the Universal Monster movies. Which ones are actually scary?
- Thread starter urrutiap
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I don't really find any of the Universal movies scary, but I do enjoy the atmosphere in movies like Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dracula. For some reason, seeing the Wolfman walking in the fog with the creepy music puts me right in a Halloween mood.
For anyone living in the U.K., the horror channel is showing them today. Frankenstein is on at the moment (you’ll catch it from the start in 10 mins on Horror+1, followed by bride of Frankenstein, then The Wolfman and then Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. Afraid you’ve missed Dracula.
Here in 2021, none of them are scary.
Back in the 1930s / 40s / 50s I bet each one caused some people some major nightmares for a couple of nights.
Back in the 1930s / 40s / 50s I bet each one caused some people some major nightmares for a couple of nights.
Can you imagine taking THE THING and ALIEN back in time and showing them to those audiences.
And yet, being old fashioned, I want a deep fake battle of old vs new monsters with Wolfman killing Pumpkinhead…Dracula killing the Alien with a stake…and Frankenstein’s monster using a flamethrower on THE THING…then holding the end of the wand up and shrieking…running and dragging it after him as Wolfman facepalms and Dracula shouts “you always do this!”
And yet, being old fashioned, I want a deep fake battle of old vs new monsters with Wolfman killing Pumpkinhead…Dracula killing the Alien with a stake…and Frankenstein’s monster using a flamethrower on THE THING…then holding the end of the wand up and shrieking…running and dragging it after him as Wolfman facepalms and Dracula shouts “you always do this!”
A friend and I once speculated about how many people would die of heart attacks if one went back to 1931 to replace a screening of King Kong with the 2005 version. Or replacing the 1930s version of ERB's The Lost World with Jurassic Park. We figured most people back then would need to spend the night in the ER from sheer terror.
Well they might have been bored to death by the 2005 version I guess...
Showing a 30s' audience American Werewolf in London would be interesting. What would freak them out more, the blood and gore, the transformation, or Jenny Agutter in the shower I wonder?
I always found the wolfman scarier, when I was a kid and first watched these films in the 70s, I'm not sure why, maybe the atmosphere, all those lonely fog swathed moors.
It's probably unfair to imagine those old audiences would have been automatically horrified or shocked, and I bet at least some 2021 audience members would wince if you showed them 1929's Un Chien Andalou, especially the implied eye slicing scene.
Showing a 30s' audience American Werewolf in London would be interesting. What would freak them out more, the blood and gore, the transformation, or Jenny Agutter in the shower I wonder?
I always found the wolfman scarier, when I was a kid and first watched these films in the 70s, I'm not sure why, maybe the atmosphere, all those lonely fog swathed moors.
It's probably unfair to imagine those old audiences would have been automatically horrified or shocked, and I bet at least some 2021 audience members would wince if you showed them 1929's Un Chien Andalou, especially the implied eye slicing scene.
I don’t think it is unfair to believe that 1930’s (or even later) audiences would be terrorized by modern horror movies, it is a fact. But we should keep in mind that those old monster movies would be just as terrifying for late 1800’s audiences.
Likewise, if we were somehow able to view a movie made 80 to 90 years in our future, we’d be peeing on ourselves just like those 1930’s and late 1800’s audiences. Also, an audience from say, 2090, is very likely to look at today’s horror movies that we think are SO scary, as quaint or even amusing.
We aren’t special. Our monsters are really no scarier, relatively speaking, than 30’s monsters were .. it all depends on who is watching what.
It's not necessarily that the monsters per se are scarier, it's that filmmaking techniques and technology have evolved, and back when the first Universal horror movies came out there were different standards for what could and could not be shown in movies, and pre-Code of that was in fear that local film boards might ban or force edits onto movies in particular states and municipalities.
Depends on the year and the audience, I guess. Before the Hays Code started to be enforced in 1934, there was a fair amount of racy and sexually suggestive content in a number of movies. Tarzan and His Mate from that year had a nude swimming scene for Jane, not graphic by today's standards but quite close, but it was cut out or replaced with a less revealing version in some markets depending on local propriety standards, and eventually buried altogether until the original footage was recovered in the '80s.
As far as horror movies go, I've long been struck by the contrast between the excellent 1931 Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the dull Spencer Tracy remake a decade later. The March version is racy and overt in its sexual themes, with Hyde having a kept woman who's pretty overtly a prostitute and who's sexually abused and terrorized by Hyde. But the Tracy version is post-Code and cut out any hint of sexuality, so the nature of Hyde's abuses of Ingrid Bergman is left so vague that he comes off as little more than just a grouchy boyfriend. (It doesn't help that, where March's Hyde looked like a savage ape-man, Tracy's Hyde just looked like Spencer Tracy with bushier eyebrows. And I love Ingrid Bergman, but casting her as a Cockney girl was not a good idea.) I found it strange that they even bothered to remake the '31 film's script when they couldn't actually acknowledge its core elements. After all, Hyde's crimes and vices in the original novella were less overtly sexual and more violent. So it seems it would've made more sense to go back to the source and do a new adaptation that was better suited to what the Hays Code permitted.
I love the Universal Horror movies and Hammer Horror movies. I never saw Frankenstein as scary. It's tragic. When I read the book it felt more like science fiction, tragedy and a revenge story all rolled into one.
The Invisible man movies are probably my favorite and the Frankenstein movies would be next with the Wolfman third. I didn't really find them scary. I agree that the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon are scarier because they have less human qualities and there is little to be enamored with.
As for 1930s audiences getting frightened by modern horror movies... depends where they are from. In some places people were still living without electricity, if they wanted to go to the toilet in the middle of the night they had to go outside to a wooden shed in a field. Coming home drunk would be in the pitch black darkness. Some people believed very strongly that ghosts, demons etc existed. I think modern audiences would have a harder time coping in the 1930s.
The Invisible man movies are probably my favorite and the Frankenstein movies would be next with the Wolfman third. I didn't really find them scary. I agree that the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon are scarier because they have less human qualities and there is little to be enamored with.
As for 1930s audiences getting frightened by modern horror movies... depends where they are from. In some places people were still living without electricity, if they wanted to go to the toilet in the middle of the night they had to go outside to a wooden shed in a field. Coming home drunk would be in the pitch black darkness. Some people believed very strongly that ghosts, demons etc existed. I think modern audiences would have a harder time coping in the 1930s.
A person from the ‘30’s who didn’t believe in the supernatural would be terrorized by the sheer volume, picture quality, special effects, modern concepts of evil (imagine that person seeing The Exorcist), etc
But for a person from the 30’s who DOES believe in the supernatural, a modern horror movie would be that much harder to bear. A modern horror movie would seem even more like reality, to a 30’s person who believes in the supernatu,, and therefore MUCH scarier.
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But we’re not talking about “coping” or living in the 30’s, we’re only talking about how different audiences would react to movies from different times.
It's the difference between having to learn to do without things one has taken for granted versus seeing things one has no idea could in fact not be real. Going back in time ninety, or a thousand years, would be a huge culture shock. Conversely, seeing a modern film like the 2005 King Kong, or the Brendan Fraser Mummy films as part of a 1930s audience, one would easily assume they're actually watching a documentary. And the color would simply make it that much harder to dismiss the idea.
I think the other thing to consider is the age of the viewer. I recently watched the Creepshow episode that used footage from 1972's Horror Express (Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas). I remember seeing this as a kid and being absolutely terrified by it! I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be now! Similarly I think the Universal films spooked me as a child as well, hell I recall being perturbed by the original Blob as a kid!
The Universal monster movies were designed to scare adults in the ‘30’s, and they did just that, so the age of the 1930’s monster movie viewer really didn’t matter. Same for current monster movies.
Right, you were no longer frightened by those 1972 movies because you grew up seeing much better movie tech which made the old movies look fake and obsolete. For the person who watched the 1930’s movies that scared them as kids or even as adults, eventually came to see those movies as quaint and not t scary anymore.
When you say the age of the viewer matters, maybe what you really mean is the number of years the viewer has been watching horror movies evolve.
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