Top 13 of '13

Every year, like sparkly, enormous, Times Square-clockwork, horror fans, freaks, and scholars spend the last week of December polishing their "best of" and "worst of" lists for the genre. Most of these lists will find the author lamenting about how thin the year was or how mainstream horror has gone to the dogs (werewolves?). It's easy to see how one might take to that field of thought given the noticeable lack of blockbuster horror films this year. Of course, on the flip side, if you've got a year that's horror heavy-handed, with October packed to the brim with thrills and chills, then you'll have fans taking to the message boards to berate all the remakes and sequels and copycat films cluttering up the multiplexes. The close proximity of all the Saw (2004), Paranormal Activity (2007), and Final Destination (2000) films is probably to blame for this. 

Funny you should say that, Chucky...

In reality, this was an above-average year for horror. Some major releases made splashes, and some others turned out to be garbage, but it seemed to be the parade of successful independent films that took the calendar year and sliced it up real nice. If you're finding that you missed some really solid horror this year, or if you need that reminder to check out something you made a mental note to see last July, hopefully this post will prompt you to seek out one of the films below. Or save you the trouble of watching a complete stinker and/or utter disappointment--because for every stand-out, there's at least two films that fail to live up to their height and crash and burn in a blaze of bloody glory. 

I'm sure that several of these films will get greater examinations in the future, probably once I finally knock off the Horror History series (I mean, dammit, why did the 1950's have to be so influential and so boring at the same time?), so I'll try to keep things streamlined, and I won't give all that much attention to the clunkers because, honestly, I'm hoping they will all die with the rest of the year at the stroke of midnight tonight.

Or at least get thrown into the basement with her…

And on that note, let's get started with Splatter Chatter's 13 Best Horror Films of 2013, kicking it off with 

13. Stoker

This film was the definition of "under the radar" in 2013. Even some of the most hardcore genre fans unknowingly skipped by this one as a result of a very, very, very limited theatrical run and one of the worst marketing campaigns since the dawn of ever. I could count the number of previews I saw for this film on one hand, and that's a shame because this psychologically driven film about a girl, India (Mia Wasikowska) and her mother (Nicole Kidman) who became drawn into an unsettling mind game with India's uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode)--recently moved in after India's father's death in a car accident--will keep (and leave) you guessing. This is a film that's all about the escalation of suspense, so fans of gore, blood, and undead warfare may not gravitate towards this one, though you may be left feeling disgusted once the credits roll. Before that moment though, your skin will prickle and your stomach will rumble that something is not just not right…and we should always listen to our gut.

12. Curse of Chucky

Alright, yes, it's a bit of a head-scratcher as to why the sixth film in a franchise about a murderous doll should make this list, but the fact that this movie introduced us to a darker, and dare I say it, more menacing version of Chucky, made it one of the genre hits of the year. This is a film that does away with the cheesy one-liners that made the first five films in the series great in their own right. Instead, the emphasis lies on the nature of fear and claustrophobia. There's even a solid acting performance or two. It came as quite the surprise, which is probably why it ranks over Stoker, which I expected to be good, and I wish it had received more attention than it did…and I don't even like the series!

11. Curandero: Dawn of the Demon

Another sleep night (though perhaps not so south of the border; I'll have to check on that) this Mexican demonic horror film is multi-faceted and complex. It does some great work in examining horror's relationship to politics and cultural/societal norms for our neighbors to the south. Billed as "Mexico's Answer to The Exorcist," Curandero is also quite the gore-fest, and at one point seedy drug lords are involved in the plot. Which never ends well. It's an interesting film, especially for U.S. viewers, and as with all good horror (and film in general) it packs in different layers of enjoyment for everyone. 

10. Jug Face

Every time I think of this movie, I think of how ridiculously uncomfortable the first five minutes made me feel. Read: sibling incest. And not the saucy (but still weirded out) kind you'd watch on The Borgias (2011-2013) or Game of Thrones (2011-present). And that's just the beginning. This indie production that could also sports a mother examining her full-grown daughter's nether regions and a slew of human sacrifice. This film is inspired, but it's also totally insane. The plot can get somewhat thin and it doesn't make the most sense all the time, but oddly enough it doesn't need to, and will keep you fully invested the whole time. You won't be able to take your eyes off the screen, though at times you'll wish that you could.

Don't they make a cute couple?

9. The Seasoning House

Revenge, cold, cruel, and bloody, dominates this British horror film set in a war-torn and ravaged unnamed country in Eastern Europe. What helps to make the film brilliant is that the retribution that is being delivered happens almost by accident or divine providence, though looking for God is something the protagonist, a girl abducted by militia soldiers and forced to work various chores in a brothel staffed with unwilling and kidnapped girls, does not have time for. Very well done horror cinema.

8. Insidious: Chapter 2

When this sequel was originally announced, fans had some concern. James Wan, who shotgunned to prominence in the horror genre with his work on the Saw franchise, Dead Silence (2007), and the first Insidious (2011), was releasing two films within months of each other, and that made people nervous that he had failed to deliver on at least one of them. The bets were placed on this movie, probably because of the WAY too many impacting shots in the trailers, but this follow-up to the haunted-boy troubles of the Lambert family was still pretty damn creepy at parts. Not as strong as the first, as sequels tend to be, but not as bad as most are inclined to think.

7. All Hallows' Eve

This straight-to-DVD anthology film garnered high hopes in the horror community, and delivered on a great many of those hopes. A warp-around with three individual horror vignettes sprinkled throughout, this movie may have been the birth of the next great horror film villain, Art the Clown, who features in each of the four stories. I'll admit that you may not find this ranked as high on other lists, given my personal, biased fear of white-faced clowns, but this film covers gore, jump scares, tension-building, and packs a serious punch of lingering, sinister menace. The middle segment is a bit weak, but I don't think that will stop it from becoming essential Halloween viewing for most horror fans now, so expect a more thorough review in October 2014.

So much NOPE.

6. Evil Dead

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with this re-imagining of Sam Raimi's  The Evil Dead (1981)--and some of them did--that it was bound to disappoint at least a few loyal and passionate fans of the original staple to the horror genre. I had my doubts, and did not see it for quite some time, but I'll admit that it came out about as good as it possibly could have. It's ultra-violent and unforgiving and has some good practical effects in the spirit of the classic it came from, as well as some of those iconic Raimi shots that toyed with by director Fede Alvarez. The story was spun just enough, which was smart, and allowed the film to stand on its own.

5. The Conjuring

While the basis of James Wan's other big-budget horror film of the year as a true story is somewhat murky, the dramatization is exceptionally creepy through a solid 80% of the film. The story twists from a straight-forward slow burn haunting into a full-on exorcism battle that erupts after all hell breaks loose. It's a supremely eerie film that is handled deafly by Wan, who has an intricate understanding of direction. The heavy-handed promotion led some critics to believe it wasn't well-crafted, but it is, rarely faltering through the 112 minute runtime.

4. You're Next

In the current state of the horror film, it's difficult to pull off a legitimately disconcerting home invasion story, and quite easy to write off the ones that try. It's a sub-genre of horror that has never quite managed to refresh its formula, and the luster has faded. And yet, here was a powerful and lovable sparkle. Director Adam Wingard, who has a true fan's passion for filmmaking, crafted this film that is equal parts thrills and chills, homage and re-invention, titillating and terrifying. Mired in post-production for close to two years, this film takes genre expectation on a roller coaster ride in an examination of horror, film, and safety. It's clever, playing in the league of other great home invasion films like Funny Games (1997), Them (2006), and The Strangers (2008). And that pig mask is more than capable of inducing a nightmare or two…

Someone call animal control…

3. American Mary

Twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska are fast carving an unforgettable niche for themselves in the world of horror, first coming to prominence with Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009) and following up with American Mary, a technically refined, highly jarring picture that takes an artistic approach to some of the most uncomfortable gore and body modification ever filmed. This sleeper hit follows Mary, played wonderfully by Katharine Isabelle, a med student whose quest for vengeance ends up making her a major player in the medical underworld, a place where strippers and sexual fetishists become her associates. As her life snowballs out of control, a feat steadily handled by the Soskas, the audience is drawn into Mary's headspace and begins to wonder, along with her, how simple revenge ever went this far.

2. The Battery

The zombie film has been done, and re-done, and then done twice more after that, to death (pun intended). How then does a filmmaker take a post-apocalytpic story and turn it into something unorthodox, fresh, and deeply moving? Jeremy Gardner found a way on a $6,000 budget, and though that leaves the film as being remarkably bland, it also makes the story that much more effective and lovable. The endearing personalities of the characters make the character examination rich and fulfilling, much like the use of the scenery. The struggle portrayed feels very real, and it's unfortunate that no one has seen this movie, because once you do you'll want to hit "play" over and over and over again. You can feel the thought, heart, and determination that went into this film, and hopefully that will help spread it to more viewers in the coming year.

1. Maniac

This genius remake, expertly shot and poignantly acted, achieves a rare feat in the world of cinema, horror or otherwise, in that it is better than the original source, the 1980 film by William Lustig. This re-imagining follows Frank Zito, played with haunting and heartfelt depth by Elijah Wood, an uber-quirky and murderous psychopath who yearns and hunts for a human connection in a world that has cast him and his mannequin store aside. The graphic chaos and unraveling of his fatal endeavors after he meets beautiful photographer Rita is both gut-wrenching and wonderful to behold. The atmosphere alone is enough to leave you feeling heavy with gloom, and yet director Franck Khalfoun is still able to build palpable tension, bringing you to the very edge of darkness, before that thumping final push.

He's come a long way from the Shire…

With that I conclude the list; thirteen excellent horror films I am happy to vouch for any day. I'd also like to give honorable mention to a few other gems from 2013, namely Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem and Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are. There was also a surprisingly good number of horror-comedies to come our way this year, including Warm Bodies, John Dies at the End, Sightseers, and Ghost Team One. 

Hopefully there is enough fodder here to spur you on into the next year, which is going to see some really interesting genre films (Big Bad Wolves and The Banchee Chapter are two I'm looking forward to) and some (likely) flops as per usual, i.e. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, The Purge 2, I, Frankenstein, and Paranormal Activity 5. Yep, that's right. We're getting not one, but TWO more Paranormal Activity films next year. Therefore my resolution is to not spend money on those films but to somehow see them anyway… 

Hey, we should all challenge ourselves in the coming year, right? Right. 

Happy New Year, folks.

Holiday Horror

You may think that of all the seasons, all the holidays and phases of the year, that Christmas is the most ill-suited to horror. Well, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. Obviously the days leading up to Halloween are the meat and potatoes of a horror film fan's existence, what with creeps and spooks and serial slashers and one more Paranormal Activity sequel taking over multiplexes, television schedules, and your suggestion row on Neflix, but the Yuletide makes for a surprisingly devilish season when it comes to holiday horror. It's not all rosy-cheeked children and talking puppies skating around the ice musing about St. Nick, or aggravating and dysfunctional families brought together to magically heal their decades-old emotional wounds through the power of tinsel and snow. Nope. In fact, there's a sleigh-full of Christmas-related horror out there so that us die hard fans (or perhaps those fans who get just a little bit tired of watching Elf (2003) seventeen times in one week) can always find something shocking in our stockings.

Like this monstrosity, for example

Some people might find it offensive or distasteful that there is such an abundance of Christmas horror films in the world, or that themes typically related to the horror genre have no place at this time of year. To that, I bring up one of the oldest and most beloved Christmas tales of all time, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which is littered with ghosts, graveyards, and ghoulish visions. So, I've got some recommendations for a few holiday horror hits for those who prefer their Christmas movies a little on the twisted side, or anyone that needs an antidote to the endless parade of celluloid holiday sweetness clogging up the TV. 

When it comes to Christmas-themed horror, ask any true buff of the genre and they'll talk to you about Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). This delightfully cheesy slasher film once enraged an entire nation to the point that a large smear campaign, led primarily by rural and suburban, middle-class, white parents, managed to get the film pulled from theaters and dropped by its distribution company. The film, which has since become a cult classic and a gem in the horror crown, tells the story of young Billy, who witnesses his parents get slaughtered by someone dressed in a Santa Claus costume. As a grown up, Billy has trouble dealing with the lingering issues he has over Old St. Nick, especially when he is forced to put on a Santa suit as part of his job at the toy store. Needless to say, a mental breakdown ensues, prompting Billy to stalk about his small, cheerful Utah town with an axe, knocking off random citizens while shouting "NAUGHTY" and "PUNISH."

Part of the fame surrounding this low-budget classic is certainly due to the fact that its commercials alone scarred a generation of American children and spurred their elders to fantastically self-righteous protest. They were even joined in their cause by Siskel and Ebert, who denounced the film on their television show, "At the Movies." And yet, despite its notoriety, or perhaps because of it, Silent Night, Deadly Night endured, sought out desperately by horror freaks due to it's "forbidden fruit" allure. The film spawned four sequels by the early 1990's (and in an odd twist, actor Mickey Rooney, one of the original film's most vocal detractors, had a starring role in the final installment, Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991) ), and was remade just last year as Silent Night (2012), in which Malcolm McDowell plays a sheriff tracking down another psycho killer dressed in a Santa suit. The only snag? His entire town is full of guys dressed in Santa suits because it's the day of the annual Christmas parade. Don't you hate it when that happens? This gory, violent, and over-the-top loose re-imagining isn't all that bad, though, and pleased most fans of the original--myself included. 

He'll show you exactly why his suit is so red…

What's interesting about the massive backlash that followed the release of Silent Night, Deadly Night, was that it was virtually absent when Christmas Evil (1980), a film that used the same hook, was released four years prior. This film, sometimes marketed as You Better Watch Out or Terror in Toyland, follows a schlumpy toy company employee who, so jaded from a lifetime of cynicism and festering bitterness, snaps on Christmas Evil and dons a Santa suit to strike down anyone who's ever done him wrong and thus diminished his Christmas spirit. It's kind of like a Taxi Driver (1976) holiday special. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognize a young Jeffrey DeMunn, better known as Dale on AMC's "The Walking Dead."

If you still haven't had your fill of serial Santa's, you can watch him go psycho again in Santa's Slay (2005), a horror-comedy that enlightens us all to the true origins of Father Christmas: he's the son of the Devil who once did battle with an angel. As punishment for this, he was sentenced to a 1,000 years of "doing good" by delivering presents on Christmas Eve. But now, as you may have guessed, his millennia of community service is over and he can return to his true calling of making Christmas a "Day of Slaying." A similar premise is also utilized in the so-bad-it's-good awesomefest, Satan Claus (1996), which finds innocent New Yorkers axe-murdered in order to have their body parts chopped off to decorate a macabre Christmas tree from hell. Duh. 

The last movie I'll suggest to round out Killer Santas (which, at this point, I'm realizing could be it's own horror sub-genre), is To All a Good Night (1980), which is even more classic slasher than the others listed above, as this time a Santa-suited maniac is picking off co-eds on a college campus who have stayed behind for Christmas break. It doesn't get much campier than that. Not to worry, though, Santa is not always the one doing the hacking; in Don't Open Till Christmas (1984), a slasher prowls the streets of London, murdering department store Santas, always one step ahead of Scotland Yard and one step behind logic. For some reason, the film was heavily promoted as being from the same producer as Pieces (1982) which, if you've seen this drive-in dime…is not exactly the best selling point.

Now don't get all hot and bothered there, Santa…

But of course, holiday horror does not need a deranged Santa to find that warm, special place in the heart of a horror fan. Take Black Christmas (1974), for instance, a monumental and influential film that acted as the true founding father to the slasher genre, even if it was later overshadowed by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). In this controversial and well-known horror classic, the residents of a sorority house, including a young Margot Kidder, fall victim to an obscene phone caller who then escalates into a sinister and murderous home invader as the girls attempt to prepare for Christmas break. It's probably the most well-known and well done Christmas-horror film out there, and it's definitely a staple and game-changer for horror as a whole. Ironically, director Bob Clark would go on to helm one of the greatest warm-and-fuzzy Christmas classics of our time, A Christmas Story (1983). 

If slashers aren't your thing, and I'll admit that my bias for that sub-genre has dominated this post thus far, I suggest Silent Night, Zombie Night (2009)--man, what is it with all these Christmas horror films using "silent night in their titles? Black Christmas was also released under the title Silent Night, Evil Night--a low budget film that finds the Christmas celebrations of Los Angeles rudely interrupted by an outbreak of everyone's favorite flesh-eating undead walkers. In that same vein, you could pop in Elves (1989) and watch a department store Santa Claus attempt to protect a group of unlucky teenagers from a demonic, Nazi, North Pole Elf who was unknowingly released by a pagan blood ritual. You really just can't make this shit up, folks.

But wait. If Santa can chop us into bits now, and his elves can do the same, what about snowmen? You'll find the answer to that in the overly cheesy, what-the-hell-even-is-this cult classic Jack Frost (1997)--not to be confused with the family comedy of the same name starring Michael Keaton, which is horrific in its own right--that features a serial killer having an unfortunate run-in with an experimental genetic modifier on a cold winter's night, resulting in his transformation into a psycho, fucked-up Frosty. I'm not even kidding. I literally just went back and linked the movie's Amazon page to the title. Because honestly, this is a movie that has to be seen to be believed. And, if you can find it in your hearts to truly embrace the reason of the season and believe, there is a sequel. 

This probably should have been shown to the filmmakers

of Jack Frost 2 after the first film bombed

The last, but certainly not least of the more "established" Christmas-themed horror movies out there I want to draw your attention to, is Joe Dante's classic creature feature Gremlins (1984). It's hard to find someone these days who hasn't seen the film or at least understands the pop culture references surrounding Gremlins, but many people forget that it takes place on Christmas Eve. There is massive amounts of tiny critter carnage, but what's truly disturbing is the mid-film soliloquy from Kate as she recalls finding her father's dead body stuck in the chimney as a little girl. It's oddly tragic.

Much like the following list of Christmas related horror movies I have either seen (the ones with a brief description) or have heard of. You know, if you really just can't get enough. Or if Uncle Clyde keeps gushing about the latest Tea Party rally and you need to sneak away and watch something in which there is a high probability of someone or something being struck repeatedly…

-Dead of Night (1945)--one of the top 100 horror movies of all time, easy
-Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)--this amusingly bad horror/sci-fi B-movie comes complete with a sing-along portion. OBVIOUSLY.
-Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)---A man inherits an old manor that once used to be an asylum. When he investigates strange events of the house's past, the townspeople grow worried. Pretty solid film.
-Home for the Holidays (1972)--an ailing man summons his three daughters home for Christmas and asks them to kill his new wife, whom he suspects is poisoning him
-The Legend of Hell House (1973)--another film on this list that makes the top 100 without question about a psychiatrist, his wife, a young psychic, and the only survivor of a previous trauma are sent to Hell House to prove/disprove life after death
-Deadly Games (1982)
-Blood Beat (1982)--a woman in rural Wisconsin is possessed by a samurai warrior
-The Thirteenth Day of Christmas (1985)

-Chopping Mall (1986)

-Child's Play (1988)--another one people forget takes place at Christmastime. The Chucky doll is the hottest toy on the market in the first film of this silly series
-Lucky Stiff (1988)--loner Ron, who has no luck with women, is invited by Cynthia to her backwoods home for Christmas dinner. Turns out clan takes inspiration from the Donner party
-Deadly Dreams (1988)
-Prime Evil (1989)
-Family Reunion (1989)

-Campfire Tales (1991)
-The Day of the Beast (1995)
-Santa Claws (1996)
-Feeders 2: Slay Bells (1998)--aliens invade Earth and it's up to Santa and his elves to save the day
-The Minion (1998)
-Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000)--he's back to made the holidays red

-A Christmas Nightmare (2001)
-Nutcracker (2001)

-Christmas Season Massacre (2001)
-One Hell of a Christmas (2002)
-Dead End (2003)--En route to his in-laws on Christmas Eve, Frank decides to take a shortcut for the first time in 20 years. It turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life. Highly recommended. Really great, little known gem.
-Psycho Santa (2003)
-Trees 2: The Root of All Evil (2004)
-Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)--sequel to one of the greatest horror films post-2000 in which Brigitte now finds herself a werewolf who must hide out in a rehab facility
-Gingerbread Man (2005)--it's not directly related to Christmas, but it's the only time of year I associate gingerbread as a thing
-The Toybox (2005)
-The Horror Seasons (2005)
-Marcus (2006)--a troubled young man returns home for Christmas to reconcile with his estranged sister. Then her alleged boyfriend shows up and turns the holiday dinner into a dark, disturbing night of violence and terror
-Two Front Teeth (2006)
-Xmas Tale (2006)
-P2 (2007)--A woman is pursued by a psychopath after being locked in a parking garage on Christmas Eve
-Wind Chill (2007)
-Inside (2007)--one of the most visually brutal and controversial horror films out there about a recently widowed pregnant woman who endures a horrific home invasion
-Ornaments (2008)
-The Children (2008)--A relaxing Christmas vacation turns into a terrifying fight for survival when children begin to turn on their parents. Very, very creepy little film.

-Alien Raiders (2008)

-12-24 (2008)--a zombie horde prevents a group of characters from getting home on Christmas Eve
-The Blackout (2009)
-Deadly Little Christmas (2009)
-Hate's Haunted Slay Ride (2010)
-Wolf Cabin (2010)
-Sint/Saint (2010)--St. Nicholas is a deranged bishop who kidnaps and murders children whenever there is a full moon on December 5
-Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
-Nixon and Hogan Smoke Christmas (2010)
-Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2011)--all the YES

-A Cadaver Christmas (2011)
-Snowmageddon (2011)

-ATM (2012)--David and Emily leave the company Christmas party to salvage their first date together, only to have their night turn deadly when co-worker Corey asks to stop at an all-night ATM (in all honestly, I highly recommend this one)
-Tinsel (2012)
-The 12 Disasters of Christmas (2012)

-Bloody Christmas (2012)

-Christmas with the Dead (2012)
-Darkest Night (2012)--family reunion in the mountains at Christmas is spoiled by a series of bizarre, demonic, and tragic events

-Caesar and Otto's Deadly Xmas (2013)
-Treevenge (2013)--a short film that depicts Christmas from the perspective of sentient pine trees hacked down, shipped to homes, and subjected to humiliation by humans who decorate them and make them stand in their living rooms. Now the trees have had enough, and decide to stage an uprising

Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, oh please oh please

don't kill me

Bloody Christmas to all, and to all the bumps in the night!

Horror History: Man vs. Animal, a Looming Terror (The 1940's)

If the horror movies of the 1930's had dealt in well-established fictional monsters for inspiration (i.e. Dracula, Frankenstein, werewolves, mummies, etc.), then the 1940's reflected the internationalization of the horror market. Americans looked at themselves as "safe" and separate from Europe, where everything was gradually turning into a chaotic, frightening, uncontrollable, and and unreasonable mess. Banned in Britain, wartime horror movies became solely an American product. Of course, the U.S. did not remain separate and pure. Senses of duty and heritage regarding Europe kept peeking through the American shield, the pull of that link to the land of the nation's ancestors eventually catapulting the States not only into war with Japan, but Germany as well. In the same way, many horror films of this period deal with roots cracking through the ground--men and women becoming subject to the emergence of a primal, animal identity. You can actually see this device used in Disney's Pinocchio (1940), when the bad boys of Pleasure Island turn into donkeys. 

You wanna hear something truly horrific? 

Listen to "Dominic the Donkey"

But it wasn't donkeys that posed the main global threat at the outset of the 1940's. It was wolves. Hitler (though one could easily call him a jackass), identified strongly with legends and symbolism associated with wolves. His first name, Adolf, means "noble wolf" in the Old German tongue and he was known to use "Herr Wolf" as a pseudonym for himself in his early political days. Various headquarters for the Nazi Party were given names like Wolf's Gulch (France), Manwolf (Ukraine), and Wolf's Lair (Eastern Prussia). Hitler often referred to the SS as his "pack of wolves" and several sources, among these his favorite secretary Johanna Wolf (whom he called the "she-wolf") report that he would absent-mindedly whistle the tune of "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?"--a character, it should be recalled, whose desire is to consume people and blow their houses down.

Propagandists of the time were fond of depicting Hitler as the Big Bad Wolf of various fairy tales. It seemed that the figure of the marauding wolf typified the predators that were lurking in the corners of the public consciousness. It is therefore no surprise that Universal, home of those iconic monsters of the 1930's, picked the Wolf as the go-to figure of menace for their horror films of the early 1940's. 

After Son of Frankenstein (1939), Universal looked to their backlist for properties that could have sequels. This move ended up finding Vincent Prince disappearing in The Invisible Man Returns (1940) and Tom Tyler bandaged up in The Mummy's Hand (1941). But this wasn't enough, so the new studio regime developed a fresh horror star in Creighton Chaney, son of their silent Quasimodo, better known under the name he was working under, Lon Chaney Jr. Chaney Jr. had scored critical success in his portrayal of Lenny in Of Mice and Men (1939) and so Universal used a leftover, unfilmed Karloff-Lugosi script to introduce Chaney into their repertoire. The result, Man-Made Monster (1941) prompted director George Waggner to take on a more elaborate project to showcase the character talents of the new, burly Chaney.

"Blitz Wolf," a short Disney farce of the Three Little Pigs

with Hitler in the role of the Big Bad Wolf

And so Chaney Jr. was cast as Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941), a film about an American schlub, probably only a few IQ points smarter than Lenny, who is bitten by a gypsy in wolf form (Lugosi, passing on the "curse" and status of a horror star) while staying in Wales. He is eventually battered to death with a silver cane by his father (played by Claude Rains) at the conclusion of the well-mounted and ambitious script by Curt Siodmak, who had fled the Nazi wolves himself in 1937. The Wolf Man proved that Universal could still found horror franchises. Chaney was then shuffled around to play all of the greats, taking on the role of the Monster in Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Mummy in The Mummy's Tomb (1942), and the vampiric count in Son of Dracula (1943). It must have burned him just a little when Waggner was producing a lavish, Technicolor Phantom of the Opera (1943) and passed over Chaney Jr. to take his father's old role. The part was deemed too important and so given to Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man father figure, Rains.

This new version of the masked theater dweller's tale was as much musical melodrama as it was horror and is surprisingly mild compared to the silent version. It was also unusually large-scale for Universal in the 1940's who mostly stuck to making series horror the way other studios were making series Westerns. There were ongoing sagas chronicling the eerie adventures of the Invisible Man and the Mummy and a three-picture series about Paula the Ape Woman, kickstarted with Captive Wild Woman (1943), again pinpointing the cultural fear of man overcome by baser, primal instincts that lead to disaster. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, signed over from Fox, played Holmes and Watson respectively in a series of twelve modern-day mysteries, almost all directed by Roy William Neill, and featuring horror elements, as in The Scarlet Claw (1944) and The House of Fear (1945). In turn, the Holmes films spun off their own monster stars. Real-life acromegalic Rondo Hatton, the "Creeper" in Pearl of Death (1944), became a regular mad lab assistant in an Ape Woman sequel and got vehicles for success in House of Horrors (1946) and The Brute Man (1946). Gale Sondergaard, the black widow of The Spider Woman (1944), returned as a similar villainess (with Hatton playing her minion) in The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1945). Chaney Jr. starred in six Inner Sanctum mysteries, often in unsuitably intellectual roles, as when he plays a college professor in Weird Woman (1944). There were a few stand alones at the time whose familiar sets, players (Karloff, Atwill, Lugosi, etc.) and story lines makes it seem like they were series efforts that never took flight, among them Black Friday (1940), Night Monster (1942), The Mad Ghoul (1943), and She-Wolf of London (1946).

The most significant Universal horror in franchise terms was Neill's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), a dual sequel to Ghost of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man in which Lugosi (whose brain--spoiler alert--was put in Chaney's skull at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein) plays the Monster and Chaney Jr. returns as the cursed Talbot. In House of Frankenstein (1944), Dracula (John Carradine) joined up, Lugosi was ditched in favor of bulky Glenn Strange, and Karloff returned to play a distinguished mad scientist. House of Dracula (1945) lost Karloff, but is otherwise the same deal. These monster rallies remain endearing to fans of the classics (myself included), not least for the strange twists of plotting that get around the monsters' seemingly permanent deaths and contrive to bring them together for yet another rumble. They don't, however, even try to be terrifying, and seem pitched entirely at children's matinees. The end result was one of the first truly great horror-comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), in which Universal's premier vaudeville comics run into Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man, Strange's Monster, and in what was to be his last turn in the role, Lugosi's Dracula. The pair's later run-in movies with the Invisible Man, the Mummy, and Jekyll and Hyde aren't as funny as they should be, but the comedians are spot on in haunted-house mode with Hold That Ghost (1941). 

Many a sleepover with my cousins was spent watching this movie.

Because obviously.

At this point, the days of the lovingly-crafted Bride of Frankenstein (1935) were over, and the horror genre had totally devoured itself like the feral creatures it played up so much in the early 1940's. The series of Abbot and Costello parodies put the final nails in the coffin of this phase of the horror film, forever resigning Dracula, The Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Monster to sequel fodder. Those monsters who had been so terrifying on their debuts would not be frightening again for a long time to come. Meanwhile, the B studios were cashing in on Universal's comedy-horror act with lookalike efforts. Columbia signed Karloff to a run of "mad doctor" movies like The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) before landing Lugosi and his werewolf minion (Matt Willis) in their own monster mash-up picture, Return of the Vampire (1943). Fox and Paramount felt obliged to produce a white slavery/gorilla brain transplant story with The Monster and the Girl (1941) and a foggy werewolf whodunit, The Undying Monster (1942). It seemed that if it wasn't werewolves, it was brains being switched or tampered with, a person made into something they are not, something twisted, devilish, cruel…wolflike. Then, down on Poverty Row, Monogram kept Lugosi on retainer for The Invisible Ghost (1941) and its eight sequels, and played the race card with King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943), inadvertently channeling subversive societal issues of the times. Studios loved having their comedians mix it with ghouls and spooks in old dark houses with secret passageways, and that became the premise of a whole slew of horror-comedies like You'll Find Out (1940), Whistling in the Dark (1941), The Smiling Ghost (1941), Topper Returns (1941), One Body Too Many (1944), Ghost Catchers (1944), and Genius at Work (1946).

In contrast to all of this cheap bustle, RKO hired Val Lewton to produce their own small-scale horror pictures and got a clutch of polished, doom-haunted, poetic little masterpieces  in Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), The Ghost Ship (1943), The Curse of the Cat People (1944), Isle of the Dead (1945), The Body Snatcher (1945), and Bedlam (1946). Directed by Jacques Tourneur, Mark Robson, or Robert Wise, the Lewton films are literate, adult, and sophisticated, especially when set beside their competition. But the reason they worked for the audiences of the 1940's is that they are also serious about being scary in a way that Universal had given up on. The stalking scenes in Central Park and a basement swimming pool in Cat People are models of a style of horror cinema that Lewton would perfect, a style that would become the basis of the stalk-and-slash films of the 1970's and beyond. The Lewton films also spill more gore than the average Monogram--the trickle of blood under the door in The Leopard Man was an especial shock at the time--and emphasize extreme emotional states, like the neglected daughter driven nearly to child murder in Curse of the Cat People. Almost all of Lewton's films dealt with vicious animal beats overcoming the human form, though some of his later films, the ones produced as war grew imminent, were measured exercises in psychological horror that revealed the true monsters of the world to be human beings who had lost their moral compass. That Lewton had hit on a style and formula that worked is proved by the way others tried to imitate it. After Cat People, Columbia managed its own effects-free, "subtle" horror, Cry of the Werewolf (1943), and Lewtonesque effects could be seen in The Soul of a Monster (1944) and The Woman Who Came Back (1945) as well.

As far as intelligent, well produced, carriage-trade horror goes, Lewton wasn't quite the whole act in the 1940's. MGM had Victor Fleming, a hero on the strength of his credited direction of both Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). He mounted a big-budget remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) as a showcase for Spencer Tracy's dual performance, with the full Metro glamor treatment for his co-stars, Ingrid Bergman as the abused Soho waitress and Lana Turner as Jekyll's society fiancee. This was followed by other fogbound literary properties, with bravura acting and careful production values: The Lodger (1944), with Laird Cregar as Jack the Ripper, Gaslight (1944), with Bergman persecuted again, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). During the war and its aftermath, there was a run of near-benevolent supernatural pictures, like A Guy Named Joe (1943), the British film A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). This trend took in a few scarier themes. The Uninvited (1944) feels like an homage to Lewton, to the extent of the casting of Elizabeth Russell, Lewton's favorite, as the wispily malevolent specter (who happens to be a nasty lesbian, to boot). The Uninvited was groundbreaking and incredibly influential, and still stands as the model for many, many tales in which nice folks buy a picturesque, remote house and are pestered by spooks, which then prompts an investigation into the cause of the haunting (allowing for that oh-so crucial mystery angle), and a climatic exorcism. From Britain, neglectful of the horror film while fighting against real life monsters, came Ealing's multi-directed Dead of Night (1945), the grandfather of the horror anthology, best remembered for its haunted mirror and mad ventriloquist sequences. It was highly influential in its use of the frame narrative with twists and mixes of moods from supernatural anecdote to clubroom comedy to all-out psychological terror.

Chucky ain't got nothing on this guy

Some horror scholars say that the greatest mystery of the genre is that in the late 1940's, just as in the late 1930's, the horror film completely died out seemingly without warning. In the 1930's the phenomenon is almost entirely down to the unique circumstance of the British horror ban. For the 1940's, some have suggested that after Abbott and Costello it became impossible for moviegoers to take the monsters seriously, but I would point out that the pair didn't "meet" Frankenstein until 1948, when the genre was already withering away. It could equally be argued that it was hard to take the monsters seriously after the third or fourth Mummy sequel in which victims have to maneuver themselves into a corner so that the limping, pot-bellied, not terribly fearsome, bandaged bully can get his single functional hand around their throats. Between 1947 and 1951, Hollywood produced almost no horror films. The Creeper (1948), Jean Yarbrough's weird melange of Lewton shadows and Monogram mad science, is the lone exception. It could be that overproduction had killed the genre, but hollow copycat Westerns had been churned out in even greater numbers without slaking the appetites of cowboy fans. For example, there are five films in Universal's Kharis the Mummy series, which most fans rate as repetitive and formulaic; there are 51 completely interchangeable Three Musketeers pictures. Perhaps the explanation was that after World War II, gothic horror was upstaged by real life genocides--but the First World War had proved a potent inspiration for the Expressionist horrors of the 1920's and 1930's, lingering subliminally in the films of F.W. Murnau (a fighter pilot) and James Whale (a POW). 

The irony is that, in the later 1940's, American screens were as shadowed and haunted as they had ever been, but not in actual horror films. Film noir is a genre that was diagnosed rather than invented. French critics looked at a stream of American films (mostly thrillers and melodrama) and labelled them as noir, in homage to their overwhelming darkness in imagery and in subject matter. Lewton's horror films are also important as early noirs, and Jacques Tourneur proceeded from his woman cursed to turn into a feral and ferocious cat if she cannot consummate her marriage to his noir masterpiece, Out of the Past (1948). Other personnel made similar shifts. Robert Siodmak, Curt's brother, helmed the gloomy, unusual Son of Dracula in which the girl wants to be bitten by Dracula, as well as the early psycho-horror suspense The Spiral Staircase (1946). He also took on many outstanding noir films that doubled as horror, Phantom Lady (1943), The Killers (1946), The Dark Mirror (1946), etc. Edward Dmytryk moved from Captive Wild Woman to Murder, My Sweet (1944), the first major adaptation of Raymond Chandler's work. While Karloff and Lugosi were tied too closely to castles and laboratories, Peter Lorre segued easily from horror to noir roles, reprising his M (1931) act as a sorrowful psychotic killer in what might be the first truly proper noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). 

These were all films about a looming evil, scenes steeped in gloom, scores that pulsed with foreboding atmosphere and dread. Many viewed them as the embodiment of the last decade, dark forays into the atrocities that had griped the globe and unleashed those feral, wolflike creatures in the early 1940's who were responsible for so much cruelty and damage. The noir films worked hard to do horror's job in a less direct but still compelling manner while the genre was on hiatus. Because as any student of the supernatural will tell you, if a thing looks dead, that's the time to be most afraid, as you never know what might come shooting out from beneath the tombstone…

Next in Horror History: Creature Features (The 1950's)

Motel Hell

The distinctive taste of farmer Vincent Smith's is renowned in the small rural community in which he runs a local motel with his sister, Ida. People come from far and wide to sample his deliciously unique meat treats. But the real question is why no one is staying in the motel, despite the "No Vacancy" sign constantly being lit. And the REALLY real question is why on earth did this movie come into existence? Because even though this movie has a weirdly special place in my family's Thanksgiving festivities, the super secret Smith meat treat isn't turkey, it's people. Welcome to Motel Hell (1980). 

Motel Hell (U.S.A.)

Released: October 18, 1980

Director: Kevin Connor

Screenplay: Robert & Steven-Charles Jaffe

Tagline: "Checking in is easy…checking out is hell"

Cast:

Rory Calhoun as Vincent Smith

Nancy Parsons as Ida Smith

Paul Linke as Sheriff Bruce Smith

Nina Axelrod as Terry

Wolfman Jack as Reverend Billy

It's hard not to love the campy awfulness of this movie. At its dirty, bizarre core, Motel Hell is a fun, and surprisingly graphic at points, horror-comedy; a parody of films like Psycho (1960), The Last House on the Left (1972), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). It downplays shock tactics and special effects to play up the more satirical aspect of the film and keep the viewer entertained, which in this case usually means laughing your ass off at the ridiculousness of the situation.

In fact, the variety of funny and oddly charming sequences that populate this messy and mashed up film range from heckling televangelists to hilarious send-ups of lives of swingers. Viewers will be treated to a chainsaw duel (potential influence for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)? We'll never know) a garden of human heads preparing to be harvested for dinner, cannibalism (go figure), and a particularly stomach churning conversation of smoking dogs. This movie is, without a doubt, one of the most goofy and tacky horror films of its era, and yet it has a hint of the same intelligence paired with gruesome witty horror-comedy that is to be found in Re-Animator (1985) and Evil Dead 2 (1987). It's not as effective or enjoyable as those two films, and can drag a little near the end, but it's there nonetheless.

Rory Calhoun undoubtedly steals this shlock show with his portrayal of the deranged and creepily pleasant Vincent Smith. The campy yet fairly smooth script provides for an appealing personality for Vincent, though the viewer still spends most of the movie laughing at his God-fearing monologues he slips into when he discusses the creative and artistic ways in which he stray humans to mix in with his meat. That's what the film is about, if you haven't caught on to that, and there's not much more to the plot other than a stranded biker chick who eventually pieces together the insanity with the naive sheriff Bruce, excluded from the family side-business his brother and sister are running.

Come one, who WOULDN'T want to stay with these fine folks?

Calhoun is accompanied by Nancy Parsons in the role of his overweight and dim-witted sister Ida, who comes off, in a strange and unaccounted for way, of being a female, vaguely more intelligent version of Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Leatherface. Given the subpar material these two had to work with, as well as Nina Axelrod in the role of stranded hotel guest and eventual heroine Terry, their performances weren't all that bad, if still poor, but that somehow makes the whole spectacle more humorous. 

Director Kevin Connor has a lot of fun sliding in references to some of the horror hall-of-famers, including a captivating comedic illustration of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Zombie Holocaust (1979). His take on horror-comedy is more macabre-weird, and he never really spends much time trying to bring the story to life (perhaps because it's buried neck deep in the ground with vocal chords ripped out and throats stitched up, as Vincent and Ida's victims are?). 

Motel Hell has not aged well, looking more like a movie meant to be viewed on a drive-in screen rather than a television screen, but my family managed to get past that one year on Thanksgiving when my father, the King of the B-Movie, busted out his copy of the film to share with the rest of the Ranallos and now, each year, if it's not viewed, it's referenced in fondness. Hey, at least we're all together, rather than running out for Black Friday shopping. Which I will always find more ridiculous than this movie. Motel Hell, for all its faults, became what the filmmakers intended it to be, a cheesy fun-fest for horror and non-horror fans alike. 

Dig in, folks. There's plenty more where that came from

Motel Hell (1980)

5-Totally Terrifying

4-Crazy Creepy

3-Fairly Frightening

2-Slightly Scary

1-Hardly Horror

ThanksKilling

Don't worry, you totally read that title right. ThanksKilling (2009) is a completely ridiculous, consciously made B-movie extravaganza of utter schlock, and as such, it's bizarrely enjoyable. Dumb, but actually funny in an absurd, shake-your-head-at-the-world kind of way, like those people who think that Judaism did not come before Christianity, or videos of skateboarders face-planting off of metal guardrails.

Only this has a mass-murdering, talking, demonic turkey.

ThanksKilling (USA)

Released: November 17, 2009 (made in 2007, post-production in 2008, and released straight to DVD in '09. Come on people, like this would EVER see a movie theater)

Director: Jordan Downey

Screenplay: Kevin Stewart & Jordan Downey

Tagline: "Gobble, Gobble, Motherfucker!"

Cast:

Lance Predmore as Johnny (The Jock)

Lindsey Anderson as Kristen (The Good Girl)

Ryan E. Francis as Darren (The Nerd)

Aaron Ringhiser-Carlson as Billy (The Hick)

Natasha Cordova as Ali

General Bastard as Oscar the Hermit

This wonderfully weird holiday guilty pleasure centers around a group of college kids heading out on mini-road trip at the dawn of their Thanksgiving break. When any such scenario occurs in a horror film, even casual fans of the genre know that a certain breakdown is in order: one of the girls will be a bit "loose in the legs," another will be a tad nerdy, and generally virginal, one of the guys will be the "Alpha," ideally a football player, but lacrosse or swimming is acceptable, another guy will be the fool, the comedic idiot who isn't all that attractive but remains goofy enough to keep the attention of the female company, and then there will be the fifth wheel, a painfully inept social outcast. 

These tropes are recycled almost on a daily basis when it comes to crafting horror characters, characters pulled from a bin and given different names since we first saw Ned running around in his underwear wearing a Native American headdress in the very first Friday the 13th (1980). Occasionally, for the sake of making a point about these stereotypes and their constant presence in post-1980 horror, a movie like ThanksKilling will present these characters in unabashed, exaggerated stereotypical glory, but often this attempt comes across weak and forced. Then again, sometimes it doesn't.

Our crew of cardboard-cutouts in ThanksKilling encounter car trouble en route to their primary destination (big shocker there, right?) and decide to camp where they land. Because, even though the whole point of the trip is simply to go home for break, they've somehow packed sleeping bags, tents, and camping supplies, so WHY THE HELL NOT? While they drink and flirt about the campfire, the nerdiest kid of the bunch, tag-along friend Darren, tells the tale of a serial-killing turkey imbued with dark spirits immediately after the first Thanksgiving to be used as a weapon against white people (a story that, during which, we get to hear the line, "Turkeyologists all over the world refer to it as…THANKSKILLING"). Unfortunately for them (and,  let's be real, for us as well) legend becomes reality when a local hermit's dog pisses on the burial site of said vengeful turkey and resurrects the foul-mouthed, rubber and plastic beast, who then proceeds to stalk our heroes and pick them off one by one.

"You just got STUFFED"

-actual line from the movie

As such, it should come to know surprise to anyone that this movie is not in any way, shape, or form meant to be taken seriously. The filmmakers made a point in the promotions for the film that there would be "tits in the first minute," which there are--some pilgrim woman is running around in her frumpy buckles and what not with the front of her dress inexplicably missing and her boobs hanging out, because WHY NOT? And it's all just downhill from there. At one point, the killer turkey is hitch-hitching (because OBVIOUSLY), and a driver pulls over and asks what the turkey is offering for a ride, "gas, grass, or ass," and the turkey proceeds to present him with this derriere. Before killing him. With a shotgun. That he somehow has. And then driving away in the car. Driving. He also, sometime later, finishes the job that the murdered lover boy started when the requisite "kill during a sex scene" goes down. Prettyyyyyy silly.

And yet, as completely wrong and messed up as it this that ThanksKilling was made, there are moments where you just have to laugh, genuinely. The filmmakers are using their weird and wonderful film to mock the staples of the horror film and all the crap B-movies that other movie-makers actually believe to be good, but at the same time the film works as a send-up for the slasher sub-genre as well. There's a certain underlying respect there that just, for whatever reason, makes it all O.K.

It's slim pickings when it comes to Thanksgiving-related horror. Christmas is actually very well-covered in the realm of horror, and of course Halloween. There's even films centering around Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, April Fools, and hell, even the Fourth of July got covered in Final Destination 3 (2006). But Thanksgiving? Not a lot of choices. Fortunately for me, my family has a weird turkey day tradition that involves another goofy horror gem that I'll be covering on Thursday, but in the grand scheme of campy horror with a holiday theme, you actually could do worse than ThanksKilling, like Blood Freak (1972), in which a man ends up with a giant turkey's head in place of his own and slaughters a bunch of teens in revenge. I'm not saying we can't do better for Thanksgiving horror, since we certainly can, but I have a feeling that because ThanksKilling is just so fun, it'll become the Troll 2 (1990) of a new generation. Gobble, gobble, motherfuckers. Gobble, gobble.

"Now that's what I call FOWL PLAY"

P.S. If you find that you can't get enough of the murderous turkey, have NO FEAR. There is a sequel, ThanksKilling 3 (2012) available to stream instantly on Amazon. Don't worry, you didn't miss ThanksKilling 2, because ThanksKilling 3 IS ThanksKilling 2….YEAH.

ThanksKilling (2009)

5-Totally Terrifying

4-Crazy Creepy

3-Fairly Frightening

2-Slightly Scary

1-Hardly Horror

Horror History: Exotic Monsters (The 1930's)

Again, it starts with Dracula.

And his mighty claw, apparently

When Bela Lugosi was interviewed about his stage performance as the Count, journalists would often ask if he was worried about being typecast in "mystery plays." After Lugosi had starred in Tod Browning's 1931 film, with Frankenstein (1931) in pre-production at Universal as a follow-up and competing studios rooting about for similar properties to chase the Dracula dollars, the term "horror film" slipped into general usage.

When the British Board of Film Censors instituted a special rating for these "distasteful" items, they labelled them as "H" for "Horrific"--which seems to have sealed the deal in so far as naming the genre went. It wasn't a linguistic inevitability: terms like "macabre," "gothic," "weird," "terror," "monster," and "shudder" were also available.

Though Dracula founded a genre, there's a feeling that neither the studio nor the director really had their heart in the film. Both were involved with the project because of Lon Chaney. With his death, it may have seemed like a contractual obligation. Universal gaffed about with casting choices before resorting, essentially because he was cheap, to Lugosi. It may be they didn't go with Conrad Veidt because they didn't see Dracula as a super-spectacular like The Phantom of the Opera (1925), which was then in re-release in a part-talkie version, or The Man Who Laughs (1928). Browning hardly gave Dracula his best shot--though stunningly designed and photographed by German Karl Freund, who had done The Golem (1920) and Metropolis (1926), the picture is basic filmmaking, certainly not on par with The Unknown (1927) or other surviving Chaney-Browning films. Some have argued that the simultaneous Spanish version shot on the same sets (from a translation of the John L. Balderston script) is more excitingly directed by George Melford. Personally, I feel it should be noted that it's far less excitingly script-edited--Browning tore out redundant pages which Melford faithfully plods through. The English-language Dracula has pace to recommend it above the Spanish shadow, not to mention Lugosi' iconic performance in a role Carlos Villarias cannot claim to own in the way the Hungarian did (and does). Browning's film also has a definitive fly-eating Renfield from Dwight Frye, whose cracked laugh is almost as imitable as Lugosi's haunting "I…am…Dracula," accent.

Plus that's one winning smile

There was enthusiasm for Dracula on the part of studio head Carl Laemmle Jr., just promoted by a doting father. But no one seems to have considered how radical the material was. To the Laemmles, Dracula was a solid, proven property--a book everyone knew and a play that was still running. The studio that had coined it in with The Phantom of the Opera and The Cat and the Canary (1927) thought they knew what they were getting. Dracula was even a remake: Nosferatu (1922) might be officially suppressed, but certainly wasn't forgotten--clips turn up in a Universal short, Boo! (1932), so there must even have been a print on th slot for easy reference--and F.W. Murnau was well-known around town as an Oscar winner for Sunrise (1928). 

The difference between what had come before in Hollywood and Dracula was underlined by the play's epilogue, in which Dr. Van Helsing (played by Edward Van Sloan in the film) comes out from behind the curtain to assure the audience that "there are such things." The Phantom was malformed at birth, the Cat just the secondary heir in a fright mask, and Chaney's pointy-fanged London After Midnight (1927) vampire turned out to be a sleuth playing dress up to catch a killer. Lugosi's Dracula is a real-life, honest-to-Bram Stoker bloodsucking reanimated corpse. Previously, Hollywood had been leery of "such things" and practical Yankee reviewers were a touch sneery about their appearance in highfalutin European pictures which might do for the carriage trade but wouldn't pack 'em into the stalls. Browning didn't care either way. He remade London After Midnight as Mark of the Vampire (1935), with Lugosi in the cloak again, and tried to get away with a Scooby-Doo ending as if he hadn't founded a whole new genre with Dracula.

Junior Laemmle took note of the unexpected box office bonanza of Dracula, which hit theaters in February 1931, and immediately began to develop Frankenstein, getting it out before the end of the year, despite a change of director and star midway through pre-production. Originally, the project was set for Lugosi and Robert Florey, but the Englishman James Whale, whom Laemmle valued as a Universal asset, was given the pick of all the studio's properties and plumped for Mary Shelley's "Man Who Made a Monster." Lugosi (who, forever after, claimed to have turned down the Monster role rather than being unceremoniously dumped by a Brit who didn't take him seriously) and Florey were shunted off into Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), a Poe adaptation which is also a lightly disguised remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Whale cast his London stage associate Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein, bumping out a possibly interesting Leslie Howard, and scuppered Lugosi' future career by selecting Anglo-Indian bit player Boris Karloff (born William Pratt) to wear Jack P. Pierce's make-up as the Monster.

And he really does wear it well

In the opening credits of Frankenstein, Karloff is billed as "?"--his name, not familiar to the public despite decades' worth of secondary villains and one-scene psychotics, was not revealed until the "a good cast is worth repeating" closing crawl. If Dracula is a thrown-together piece that somehow works, Frankenstein is the result of considered thought by the director, make-up man (a great deal of the film's lasting strength is in that unbeatable, copyrighted Monster) and cast. The script is even more makeshift than that of Dracula, with too many irreconcilable ideas thrown in. Quite a lot of fuss is made of the plot point that the hunchbacked minion Fritz (Dwight Frye, whom Whale did hold over from Dracula) has snatched an "abnormal brain" for use in the Monster's skull, but this "explanation" for why the experiment turns out badly is at odds with Whale's (and Shelley's) depiction of the creature as an innocent who only reacts viciously when abused or  rejected, and whose worst crime (drowning a little girl) is simply a tragic misunderstanding.

The early stirrings of censoring grumblers (especially in Britain, the spiritual home of Dracula and Frankenstein) did more to excite than depress box office figures. With two proven hits, Universal realized they had a new-made genre on their hands--complete with iconic stars, supporting actors, standing sets, behind-the-camera talent like Whale, Pierce, and Freund, and a shelf load of suitable source material--and that their horror monopoly would not last long. Lugosi, though he signed for a Poverty Row quickie (shot on the Universal lot), White Zombie (1932), retained some of the Dracula magic in the troubled Murders in the Rue Morgue, and would remain (resentfully) the studio's number-two bet for any horror role. But Whale and Karloff were treasured and were cannier and more ambitious than the Hungarian in parlaying their break-out success into whole careers. The duo reunited for The Old Dark House (1932), adapted from a J.B. Priestley novel, which summed up the entire genre of pre-Dracula "old dark house" horror comedies--Whale even re-creates some of Paul Leni's Cat and the Canary compositions. The gloomy drawing room is filled with clipped, to-be-familiar British players (Raymond Massey, Ernest Thesiger, Charles Laughton) who sprout sardonic dialogue, and Karloff is cast as a grunting "below-stairs" brute--Morgan, the drunken Welsh butler. Whale was a working class lad who reinvented himself as an "officer material" gentleman and West End wit, whereas Karloff was the public school-educated black sheep of a distinguished diplomatic family who'd oddly served decades as a manual laborer before becoming an actor. Whale disparagingly referred to his discovery as "the truck driver."

Perhaps sensing that he was being "kept in his place," Karloff passed on Whale's offer of The Invisible Man (1933), in which his voice would finally be heard but only on the condition that his face was kept off screen. Claude Rains, another well spoken Englishman of humble origins, landed that plum, and his silky voice established him as a character star. Lugosi moaned that if only he had played the Monster, he would have got all the career breaks which came to Karloff; Karloff never suggested that, if he had played the Invisible Man, he would have landed Rains's stand-out roles in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1943), and Notorious (1945). 

Do you know how many children the Invisible Man has?

None, he's not apparent!

Karloff as at last allowed to talk, revealing an educated lisp in The Mummy (1932), a swift rewrite of Dracula mingled with She and tabloid stories about the "Curse of King Tut." With Karl Freund promoted to director and a script that is streamlined rather than eccentric, The Mummy is Hollywood's first conveyor-belt horror film--commissioned by a studio that knew what they were getting, partnered closely on what had worked before, and showcasing a star who was not only a proven talent but a box-office draw in this type of picture. Withal, along with the tunes of Swan Lake over the credits (as in Dracula and several other Universal movies of the period) and another memorable Jack Pierce make-up job, a whiff of graveyard poetry informs the film.

By now, the competition was on the scent. Every studio in Hollywood had their own would-be Dracula or Frankenstein on the starting blocks. Paramount, the most elegant and sophisticated of the majors, looked to classic novels which nevertheless offered an opportunity for lurid, sexualized violence. First, they green lit Robert Mamoulian to direct Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), with Fredric March trumping John Barrymore's silent performance by doing the handsome doctor as a parody of matinee idly Barrymore and the ape-like mister as a shaggy thug in evening dress with a nasty steak of sadistic humor. Paramount's second-string monster was Erle C. Kenton's Island of Lost Souls (1933), with Charles Laughton as a flabby, whip-wielding incarnation of H.G. Wells's Dr. Moreau. An unrecognizable Lugosi hides under face-fur as a beast man added in post-production to beef up the film's horror status. March won a Best Actor Oscar at the Academy Awards that year, which went some way towards silencing prudes tho though the film entirely too explicit about the double man's relationship with Soho tart Ivy (Miriam Hopkins). Island of Lost Souls was actually banned in England for its vivisection and implied bestiality. Meanwhile, Paramount's Murders in the Zoo (1933) is just as nasty, if nowhere near as respectable.

Warner Brothers, who specialized in rattling, contemporary, torn-from-the-headline dramas (even their musicals are realistic) had Michael Curtiz direct a pair of twisted whodunits in lovely Technicolor, Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). These introduce Lionel Atwill as another British horror face, voice, and leer (Paramount would snap him up for Murders in the Zoo and he would inevitably gravitate to Universal's stock company). They also employed Fay Wray as a leggy beauty, even though some might say she was upstaged by Glenda Farrell's wisecracking proto-Lois Lane in Mystery of the Wax Museum. The two films mixed disfigured fiends, mad geniuses, "moon murders," and "synthetic flesh" with snappy reporters doing self-aware gags ("he makes Frankenstein look like a lily") and complaining about Prohibition. Warner never really committed to horror, but Curtiz landed Karloff for The Walking Dead (1935), which has gangsters stalked by a vengeful zombie (it's one of the first "body count" movies), and the studio put contract player Humphrey Bogart in an unlikely "scientific vampire" role for The Return of Dr. X (1939). 

Humphrey Bog-eyman? 

RKO had their own monster in the works, though King Kong (1933) doesn't seem to have been an attempt to get in on the Dracula and Frankenstein business and probably owes its inspiration to the 1926 film of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which had proved that Willis H. O'Brien's hand-animated prehistoric creatures could carry a picture. While producer-directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper were toiling over King Kong, they had time to use the same sets and actress Fay Wray in a quickie classic, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Here, Leslie Banks is cast in the Karloff-Atwill-Rains mould as Count Zaroff, a Russian huntsman with perfect Shaftesbury Avenue tones and a distinctive way of holding a cigarette. Zaroff's passion is stalking "the most dangerous game," man. The Richard Connell story would be often remade and Zaroff is an archetype of the sadistic mad genius who would feature in many horror melodramas before mutating into the role model for all Bond villains (Christopher Lee's Man With the Golden Gun has many Zaroff traits). After Zaroff and the awe-inspiring King Kong, RKO rushed out Son of Kong (1933), the genre's first disappointing sequel (hooray!), and quit the horror business until the 1940's.

MGM, which liked to think themselves the most prestigious studio on the row, obviously had to make horror movies. Chaney and Browning had worked there through the 1920's, under the aegis of the supposed genius Irving Thalberg--who had a strange streak that responded to stories like The Unknown. Browning was back with Freaks (1932) and Chaney replaced by real sideshow oddities--the result is Browning's masterpiece, though it's wildly inconsistent in tone. It was hastily sold off by the studio to grind house exhibitors who touted it as a roadshow shocker alongside Dwain Esper's astounding Poe-derived Maniac (1934). Since Freaks didn't work (though it's fondly looked on as a genre classic now), the studio played safe by hiring Karloff and adapting a proven property in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Again, MGM vacillated, switching directors and never settling on a proper tone. However, this is the film where Karloff really breaks out and shows he can be more than a dutiful studio employee, relishing sadistic camp in a manner even Whale would never dare and hissing polite hatred as he plans to lead his Asian hordes in an apocalyptic conflict to kill all white men and mate with their women. Myrna Loy is fun as the devil doctor's "sadistic nymphomaniac" daughter too--and puritanical, moralistic studio boss Louis B. Mayer, in a perpetual power struggle with Thalberg, was duly horrified. Browning, though reckoned as a burn-out now, was still welcome on the lot; besides Mark of the Vampire (1935), he managed one other quirky effort, the grotesque science-fiction tale of miniaturized assassins, The Devil-Doll (1936). Perhaps MGM's best horror was another attempt to fit the Universal template, Mad Love (1935), which hired Freund to direct, used source material (Maurice Renard's novel The Hands of Orlac) which had worked in a German silent film, and teamed established second-rank horror player Colin Clive with Peter Lorre, whose performance in the well-crafted Fritz Lang film M impressed all those Hollywood executives who would never have greenlit a film about child-murder and who was well on his way to joining the elect company of horror stars.

The independent Halperin organization gave Lugosi one of his better roles in White Zombie (1932), drawing not the then-hot new topic of Caribbean voodoo. This introduced the apparatus of wax dolls and walking corpses, and exploited the sub-genre's simultaneous fascination with and denial of ethnic cultures: the implication of the title is that "Black Zombie" wouldn't be news. Never a force, even on Poverty Row, the Halperins managed a semi-sophisticated tale of possession, Supernatural (1933), and a near-unwatched follow up, Revolt of the Zombies (1936). Other quickie outfits were ready to sign Lugosi or Atwill and borrow Universal sets. Majestic made The Vampire Bat (1933) with Atwill and Fay Wray, and Condemned to Live (1935). The success of White Zombie inspired Drums o' Voodoo (1934), Black Moon (1934), and Ouanga (1935). If things dried up in Hollywood, there were even jobs abroad. Karloff returned home in triumph for the rickety (but I think still wonderful) The Ghoul (1933) and the calmer The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936), while Lugosi was made welcome in England for The Phantom Ship (1935), from the newly founded studio Hammer Films, and the Edgar Wallace derived shocker The Dark Eyes of London (1939). However, if horror had a true home, it was still the surely on the Universal lot.

I actually kind of really want this on a t-shirt. No joke.

Junior Laemmle's big idea for 1934 was to team Karloff and Lugosi and throw in a big horror name he didn't have to pay for, Edgar Allan Poe. The Black Cat (1934), directed by the ambitious Edgar C. Ulmer, owes more to The Most Dangerous Game than the Poe story, but nevertheless gives the stars material worth chewing over. Karloff plays a perverted diabolist who lives in a modern castle built over the battlefield where all the men he betrayed in the war were killed, and Lugosi is a vengeance-seeking obsessive who plans on skinning him alive. It worked so well that the gang was back together, with Ulmer replaced by the less artsy Louis Friedlander for The Raven (1935), in which Lugosi's Poe-obsessed mad plastic surgeon gives Karloff's gangster a new, hideous face. In this pair of films, the stars are evenly matched, alternating lead villain and vengeful stooge. By The Invisible Ray (1936) Karloff was the undisputed lead as a glowing mutant and Lugosi is just along for the name-value. Meanwhile, Universal--wary of Whale's increasing demands--tried to boost other directors as horror men. Stuart Walker handled a couple of gothic Dickens films, getting good mad work from Claude Rains in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), and was given The WereWolf of London (1935), in which Henry Hull subs for Karloff as a botanist infected with lycanthropy by Warner Oland in the Himalayas. The first talkie werewolf movie, this still wound up being a rough draft for a sub-genre that didn't come together until The Wolf Man (1941). 

What Universal really wanted weren't just follow-ups, but sequels. James Whale was given carte blanche--along with a dream cast, including Ernest Thesiger and Elsa Lanchester--to make Bride of Frankenstein (1935), which is at once a genuine expansion of his original and a deconstructive parody of it. Waspish, sly, charming, perverse, and emotionally devastating, Bride of Frankenstein shows how far Hollywood had come in only four years: already, the 1931 film, with its lack of music and dull, drawing-room chats, seemed antique, while the sequel has a full score by Franz Waxman, no patience at all with boring characters (Valerie Hobson barely gets a look-in, though she officially has the title role) and enormous visual sophistication to go with his bare-faced, blasphemous cheek. If it had been up to Whale, the horror cycle would have ended with Bride of Frankenstein. He certainly had no more to say on the subject. Like Browning, he didn't really work after the mid-1930's. Universal, of course, saw things differently. They had Dracula's Daughter (1936) in production--albeit without Lugosi (Gloria Holden is luminously odd in the title role by the way) and with a new, efficient briskness that makes for rattling entertainment and gothic charm but sadly few real chills. 

Around the time of these sequels, the horror film fell off Hollywood's production schedules. Pressure from British censors and moralists mounted due to the rising tension in Europe, whispers of war and atrocious Nazi crimes on the horizon. This brought about a hiatus. It was somewhat bizarre given that the voice of Hollywood horror had a distinctly British accent, much of the subject matter came from British authors and the remarkable Tod Slaughter was in constant employment in tiny studios around London outdoing any depravity Karloff or Lugosi could imagine in the likes of Sweeney Todd, or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) and The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936). Still, Karloff was reduced to playing a Charlie Chan knock-off Chinese sleuth for the low-grade Monogram studio and Lugosi was on welfare until the end of the decade, when the horror express was back on the rails. 

This might not be exactly what the horror express looks like,

but I'm sure it's similar

Hailed as "the greatest year for film," 1939 was big on super-productions. Besides Gone with the Wind, mammoth Southern drama, and The Wizard of Oz, ultimate children's tale, there were several epic-scale, all-star, A-picture revivals of genres that had fallen to programmer status, notably the Western Stagecoach and the gangster picture The Roaring Twenties.

The usual account of the 1939 return of the horror film suggests that a successful double-bill re-release of Dracula and Frankenstein prompted Universal to produce Son of Frankenstein--inevitably casting Karloff (in his final go-round as the Monster) and Lugosi (in arguably his finest screen role as the broken-necked Ygor), with incisive Basil Rathbone and clipped Lionel Atwill aboard to make up for the absence of the dry, British Whale (replaced by the underrated, in my opinion, Rowland V. Lee). However, Son of Frankenstein wasn't the only horror restart project that year. Rathbone donned the deerstalker for the first time in Fox's Hound of the Baskervilles, Paramount polished off an old Universal property and put Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary (with perennial supporting suspects George Zucco and Gale Sondergaard) and RKO mounted a lavish version of another silent Universal hit with Charles Laughton as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There was even time enough for follow-ups: Universal had Lee, Karloff, and Rathbone do a historical horror (Tower of London), Fox got Rathbone back for a macabre duel with Moriarty (Zucco) in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and RKO got another Broadway mystery remake in the cane with The Gorilla (with the Ritz brothers, Atwill, and Lugosi).

Horror was back.

Boris Karloff climbin' in you windows and snatchin' yo

people up in The Ghoul (1933)

Next in Horror History: Man vs. Animal, a Looming Terror (The 1940's)