Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Director: Jack Arnold

Cast: Richard Carlso, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno

Have I Seen It Before: Yes… I absolutely had to, having marched through all the discs on my Universal Monsters box set. But I will admit I have stronger memories of Revenge of the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1955), owing to its frequent runs on TV, up to and including it being featured in the first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 I ever watched…

That doesn’t even cover the Clint of it all.

Did I Like It: There’s a part of me that wants to be a little bit down on the film. This is so far removed from the submlime, high era of Universal Monster pictures, and even seems removed from the occasionally schlocky monster mashups* of the late 1940s. There’s a certain degree of retrograde Spielbergian restraint—waiting until the last possible moment to show as the Gill-man in all of his splendor**—on display here working in its favor, but after everything is said and done, this isn’t all that much more than a typical monster movie…

But then I remember that it is the progenitor of what some (me, just now) might call typical monster movies. I can’t fully deny the charms of a film which is disinterested in imitating other films, and proceeds to be imitated by other films.

*I’m excluding you from that blanket statement, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). You’re perfect, you’re better than we deserve, and I love you.

**What I am enjoying this week, as this is a Beyond the Cabin in the Woods episode, is reading Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady From the Black Lagoon about the long-erased credit for Milicent Patrick in designing the Creature. In all honesty, the Gill-man in this film looks fine when he is within the water, but strains belief a bit whenever he elects to emerge and embrace his rubbery reality. Perhaps if she had been given her due, and even the ability to continue working, he may have improved.

Frankenstein (1931)

Director: James Whale

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye

Have I seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, I’m more mystified that it has taken me this long in the course of these reviews and not managed to re-watch this one yet. What have I been doing this whole time?

Did I Like It: I mean, I think I get why. I’ve always had a certain partiality to Bride of Frankenstein (1935), so it usually gets my attention when I’m in the mood for anything Whale. The relationship between this film and its sequel is not unlike that of Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). One is a perfectly fine horror movie that captured the imagination of people with its iconography and pathos, while the sequel is an exercise in blissful artistic anarchy.

This is not to take away from the original, though. Here, Whale manages to still tap into his better instincts more often than not with a perfect exercise in tone, supported by perfect (and yes, sometimes perfectly campy) performances, right from the little fellow (Van Sloan, who is unrecognizable from his later role as Dr. Waldman or even his Van Hellsing in Dracula (1931)) who comes out from behind the curtain before the film to warn us about what we are about to experience* to the blustery Baron Frankenstein (Frederick Kerr).

I would put it at the very top of the early Universal horror films, just a hair below its transcendent sequel, but certainly ahead of Dracula, which may yet qualify as a sedative.

* I don’t know why more movies didn’t do this back then or even now, as it is legitimately charming and even here manages to be a little unnerving, promising horrors that might have diminished in the last 90 years. I mean, I do get it. The preamble was added by a studio afraid that the God-fearing in the movie houses would riot if they saw a man try to give life on a corpse. Once they only mildly objected, future horror films could get away with just letting reel one being without additional comment.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Director: James Whale

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lancaster

Have I Seen it Before: Many, many times. My earliest memory of the film ties directly to a Universal Monsters coloring book released in the 1990s. At this point, I just need to find another copy of that thing, right? Beyond that, I plum wore out a VHS recording from Turner Classic Movies. One of the more purely delightful moviegoing experiences in my life was going to a library-hosted* screening of the film in the early 00s**. When I first joined Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, this was my first choice for a movie for the polterguides to watch. The idea that it has taken this long to re-watch the film since starting these reviews in 2018 is kind of flabbergasting, but after watching <Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)> for my guest spot on Horror Hangover, I just couldn’t help myself.

Yes. Yes, I have seen Bride of Frankenstein before.

Did I Like It: There’s isn’t much more I can do to tip my hand after that previous section and its myriad footnotes. Bride is the greatest of the Universal Monster movies, is in my top 10 films of all time, and may just edge out Halloween (1978) as my favorite horror movie of all time***.

It is weird. It is funny far more often than it has any right to be. Every character, from Mary Shelley (Lancaster) in he film’s prologue, all the way to the Bride’s (Lancaster, again) arrival in the finale—is more interesting and vibrant than the one who appeared just before. The film is heartbreaking and often filled with a perfectly packaged, unrelenting sense of dread.

And it accomplishes all of this in the span of 75 minutes. If a measure of cinematic efficiency—with pleasures-over-runtime being the metric—is at all a fair judge of film, then this is the single most efficient feature film ever made.

If you haven’t seen this movie before, you must stop everything you are doing and watch it now. If it’s been a while, you need to drop everything and be reminded how truly good it is. If you’ve watched it recently, there is no harm in giving it another go, just as a treat.

*It’s honestly at the core of a lot of the work I’m trying to do at the moment, now that I’m thinking about it.

**It had been a date, no less. Needless to say, things didn’t work out. The films of James Whale may not be the opening romantic salvo that I always thought they should be, but I’m blessed to have ended up with someone who at least tolerates the Universal Monsters.

***Such rankings are arbitrary. At any given moment, this movie or Halloween is superior. They both rank, and very likely may be equal in their superlative quality.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Director: Charles Barton

Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. Delighted to finally have an excuse to screen it again.

Did I Like It: I may have tipped my hand with the answer to the previous question.

This film is strange. On paper, there is literally no reason why it should work. The Universal Monsters had already run their course, going through the basest, pulpy motions of endless monster mashups. Abbott and Costello were at the beginning of the unravelling of their partnership. It could have been an absolute disaster. 

And yet, it’s one of, if not the best of both the Universal Monster* and Abbott and Costello movies**. For one thing, it works as both a horror movie and comedy of the period. But far more importantly, is that for one final hurrah, it feels like Universal finally started caring about its stable of monsters again. Previously, the films had descended into increasingly lazy monster rallies, but here, even though it reaches the heights of ridiculousness, it’s actually a halfway decent finale for the characters. The Wolf Man (Chaney), the Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange, the record holder for the role) and Dracula (Lugosi) meet a final enough end for which none of the other films in the series could reach.

The only way the film could have been any better was if Karloff had played the Monster, but that was probably too much to hope far. That we got Lugosi back in the role that made him immortal is more than enough to recommend it. Now that I think about it, there really isn’t anything to not recommend the film. If the slightly stupid title puts you off, please, do get over yourself.

*I’m never going to not vote for Bride of Frankenstein (1935) on that front, but the argument could certainly be made. This film is unassailably in the top five.

**Can you really discount The Naughty Nineties (1945), as it contains the archival (for lack of a better term) version of their performance of “Who’s on first?” 

The Wolf Man (1941)

Director: George Waggner

Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, Warren William

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Although my strongest memories of the film probably come from a Universal Monsters coloring book I got in the early 90s. I had some really great times with that coloring book. Now I wish I had just gone over it in grey and black and hadn’t used any of the other colors…

Did I Like It: Interesting that Chaney is perhaps the saddest-sack movie star who ever lived (imagine if he had ever played Willy Loman), and somehow Forrest Gump-ed his way into being the Nick Fury of the Universal Monsters, that first shared cinematic universe. 

He’s certainly affecting in that capacity, and managed to do so over the course of five films in the roll, the longest sustained run in the Universal canon, and it still feels like the horror series is a something of a priority for the studio, even if James Whale has since retired from the motion pictures and the peak of the series is now firmly in the past. Yes, the entire affair has a bit of a feel of a TV special (see the opening titles), but the photography is interesting, and the ending where Sir John (Rains) unknowingly killed his son is deeply and tragic, and the film certainly reaches for a “less is more” aesthetic with its werewolf transformation.

And yet, by about minute 56 in the film, I’m bored. That’s not a great sign, considering that the film will be over in just over 10 more minutes. Chaney’s pathos cannot hope to hold up in comparison to that of Karloff, and the atmosphere is largely perfunctory, which leave it in the shadow of even Dracula (1931), which is saying quite a bit.