What's Your Fav Universal Studio Classic horror flick?

No pun intended?

I also prefer the original Frankenstein mostly because I saw it first with my dad. I also like Dracula and The Invisible Man.

 

Yeah, those were all extremely well-lit films for the most part. There's a famous photograph of the outside of one of the Universal stages around 1940-1941, and some cinematographer had written, "when in doubt, shoot at F11." I always thought that was hilarious, and it kind of showed you how a lot of the lighting and exposure on those films was done by the seat of their pants. They were really artists, because they were never 100% sure of what was going to come out on film.

Those were the coolest of logos. As much as I think I know about special effects, I'm still not 100% sure how they did the "reflective ball" Universal studio logo! Wires? Motors? Black rods? Glass paintings? Opticals? Who knows? It still looks great, 70 years later.

 

Was it just one WW1 friend? I got the impression from the 'swimming pool party' scenes that Whale was in love with more than one young man; but maybe it was just artistic license to indicate the horrendous slaughter of a whole generation of youths in the war. Could be mis-remembering. And I guess the iconic image of the soldier impaled by barbed-wire in WW1 was more common and known by its contemporaries than we might realize ("The Pity Of War", Ferguson, Illustrations following p. 180). Takes nothing away from your points; just thought it was interesting.

 

I'm a little late with bringing this up, but the last time I watched Bride of Frankenstein it made me wonder why Ernest Thesiger didn't get nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Dr. Pretorious ? It's quite a performance. One minute he's foppish and funny like an eccentric uncle, one second later he's evil and frightening looking, spitting venom and someone not to be crossed.
He lived until 1961 and made 60 movies ( see selected filmography) but unless I'm forgetting something, I don't think I saw him in anything other than Bride of Frankenstein. Usually character actor types in his era appeared in plenty of movies I've seen. ( Looking at the list, I did see him in The Robe I guess, but I was a little kid and that was before I saw him in Bride of Frankenstein.)

The Real Thing at Last (1916)
Nelson (1918)
The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918)
A Little Bit of Fluff (1919)
The Bachelor's Club (1921)
The Adventures of Mr. Pickwick (1921)
Number 13 (1922)
Week-End Wives (1929)
The Vagabond Queen (1930)
The Old Dark House (1932)
The Only Girl (1933)
The Ghoul (1933)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Night of the Party (1935)
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)
The Ware Case (1938)
They Drive by Night (1938)
Lightning Conductor (1938)
My Learned Friend (1943)
The Lamp Still Burns (1943)
Henry V (1944)
Don't Take It to Heart (1944)
A Place of One's Own (1945)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Beware of Pity (1946)
Jassy (1947)
The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947)

The Winslow Boy (1948)
Brass Monkey (1948)
The Bad Lord Byron (1949)
Quartet (1949)
Last Holiday (1950)
Laughter in Paradise (1951)
The Man in the White Suit (1951)
Scrooge (1951) - Undertaker
The Magic Box (1951)
The Robe (1953)
Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953)
The Million Pound Note (1953)
Father Brown (1954)
Make Me an Offer (1954)
Quentin Durward (1955)
Value for Money (1955)
An Alligator Named Daisy (1955)
Who Done It? (1956)
Three Men in a Boat (1956)
Doctor at Large (1957)
The Truth About Women (1958)
The Horse's Mouth (1958)
The Battle of the Sexes (1959)
Sons and Lovers (1960)
Armchair Theatre; Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (TV, 1960)[4]
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
Invitation to Murder

 

James Whale's The Old Dark House is a must see. Very campy stuff with Thesiger, Karloff and Charles Laughton.

 

Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Phantom, The Creature, Invisible Man.

Bride of Frankenstein was always too flamboyant for my tastes.

 

I really like Old Dark House!

 

You have never seen "The Man in the White Suit"? You must correct that ASAP! Theisger's role is small and he looks 900 years old but it adds to this masterpiece.

 

Son of Frankenstein. May be Lugosi's beat screen character. Loved B Rathbone and L Atwill in this.

 

I agree with The Bride of Frankenstein. One of the all-time greats. I really liked those sets Universal put out ten or so years back with all of the films in each series. Unfortunately, it looks like we're only going to get the one Blu-ray set of the key films.

I'm also a big fan of Old Dark House. Still have the laserdisc and would love a Blu-ray upgrade.

 

Sometimes I wonder whether which is creepier, 'The Old Dark House', or 'the Cat And The Canary'. It may be apples and oranges, but I believe CATC is a Universal film as well.

 

All of them have a certain indescribable magic. Well..save for the assembly line 40's sequels which get increasingly tiresome when you do the yearly watch through.

Bride of Frankenstein is one of the great films, perfect in every way. I feel the same about Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man and the incredibly underrated Son of Frankenstein which single-handedly brought back the cycle in the 40's. (It should have been in the BD set, but always gets nixed in favor of the terrible 1943 Phantom.)

The Wolf Man is the one that never quite fully connects with me, Lon Chaney Jr. is outstanding in his signature role, but something about it just didn't resonate as fully as I wished it did. At times the story seems to be done a bit more strongly in the sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

The best lesser sequel is the unstoppably fun Mummy's Hand, which is like an adventure serial/Mummy film. All the others are near unwatchable and feature an increasingly silly timeline that goes into the 1980's if following the dialogue.

After the fun but repetitive Invisible Man Returns, the sequels get really bad. Ghost of Frankenstein is painful for me to get through, and then the House monster mashes are all over the place.

The Creature trilogy always felt more sci-fi, and I don't really count them with the others.

 

"I stole bodies -- they... said." Lugosi was great in that film as Ygor. (Don't ever call him Karloff's sidekick.)

I have a soft spot in my head for Ghost, only because it was the first horror movie I ever saw (when I was about 7 or 8). No question, it's a bad movie, and Glenn Strange was arguably the worst monster. But there are aspects I like, including gassing the monster at the end. The House movies are fun only because they're so out of control, particularly the whole plotline of Dr. Frankenstein saying he could "cure" Lawrence Talbot's little monthly problem. What, is he gene-splicing in 1942? So silly... but a lot of fun anyway.

I also laugh out loud at how much they recycled the dramatic music from all those Universal films. It's like they had only 60 minutes of tracks available and had to spread them out among 25 or 30 different movies!

 

I remember having to special-order this (VHS) from Blockbuster, for purchase. Still have it too.

 

Has there been a decent transfer yet of The Cat and the Canary (1927)?

 

I've got the Image dvd, transfer was from a restored print. I'd call it quite decent for what it is.

 

Not sure, I saw it on TCM and it was very spooky. I suppose it's not really one of the classic Universal Monster films...

 

Dracula is my favorite, followed by The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923), The Old Dark House, and The Ghost Of Frankenstein...

Did you mean Lon Chaney Jr...? I thought he did a fine job as the Monster. I love The Ghost Of Frankenstein: not saying it's "the best," just think it works strangely well, also a great looking film.

 

I just looked at the Blu-Ray page or the Universal Box and I might have to get it. Have the Dracula and it looks great. Or maybe I'll just look for the individual titles...........

 

Just to add for anyone wishing to buy or rent The Cat and the Canary, here's part of a review by John Sinnot for DVDTalk:

"The two releases of this movie both look very good. They represent two different restorations and they are just about equal in quality. The Image version features a restoration by David Shepard and Film Preservation Associates and it has a bit more grain in the picture than this Kino version, and is slightly darker in places.

The Shepard restoration is tinted however, and the image is just a tad sharper than the Photoplay release. The Image release also has more information at the top of the picture. If it wasn't for the PAL to NTSC conversion on this Kino disc and the flaws related to that, I'd say that the two discs were of similar quality."

 

Thanks, BradF. Sounds like I'll be checking out the Image release.

 

Forgot it was Lon Chaney Jr. in the makeup on Ghost. I guess it was House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein that had Glenn Strange as the monster. Strange actually had a good presence, since he was 6'5" tall.

Wasn't it Ghost that had the doctor transplant Ygor's brain into the monster, and for ten seconds the monster "talked" like Bela Lugosi? Or am I confused? All the movies kinda run together after awhile into one massive epic...

 

You are correct.

I posted a zillion behind the scenes shots from the Universal monster pictures in a different old thread, but as this is a dedicated Universal monster movie thread I'll repost a couple of them here again because they will be easier to find using the search engine. I'll post more later if you guys enjoy this sort of stuff.

The great Jack Pierce working on Boris for the first Frankenstein movie.
Boris and Bela with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
A rare color photo of Lon Jr on the set of House of Dracula.
Lon Jr used to bring his dog "Moose" to the set with him all the time.

 

GREAT!

 

Here's some more.

Wolfman makeup including a rejected version.
Jack working on wolfman hands.
Jack working on Lon Jr.
Lon Jr and Moose again.