With the creepy-crawly tendrils of Halloween fast approaching, and our thoughts focused on the best fright features to feast upon, it seemed a good time to cast a gaze backward at one of Hollywood’s most durable and beloved horror brands: the classic Universal Monsters, celebrating their eighty-fifth anniversary this year.

Now, given how familiar and, dare we say, cute and cuddly the images of Universal’s Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and friends have become to the generations of viewers who’ve known and loved them since their first theatrical runs—who’ve bought the action figures and worn the costumes and cuddled with the stuffed dolls—it’s easy to forget that the initial intent behind these denizens of the darkness was actually to scare the pants off unsuspecting audiences.

Of course that was long ago, during a simpler time when the bar for cinematic scares was significantly lower than it is now. But in an age when the horror genre has come to be almost exclusively defined by how many bucketloads of gore and viscera can be doled out, there’s something appealingly nostalgic about the gothic fright flicks that Universal made its stock in trade for the better part of two decades—thereby birthing not only Hollywood's original horror franchise, but also moviedom’s very first shared universe.

That’s right: The Universal Monsters helped pave the way for everything from King Kong vs. Godzilla to Alien vs. Predator to Batman v. Superman. And while it’s easy to see these films from a jaundiced modern perspective as antiquated or even inelegant, they're clearly also responsible for our collective cultural memories of the monsters themselves. That speaks to the remarkable foresight with which they were brought to fruition.



Director Tod Browning’s Dracula, which got the whole thing started in 1931, arguably has aged the most poorly of the bunch, thanks to its lack of dynamism and general air of staginess—understandable, since it was in fact based on the popular stage play more than on the original Bram Stoker novel. But there’s no denying that the selection of stage star Béla Lugosi for the title role was so spot-on that the actor has cast a bat-shaped shadow over every other screen iteration of the character, even though he himself played the role only twice.

This was followed by an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, also released in 1931. This one was directed by James Whale, and it gifted the world with not only the eerie, unforgettable presence of horror icon Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster, but also the equally iconic makeup created by Universal’s in-house effects guru Jack Pierce. After Frankenstein, Karloff would play the title role in Karl Freund’s The Mummy in 1932, and Whale would direct Claude Rains as The Invisible Man the following year.

It's worth mentioning here that these early offerings weren’t merely quicky exploitation flicks that the studio was cranking out. Rather, they were prestige pictures based on beloved books and afforded every expense—and it showed in both the critical and popular acclaim that greeted their releases. The first Universal horror sequel, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, re-teaming Whale and Karloff (and most memorable for introducing Elsa Lanchester as the titular creature, a mate for Karloff’s monster), was rightly treated as a big deal; even today it’s regarded by many as superior to its predecessor.

Really, it was only in the wake of Bride’s release that the studio began to realize the profit potential in sequelizing this menagerie of monsters into franchise heaven. It was four years later, with 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, that the Universal Monsters assembly line truly was jolted to undead life. That picture carried forward the story of Mary Shelley’s creature where Bride had left it, this time with stripped-down production values and minus original director Whale (this would also be Karloff’s final turn in his career-defining role).



In 1941, the last of Universal's original batch of monsters debuted in The Wolf Man, which introduced the world to Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), the tormented everyman with a very hairy problem. The studio had already cranked out another Mummy and two more Invisible Man movies, with the next Frankenstein in the pipeline. With the exception of the aforementioned Karloff and Lugosi, Chaney is the actor most identifited with the classic monsters, holding the unique distinction of starring in 1942’s Ghost of Frankenstein, 1943’s Son of Dracula, and three Mummy entries between 1942 and 1944.

The Wolf Man was Chaney’s signature creature, whom he had the opportunity to reprise in 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. With Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster, this entry was notable for being the first monster crossover, with which the franchise traded scares for spectacle. Despite some very heavy (and very obvious) editing to remove Lugosi’s Hungarian-accented monologuing as the creature, the film’s inarguable success led the studio to throw even more monsters in the mix via 1944’s House of Frankenstein and 1945’s House of Dracula.

Featuring Chaney as Talbot, Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein monster, and John Carradine as Dracula, both House pictures were directed by Erle C. Kenton, and engineered around wildly absurd scenarios to place the monsters on a collision course with each other. By this time the eeriness, artistic flare, and creeping dread that James Whale brought to his monster entries had long since given way to an efficient, workmanlike approach—short on genuine scares, but long on a gonzo, “anything goes” attitude that proved quite profitable to the studio, and quite memorable to the younger audiences they were aiming for.

In fact, it was this very profitability that led to the final incarnation of the Universal Monsters in their original forms: as foils to another of Universal’s biggest franchises, comedians Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. Thus was born a series of horror-comedies, starting with 1948’s Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which featured Glenn Strange again as the creature, along with Chaney’s fifth and final Wolf Man turn, and the return of Bela Lugosi to Dracula after an interim of seventeen years. Now, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein is kind of an interesting litmus test when it comes to this franchise, in that it’s beloved by some aficionados of the genre and reviled by others. While there are plenty of belly laughs to be had, at no point does the movie make light of or mock its coterie of creatures. Instead, it earns its laughs “honestly,” and still allows the monsters’ final onscreen appearance—or lack of appearance in the case of the Invisible Man cameo—to be dignified.



And then, just like that, it was over. Sure, Universal would continue to crank out creature features throughout the fifties, with the Gill-man, introduced in 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon, probably the most memorable. But this decade also brought a bent towards mutations, space aliens, and science-fiction, signalling an end to the era of the classical gothic horrors in which the studio had specialized for two solid decades. By the close of that run, the original Universal Monsters had gone from being agents of fear to cherished friends that audiences enjoyed visiting and re-visiting. Which isn’t such a bad thing either.

The studio has tried numerous times in the decades since its heyday to once again shine a spotlight on the classic monster roster. Recent efforts include 2004’s overblown Van Helsing, starring Hugh Jackman as the famed vampire hunter from Dracula; 2010’s The Wolfman (one word), directed by Joe Johnston and starring Benicio Del Toro as Talbot; and last year’s Dracula Untold. None of these efforts landed with filmgoers. The most commercially prosperous attempt was the 1999 Brendan Fraser starrer The Mummy, which eschewed the gothic horror of the original in favor of an extended Indiana Jones riff. This one spawned two sequels before the franchise again fizzled out.

Of course, in our current blockbuster-dominated cinematic moment, the success of Disney and Marvel Studios’ shared superhero universe has Universal once again licking its chops to bring the original cinematic universe back to the screen. To that end, they’ve already filmed a brand-new Mummy that’s intended as the leading edge in a fresh onslaught of classic monsters. And while the jury’s still out on whether this attempt will take, and for how long, it’s safe to say that any such revival will have a rough time recapturing the madcap glory of the Universal Monsters during their prime.