Cass has always liked being in on things from their beginnings. He loves my old toys and baseball cards; he loves old comics when they sell the facsimiles; he loves the old black and white Ub Iwerks Disney cartoons, as well as pretty much any old B&W animation; and now he's getting into---by way of our access to Peacock---the Golden Age of Universal Horror.
So far:
We just sort of started. A few things worth mentioning before too much longer: These films are "horror" with the quotation marks, and by that we mean they're okay for the six-year Camille to flit in and out of and not be too bothered; also, none of these four is even 80 minutes long.
In 1931, Universal released Dracula (two versions made at the same time and using the same sets: an English language version and a Spanish version (the Spanish is often considered superior)). It was met with success, and like anything from the studio system: if it hits, they do it again and again.
The rights to Wells' Invisible Man were secured, but James Whale went with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein instead, and it was released that same year, 1931. In 1932 Karloff was back as Imhotep in the Mummy, and they finally got to The Invisible Man by 1933.
Tod Browning, who directed Dracula, made Freaks in 1932, and King Kong was released in 1933, so this does seem like quite a Golden Age.
Anyway, these movies are tame by today's standards, but hold certain charm. There is almost no score at all in Dracula, and very little in Frankenstein. We're so used to manipulative music that when it's absent, it's jarring. The sets and extras are all very exciting, and while I would have picked the side of Dracula over Frankenstein when I was a kid, the Frankenstein movie is the better achievement for me at this age.
I'm not sure I'd ever seen either movie from start to finish. The Mummy is another I hadn't seen, at least not the Boris Karloff version. The Hammer version, sure; and Brendan Frasier, of course. With this one, I was pretty surprised that the museum honcho, played by Edward van Sloan, pretty much figured that Karloff's Ardath Bey was in fact Imhotep, having returned to raise his former lover from the dead.
So...the mummy, Imhotep, wakes when a guy opens a cask that says "Anyone who opens will be cursed and killed." He doesn't kill the guy, just takes the scroll, leaves, and soon is barely more fleshed in and has returned to the museum calling himself Ardath Bey. Bold, baby!
So, I mentioned Edward van Sloan earlier, and not for no reason. He played Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula, he was the mentor doctor in Frankenstein, and he was the (what we'd call) the Egyptologist who kept his wits about himself in the Mummy.
Van Sloan was not in The Invisible Man, but so what. The special effects were awesome. The guy, Dr. Jack Griffin, was great as a serious bad dude, and I don't think enough was made of his having-to-be-nude all the time. What a crazy story---it goes where you'd expect a madman who becomes invisible to go, besides only mentioning the nudity in passing.
We're moving onto the Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), the Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), and then possible Hitchcock's The Birds (1965). I showed Cass that with Kanopy (a nice streaming service that is free with a library card) we can watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), two silent era classics.
This is low-stakes and fun. Plus, I haven't seen many of these films, or not in a very long time. Psycho, maybe? Monster Squad? Maybe we'll graduate to the slashers before too long...maybe even Kurt Russel's The Thing.
Maybe a double feature, like The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982)...we'll see.
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