickly moved onto all the other new books. Much later, I tried out Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera, and boy, did I HATE it. It seemed to take forever, I despised basically every character that wasn’t Minnie Driver, and while I freely admit to not knowing much about music, some of the singing seemed, ah, not great? I’ve always felt like I should I see the musical in theater at some point to see if the sheer spectacle can pull me in, but even if that was a possibility at present, I’m reluctant to part ways with that much money over a story that, traditionally, has made me wanna stab people every time they open their mouths.
Alas, I must inform you that even in the silent version, I still hate all these motherfuckers.
Dracula is one of the rare Universal classics I’ve actually seen before; it was many years ago, though, and at the time, I found the film rather boring. Watching it again, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while the story is undeniably chaotic, I enjoyed Dracula quite a bit. There are multiple reasons for that, but the most strikingly obvious one is the fantastic score.
And if you’re thinking, Wait, I’ve seen that movie, and there IS no score . . . well, you’re right. Until the late 1990’s, at least.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Need a quick pandemic break? It’s time to return to our Year of Monsters! Today we’ll be following up Frankenstein with, appropriately enough, Bride of Frankenstein, and unlike its predecessor, I’d never seen this one before.
And while I don’t know exactly what I expected from this movie, holy shit, it wasn’t this.
Unlike the other Universal films we’ve discussed so far, I’ve actually seen Frankenstein before. Read it before, too, although I’ll admit it’s been years since I’ve done either. I’ll also admit that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a serious struggle for me to get through. Some of the prose is fascinating and beautifully written, like, there are sections of it that have stuck with me for years, and I’d actually be interested in seeing a more faithful adaptation, but boy. There’s a limit on how much I can deal with a dude moaning about how wretched and cursed and doomed he is, and Victor Frankenstein easily surpasses that limit in the first fifty pages.
But that’s not this story. James Whale’s Frankenstein is a wildly different affair, and while it certainly has its moments, I think I enjoyed it more the first time I watched it.
I’ve never considered myself a science person, partially because I have no natural aptitude for it, partially because the science you learn in high school isn’t the kind of shit that interests me. (Well, mostly. We did get to learn forensics my freshman year, and I do remember enjoying it, even if I couldn’t tell a single fucking fingerprint apart.) But I am a science-fiction person, one who’s generally drawn to pro-science stories. We’ve talked about a couple of these already during our Year of Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance, and It Came From Outer Space.
Alas, we’re now heading back to the 1930’s, where science is generally not our path to enlightenment but to our downfall and destruction. Science is the method we foolishly use to try and control what mankind was never meant to master. Clearly, this is a pretty familiar theme: if Frankenstein is about trying to master death, then Jurassic Park is about trying to control life, and Deep Blue Sea is about trying to defeat dementia. Or sharks. The point is, progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged.
Enter . . . The Invisible Man.
I adore The Mummy (1999). I adore The Mummy Returns. I do not adore The Mummy (2017) with Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella, but to be fair, I only watched about ten minutes of it. Maybe it gets better. (It doesn’t get better. We all know it.)
Now it’s time to see where all these movies began.
May I present The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff and Zita Johann.
Well, okay. Turns out, not every movie I picked was, strictly speaking, a “monster movie,” but to hell with it, right? There’s Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and, like, a black cat or two running around. Also, post-traumatic stress and revenge. Also, chess. Also, Satanism.
I mean, really. What more do you need, right?
My Geek Blasphemy 