EVERYONE LOVES A MONSTER.

At first, that doesn’t sound right. After all, isn’t

everyone supposed to be afraid of a monster? But
it is a strange kind of fear that sends adults and
children by the millions into libraries and movie
theaters in search of tales of terror. It is the same
feeling that makes children scream with pleasure
on a spinning, diving ride at the carnival. Obvi¬
ously, there is something deep down inside most
people that gets pleasure out of sheer fright.
This “something” seems to go back to the very
beginning of human history....

GREAT MONSTERS OF MOVIES

was originally published by
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
About the Author:
 «rrfci t
Monster
of til
Movie**
by Edward Edels^n

AN a" HWAY PAPERBACK

 4
“sSsfT-
 Table o£ Contents

The Legends 1

The Pioneers 25

Three Frightening Men 39

The Big Beasts 69

A Miscellany of Monsters 87

Index 115
 Great
Monsters
of the
Movies
 The Legends

Everyone loves a monster.

At first, that doesn’t sound right. After all, isn’t
everyone supposed to be afraid of a monster? But
it is a strange kind of fear that sends adults and
children by the millions into libraries and movie
theaters in search of tales of terror. It is the same
feeling that makes children scream with pleasure
on a spinning, diving rise at the carnival. Obvious¬
ly, there is something deep down inside most people
that gets pleasure out of sheer fright.
 Great Monsters
This “something” seems to go back to the very
beginning of human history. The oldest civiliza¬
tions man has known have all had their frighten¬
ing tales of ghosts and other unearthly creatures.
It is safe to say that tales designed to send a chill
down the listener’s spine go back even farther,
to the earliest, unrecorded days of mankind. And
today, of course, that same “something” has helped
make the monster one of the most popular screen
characters.
You can understand this deep-down feeling
better by thinking of the earliest days, when primi¬
tive men had just begun to master the talents that
led to civilization. There they sit at night, huddled
around a small, flickering fire surrounded by dark¬
ness and frightening noises. Almost anything
could be out there in that darkness, and—in the
mind of primitive man—almost anything could
happen at any time. Perhaps a man could turn
into an animal or back again. Perhaps a sorcerer
could make a spirit rise and obey him. Perhaps
the dead could come back to plague the living.
And certainly, huge, monstrous animals could
suddenly plunge out of the forest to create havoc.
The world was new and hard to explain.
One way of explaining it was to invent tales,
about the beings who controlled all these strange
events—for to the mind of primitive man, every
event was controlled by beings that were like hu-
2
 The Legends
mans, only much more powerful. These tales were
intended not to frighten people but to soothe them.
Passed from generation to generation, these stories
soon became traditional parts of a culture.
Perhaps that is how tales of horror began. We
will never know for sure. But we do know that they
have continued to be part of human culture to this
day—perhaps not a highly respected part in mod¬
ern times, but one that continues to fill a real hu¬
man need. In primitive times, tales and legends
had a religious purpose, since every aspect of the
primitive man’s life was” filled with magic. Only
later did entertainment become the main purpose
of tales of terror. Today, some people in unde¬
veloped areas of the world may hold on to the
deeper, magic significance of their horror tales.
But in this country, horror stories and movies are
only pure entertainment, an attempt to escape
for a while from the dull, everyday world into a
setting where almost anything can happen and all
the old terrors are loose again, if only for a few

In the beginning, monster stories were told by

bards who recited the tales they had memorized.
Later came the written word, which allowed these
tales to be put on paper. Today, the real home of
the monster story is the movie theater. That is
where the terror seems most realistic and delicious.
It is easy to understand why monsters are so
3
 Great Monsters
much at home in the movies. For one thing, when
you go to the movies you sit in the dark, and dark¬
ness is a sheltering, comfortable home for mon¬
sters. (It is even more frightening to read a mys¬
tery story at home alone after dark than to read it
in broad daylight.) Then again, a motion picture
can show you, in vivid, realistic detail, all the ter¬
rors that you could care to imagine. In the movies
ordinary: a vampire turns into a bat in front of
your eyes, a man-made monster rises up and walks,
a respectable businessman is transformed into a
a respectable businessman is transformed into a
hairy wolf in a few seconds, a huge ape destroys
a city as you watch in fascination. Even in these
sophisticated days, there is something very magical
about watching the impossible come true on the

But the movies can also do just the opposite,

and make an ordinary event into, a frightening,
sinister happening. A clever director can turn the
most common, everyday scene into something you
shudder at. For example, consider a scene that
shows a living room that could be in your house.
Weird music starts, a door creaks, curtains billow
with the wind, a telephone rings and no one an¬
swers—almost all these things happen every night
at home, but when they happen on the screen,
under the proper direction, they can be more fright¬
ening than a bucket of blood.
 The Legends
In fact, many of the most frightening movies
rely more on hints and indirect actions than they
do on actual pictures of terrifying beings doing
awful things. It does not take much skill to scare
people by showing a scene with a lot of gore. Just
the opposite; these scenes usually end up by boring
the viewer because they are so monotonous. The
real talent is the ability to make you scream with
pleasant fright and hide your face from nothing
more than a shadow moving across the screen.
The great directors do that, using the scenes of
out-and-out horror to bring the movie to a climax.
Only in the movies can the ordinary be used to set
the scene for moments of wild fright.
And, of course, movie background music helps—
slinky, scary music that goes with all the monstrous
happenings on the screen. Background music,
started in the days when movies were silent, and
every theater had a piano player or an organist
who would play tunes that helped set the mood
of each scene—fast music for chases, funny music
for comedies, and so on. When talking pictures
arrived, the practice of providing music to build
the mood of a picture continued, but now the music
was added to the sound track at the studio.
There is no question that a few chords can height¬
en the terror of a monster movie. But too often,
frightening music is used as a substitute for good
acting and direction. It is too easy to overdo back-
5
 Great Monsters
ground music, and some of the greatest monster
movies use almost no music at all. But to most
moviegoers, no scene of terror is quite complete
without the right background of minor chords.
It might be thought that the television screen
is an even better medium for terror than a movie
theater, but it usually doesn’t work that way. Most
people watch television at home, surrounded by
all the familiar belongings that make terror on the
screen less realistic. Since the television screen is
small, nothing on it is quite as convincing as what
you see on the bigger-than-life movie screen. And
while a motion picture goes on without interrup¬
tion, allowing the director to build a mood of ter¬
ror, most television programs are interrupted fre¬
quently for advertisements. Somehow, it is hard
to be truly frightened when a monster scene is fol¬
lowed by a deodorant commercial. Finally, if you
do get scared, you can turn to another channel,
something that is impossible in the movies. While
there have been some successful attempts at tele¬
vision terror, the movies remain the real stamping
ground of the great monsters.
Because movie monsters are so popular, writers,
producers, and directors have scoured the world’s
folk tales and literature to come up with enough
unearthly creatures to meet the demand. Mon¬
sters of every variety, some traditional, some mod-
 The Legends
era inventions, have been created in vie studios
for the benefit of waiting horror fans.
One of the most durable movie monsters is the
vampire, a repulsive creature that goes far back
in human history. Many ancient peoples, including
the Egyptians and the Greeks, had folk tales of
“undead” men who rose from the grave and needed
human blood for their food. In more recent times,
these legends have come to center in southeastern
Europe—more specifically, in a picturesque prov¬
ince of Romania called Transylvania, which is
near the Hungarian border. It is in this part of
Europe that the vampire legend has become most
highly developed, with a wealth of details covering
every aspect of a vampire’s life, habits, and death.
According to these legends, the true vampire is
neither quite alive nor quite dead. He—or it—is
something in between, and chilling. There are
several ways of becoming a vampire, all of them
terrifying; the most common is to be bitten by
another vampire.
Once the vampire comes into existence—"born”
is the wrong word—he must sleep in his own closed
coffin during the daytime. When night falls, the
legend says, the vampire goes out to seek the blood
that sustains him. The vampire ordinarily prefers
sleeping victims. Sneaking up on them, he sinks
his teeth into the neck, draining just enough blood
to keep the victim alive. The vampire does not let
 Great Monsters
emotions interfere with his cravings; a woman who
is unlucky enough to fall in love with a vampire
is likely to be his first victim.
Legend gives the vampire the ability to turn him¬
self into unhuman forms—a wisp of mist perhaps,
or (more often) a bat. It is remarkable to note that
there actually is such a creature as a vampire bat,
found in Latin America, which does live on blood.
The vampire bat is far less sinister than the legend¬
ary vampire, however. It is a small creature that
usually preys on cattle or other animals, biting
them and then lapping up the blood as it flows
from the wound. Only occasionally will a vampire
bat feed on a human, and then it does not bite the
throat but usually the big toe. Vampire bats are
more a nuisance than a horror.
The ability of the legendary vampire to trans¬
form himself into mist or animal enables him to
go many places where an ordinary man could not,
and to escape from certain traps. On occasion,
when his enemies are closing in, the vampire is
reputed to turn himself into a wolf for swift escape.
While these supernatural powers make the vam¬
pire a formidable enemy, the legend also says they
have many weak spots that leave them open to
attack. For example, daylight is death to a vam¬
pire. He must be back in his coffin by the time
the sun rises, for he will die when the sunlight
8
 The Legends
strikes him. And it must be his own coffin; no
other will do.
For some reason, garlic is another weapon
against the vampire. The legends say that vam¬
pires cannot bear the smell of garlic, and so super¬
stitious folk rub garlic on their doorsills and win¬
dows at night to keep vampires away. And because
the vampire is an unholy creature, it can be des¬
troyed by holy water and it flees from a crucifix or
anything shaped like a cross.
To kill a vampire, only a few selected weapons
will do. A silver bullet will slay the vampire, but
an ordinary bullet will not. The most effective
method of eliminating a vampire is to drive a stake
through its heart, preferably with a single blow.
Some versions of the legends say that the stake
must never be removed, or the vampire will return
to life. Another vampire disposal method is to burn
the coffin that is his resting place. Left without a
home, the vampire will perish when the sun rises.
However, the legends add that vampires are keenly
aware of this danger, and so they hide their coffins
with great care.
While there have been many works of fiction on
the vampire theme, most vampire movies have
been based on the novel Dracula, which was written
in 1897 by a British author named Bram Stoker.
It was this novel that placed the homeland of vam¬
pires in Transylvania, and which solidified many
 Great Monsters
of the vague vampire legends. You will encounter
Dracula often in the pages that follow, because
his sinister presence has haunted the movies from
its earliest times until today.
A different monster who is as ancient as the vam¬
pire is the werewolf—the man who is transformed
into a wolf when the moon is full. Like the vam¬
pire, the werewolf is a creature of the night; when
dawn comes, the wolf returns to its human form.
The legend of man-turned-wolf was known to the
ancient Romans, so it is at least two thousand
years old. The same theme is found in African
folk tales, and among several tribes of American
Indians. Again like the vampire, the werewolf
seems to have found his modern home in south¬
eastern Europe; one reason for this is the fact that
wolves were common in this region until fairly

The werewolf legend—and most common be¬

liefs—are unkind to the wolf. While the great
majority of people picture a wolf as a wicked beast
who kills anything at all, for pleasure more than
for food, the real-life wolf has been found to be a
self-respecting citizen of the wild who looks after
his family, slays only when he and his cubs must
eat, and almost never attacks humans. Since this
true picture is too tame, the werewolf legend pic¬
tures a wolf as a maddened, ravening beast that
10
 The Legends
shows no mercy to anyone and who delights in hu¬
man blood.
The werewolf of the movies comes into existence
when an innocent bystander is bitten by another
werewolf. From then on, the man-wolf undergoes
a set of unusual changes. The index fingers of his
hands become extraordinarily long. The palms of
the hands become unusually hairy and begin to
itch endlessly. A distinctive five-pointed symbol
called a pentagram appears on the werewolfs
body, and cannot be removed. But the most re¬
markable changes of all occur when the moon is
full. (Some versions of the legend say the werewolfs
fate is also connected with the flowering of the
wolfsbane, a plant which blooms under the au-

Says the legend: When the moon is full and the

wolfsbane blooms, the man turns into a wolf. His
great strength enables him to prowl at large even
though efforts have been made to keep him behind
locked doors and barred windows. His search is
for human victims, and he kills anyone who crosses
his path. When daytime returns, the werewolf
resumes his human form, with little or no memory
of the night’s wicked deeds. The man-wolf re¬
tains his human form until the next full moon,
when he prowls again.
The legend describes only one sure way to kill
a werewolf—with a hit by a silver bullet. An or-
 Great Monsters
dinary bullet is said to do no harm even if it goes
through the werewolfs heart, but the slightest
touch of the silver bullet means death. If the bullet
strikes when the moon is full, the werewolf will
return to its human form as it dies.
Many legends make the werewolf more a figure
of pity than of hatred. The man-wolf cannot help .
what he does when the moon turns full. And so the
silver bullet often is welcome, because the werewolf
is horrified at the cruel deeds he commits when in
animal form, yet can do nothing to stop himself.
Still, the werewolfs gruesome deeds make him a
beast to be hunted down and destroyed relentlessly.
There is no work of fiction about werewolves to
compare with Bram Stoker’s novel about vam¬
pirism. Nevertheless, the werewolf began to show
up in movies at about the same time as the vam¬
pire did, in the early days of silent films, and the
subject has remained almost as popular since then.
Special effects men and make-up experts take
special delight in managing the transformation
from man to wolf and back again in the scariest
way possible. There are enough variations on the
vampire theme—as you will see—to keep the sub¬
ject going on the screen for years to come.
In addition to these creatures of legend, there is
another folk-tale figure of horror who keeps turn¬
ing up in the movies: the zombie, or walking dead,
who was born in the tales told by Africans who
12
 The Legends
were brought to the Caribbean islands to toil as

The legends describe the zombie as a dead man

brought back to life—but life of a particularly
unpleasant and frightening kind. The zombie is
tireless, working endlessly without food or sleep.
He cannot be hurt by any weapon, and he cannot
feel pain; when hit by a bullet, the zombie simply
does not pay attention. He obeys his master’s com¬
mand without question, and the only way to des¬
troy the zombie is by total elimination. Until that
day, he is the total slave of his master—usually
a wizard who has created the zombie by a form of
black magic or voodoo.
It is easy to see how this legend originated.
Working conditions for black slaves often were
so terrible that many did come close to being the
blindly obedient, endlessly working creatures
that a zombie is supposed to be. A dash of supersti¬
tion helped keep the legend alive even after the
end of slavery.
The zombie theme has not been as popular in
the movies as the legend of the vampire or the
werewolf, perhaps because it is more difficult to
make a zombie look terrifying. A vampire can be
outfitted with a full set of fangs and a werewolf
can be as hairy and toothy as anyone wants, but a
zombie usually is just a man with a blank ex¬
pression. In addition, the zombie is a creature who
13
 Great Monsters
works hard all day and all night, while werewolves
and vampires spend their time not at work but at
play—if you care to call stalking human prey a
form of play. Children who work in school all day
and adults who work in businesses all day would
rather watch a vampire at play than a zombie at
work; at least, that is what the box office results
seem to say. And so zombie movies have not been
too successful.
You might think all these superstitious legends
would become more infrequent in modern times,
when the rise of science should have put an end to
all unscientific tales of monsters. After all, scien¬
tists are supposed to be very logical and unsupersti-
tious, and monsters thrive on fear and lack of logic.
But it didn’t work that way. Instead, the beginnings
of modern science added another kind of villain to
the roster of monsters—the mad scientist.
To many people, the power wielded by the scien¬
tist is as fearful and mysterious as the supernatural
powers described in ancient legends. Almost every
day, we read about scientists who accomplish what
seems like impossible feats—splitting the atom
or building a spacecraft to the moon, for instance.
Unless you understand the knowledge that is the
source of scientific achievements, it is easy to be
frightened by this kind of power.
So while he appears to be a completely new kind
of villain, the mad scientist actually is nothing but
14
 The Legends
a modern version of the old-fashioned magician,
like King Arthur’s Merlin. These magicians, with
their mumbo-jumbo, claimed to command vast
powers that an ordinary man could hardly begin
to understand. The ordinary man shrank back in
fear, terrified that these magical powers might be
turned against him.
The mad scientist is the same kind of frightening
figure. In a way, he is as much a legend as the
zombie or vampire. The mad scientist is always
pictured as a genius who can accomplish un¬
believable things (for example, creating a living
man from left-over parts of corpses, or transform¬
ing beasts into humans). Sometimes, the mad
scientist is a good-hearted creature who does his
mysterious experiments to advance human knowl¬
edge or to help mankind. Sometimes he is pure
evil, creating monsters for revenge, for profit,
or out of pure hatred and spite. But one thing you
can be sure of when you watch a mad scientist
movie: no matter what his motives are, the mad
scientist will come to no good. Almost always, he
will be destroyed by what he creates.
A few years ago, most scientists would have
laughed at that picture. They would have des¬
cribed it as a basic misunderstanding of what
scientists do. They would say that scientists are
people just like any other, trying to do a good job
15
 Great Monsters
and not hurt anyone, even though the results of
their work sometimes may be misused.
But these days, the old-time image of the mad
scientist sometimes seems prophetic. Alarm about
the ecological damage man is doing to his world
through science and technology has made many
people say that scientists must not ignore the ef¬
fects of their discoveries, but must try to control
those effects. Hydrogen bombs and missiles that
can destroy whole cities seem like the work of mad
scientists. Perhaps, in an odd way, the “mad scien¬
tist movies” were trying to tell us something we did
not realize: that pure science can, indeed, lead to
impure and harmful results.
The most famous mad scientist of all was created
long before the movies existed. He was the central
figure in a novel written by a young British woman
who was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of
the greatest poets of all time. More than 150 years
ago, when she was just twenty-one years old, Mrs.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley caused a sensation
by writing a novel titled, Frankenstein, or the Mod¬
em Prometheus.
Prometheus was the legendary Greek figure who
stole fire from the gods for mankind and died
because of his theft. Mary Shelley, looking at the
growing power of science with a poet’s eye, con¬
jured up a scientist with an equally daring goal:
Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the German nobleman
16
 The Legends
who was determined to create a perfect being
by taking parts of human bodies, putting them to¬
gether, and then bringing a new being into ex¬
istence.
Frankenstein’s dream, and its nightmarish re¬
sults—the creature was a destructive monster, not
a perfect being by any means—caught the imagina¬
tion of readers at once. Almost every mad scien¬
tist since then has resembled Frankenstein. The
movies have returned to the theme of Franken¬
stein and his monster again and again. Usually,
Frankenstein movies follow the plot used by Mary
Shelley: the man-made monster that proves to be
inhuman and vicious, who is destructive and mis¬
erable, and who eventually destroys his creator
and sometimes himself.
In the 1920s, a different science, archaeology,
created a new kind of movie monster: the mummy.
It all began in 1922, when a team of archaeologists
led by Howard Carter discovered, in the Valley
of the Kings, near Luxor, the hidden tomb of King
Tutankhamen. Many other tombs of ancient Egyp¬
tian rulers were known, but this one was unusual.
Somehow, Tutankhamen’s tomb had escaped the
ravages of tomb robbers, who had stripped every
other tomb of all its treasures. Tutankhamen’s
tomb had such beautiful and valuable objects that
the discovery sent a thrill through the whole world.
Here was the mummy of a man who had lived near-
17
 Great Monsters
ly three thousand years ago, surrounded by gold,
ivory, and beautiful works of art.
This thrill of discovery was followed by a thrill
of terror. Somehow, the idea got around that there
was a “Curse of King Tut” that would strike down
all the people who had invaded the royal tomb.
This belief was pure superstition, of course, but
the idea of a curse was so exciting that many people
half-believed it. In the years that followed, many
of the men who had opened the tomb did die. All
of them died of natural causes, and most of them
were old men. However, those people who wanted
to believe in the “curse” accepted no other ex¬
planation for the deaths. And, of course, the idea
of the mummy’s curse was too good for the movies
to pass up. Like the mad scientist, the mummy
who comes back to life has become a popular figure
in monster movies. Several outstanding films
have been made using the mummy theme, and
the mystery involved in opening an ancient tomb
still provides an excellent framework for hor¬
ror films.
Finally, there are the animal monsters that can
exist only in the movies—the giant beasts of every
description that stalk, stomp, slither, and swim
across the movie screen. These are the creations
of the special effects men, who keep adding to a
bag of tricks that have accumulated over several
decades of screen trickery. A good special effects
18
 The Legends
man can make you see a dinosaur as big as a moun¬
tain or a gorilla as big as a house. He can make
an elephant appear to fly through the air, or turn
an ordinary ant into a terrifying attacker. It’s
all done with models, double exposures (shooting
two scenes on the same piece of film, so both scenes
seem to be happening at once), special sets and
many more tricks like these.
In the worst of these films, the monster is ob¬
viously just a man dressed up in a funny suit, or
an unrealistic model that is maneuvered in front
of phony scenery. But the best of these monster
movies can bring back extinct dinosaurs with a
realism that makes the viewer gasp, or make an
impossible beast into a real terror that destroys
a city you can recognize.
In recent years, the theme of the giant animal
monster has started to merge with the mad scientist
theme. Once upon a time, filmmakers had no ex¬
planation for the sudden appearance of a giant
monster. Now the monsters can be blamed on a
scientific experiment that has gone wrong or on
a nuclear explosion. But, on the other hand, scien¬
tists usually are the heroes of these movies. They
always step in at the last moment with a new ma¬
chine that conquers the monster after everything
else has failed.
One of the charms of this kind of monster movie
is that you know what you are watching could never
19
 Great Monsters
really happen. A gorilla as big as King Kong could
not exist in real life. Because its bones would not
be strong enough to support it, a giant ape would
literally collapse of its own weight. So would a
giant animal of any other kind, or a giant insect.
Dinosaurs are impossible for a different reason.
While the giant dinosaurs you see on the screen
actually did exist at one time, no man ever met a
real dinosaur. The dinosaurs became extinct more
than a hundred million years ago, long before man
made his appearance on this planet; modern man
did not appear until about one million years ago.
So all the movies that show cave men wrapped
in skins fighting with dinosaurs are showing you
something that never really happened; cave men
had to fight saber-toothed cats and woolly mam¬
moths, but never dinosaurs. As for the rest of the
sea serpents, octopi, dragons, and assorted other
monsters who devastate mankind in horror movies,
some of them theoretically could exist, but none
of them have actually been found in real life. They
owe their movie existence to the wizardry of special
effects men who manage somehow to make doll¬
sized figures tower over actors—on film only.
And that should be a lesson to you, the movie¬
goer, to pay more attention to the people you don’t
see on the screen. Most people notice only the act¬
ors in movies. You can avoid bad movies and select
good ones better if you learn the names of all the
20
 The Legends
other people involved in the making of a mon¬
ster film.
For example, take the make-up men—the
equivalent of special effects men for human actors.
Boris Karloff became famous as Frankenstein’s
monster partly because of his acting ability and
partly because of his appearance, which was de¬
lightfully terrifying. Credit Jack Pierce, the make¬
up man who worked for hours every day to give
Karloff a strange new face. Pierce did the same
masterful job of make-up in a number of other
horror movies.
Don’t forget the writer of the movie, either.
Actors don’t make up the words they speak on
the screen. A writer has to create those lines, and a
convincing plot as well. Writers customarily get
very little attention from movie fans, and their
names are generally unknown to all but a handful
of film experts. Nevertheless, you cannot make a
good movie without a good writer.
But the person who should get most of the credit
for a good movie is the director. You certainly have
heard of Boris Karloff, but just as certainly, the
name of James Whale means little to you. Yet it
was James Whale who directed Frankenstein,
the movie that made Karloff famous, as well as
the equally terrifying sequel, The Bride of Frank¬
enstein. and a number of other excellent horror
movies. The same story could be told of Dracula,
21
 Great Monsters
which rocketed actor Bela Lugosi to world-wide
fame. That film was directed by Tod Browning,
who has a number of great horror movies to his
credit, and who has a dedicated following of
moviegoers.
What does a director do that makes him so
important? He puts all the parts of a movie to¬
gether into a finished product. Good writing, good
special effects, good acting, all still need one more
ingredient. The director supplies that ingredient
by giving the movie guidance, direction, and pace.
He tells the actors how specific scenes should be
handled and arranges for the atmosphere of the
movie to be just right. In a horror film, that means
arranging for the strange shadows, the creaking
doors, the artful footsteps in the night, to happen
just at the right moments in the film. The director
must also insure that each individual scene makes
its own point without overdoing it; after all, there
is a narrow line between something that is fright¬
ening and something that is just laughable. The
director keeps the film moving, so that something
always grips the viewer’s attention. And the di¬
rector builds the movie to the properly terrifying
climax that sends you jumping out of your seat.
No wonder that many moviegoers select their
films by the director alone. The number of directors
who have made great monster movies is limited,
and you should watch for their names. James
22
 The Legends
Whale and Tod Browning have already been men¬
tioned. Even though their films were made thirty
years or more ago, they still are regarded as being
among the best in the field. Other names of old-
time directors to look for include Val Lewton,
Fritz Lang, and Curt Siodmak. When you select
a more modern film, you should watch for such
names as Roger Corman, Terence Fisher, and
the great Alfred Hitchcock. This list is far from
complete, but it is a starter.
To make the list longer, you might make a point
of noting down the name of the director when you
see a new movie that you enjoy very much. The
next time a movie made by that director comes
along, you will be watching for it. In that way,
you can build up your own list of favorite directors,
and follow their progress. Many movie fans find it
fascinating to watch the development of a director
from film to film.
But now the lights of the theater are starting
to go down, the music is beginning, and the title
of the feature is flashing on the screen. Settle back
in your seat and prepare to be frightened. The
monsters are coming.

23
 BRYANT SCHOOL LIBRARY

The Pioneers

No one knows which was the first horror movie.

The early days of the movies, which were also the
early days of the twentieth century, were very un¬
organized. Films were short and simple. At first,
moviegoers were excited just to see people and
things actually moving on the screen; they did not
demand a story until later. But after the initial
excitement wore off, they wanted to laugh at come¬
dians, to cry at the plight of pretty girls, and to
25
 Great Monsters
be frightened by strange creatures and odd happen¬
ings. The film producers obliged.
The most famous early filmmaker who special¬
ized in surprising his audiences was George Melies,
a Frenchman who started making movies as early
as 18% after a stage career as a magician. At first,
M6lies showed only scenes of everyday life. But then
he began to discover that tricks could be played
with a camera. He made a woman disappear by
stopping the camera, having her step off the stage,
and starting up the camera again. He created
ghostly scenes by using double exposures. He sent
men on a trip to the moon by using tiny models.
All these tricks are familiar today, but they made
Mfilids famous in his time. With their supernatural
effects, these French films were the beginning of
monster movies.
But the place where the horror movie grew to
adulthood was Germany. The time was just after
the First World War. It really all began with a
movie called The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which
was released in 1920. Caligari is still ranked as
one of the finest horror movies ever made, although
it was filmed more than fifty years ago without
sound and with primitive methods. But it still can
frighten people. You may never get a chance to
see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari outside a movie
museum, but all true horror fans should try to
see it at least once, to learn how it all began.
26
 The Pioneers
Caligari was made immediately after Germany’s
defeat in World War I. Money was scarce in that
conquered country, and the makers of the film
used unusual sets that not only provided an eerie
effect but also kept costs down: painted back¬
drops instead of real rooms and outdoor scenery.
The backdrops, painted in strangely distorted
shapes, added an extra dash of mystery to the plot.
In the movie, an actor named Werner Krauss
played the role of Dr. Caligari, an evil hypnotist
(on the left in the illustration) who cast his spell
over a sleepwalker named Cesare (center), played
by Conrad Veidt. Under Caligari’s control, Cesare
carries away the beautiful Jane, the heroine, played
by Lil Dagover. Enraged townspeople chase Cesare,
who is captured and dies. Then, after Cesare’s
“death,” there is a new scene, set in an asylum,
which reveals that the whole story actually was just
a delusion dreamed by an unbalanced patient.
Despite that closing scene, most viewers were
genuinely frightened by Caligari. It was like no
other movie made up to that time, and it was an
instant success when it opened in Berlin. Caligari
had the same success in other countries, even
those where the Germans were still disliked be¬
cause of World War I. Viewers were impressed
by the way that the director, Robert Wiene, made
the unreal seem so real. The strange backdrops
and make-up, as well as weird, unexplainable
27
 Great Monsters
actions, all seemed to make frightening sense—
that is, until the lights came on and it was time
to return to the real world. In addition to being
an excellent movie in its own right, Caligari also
showed that moviegoers would pay to be fright¬
ened. Thus, it opened the way to all the horror
movies that followed.

It was just one year after The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari was released that the first great movie
vampire made his appearance. Once again, Ger¬
man filmmakers were the pioneers. The movie
was titled Nosferatu. Despite that name, it actually
was the first movie version of Bram Stoker’s famous
vampire novel, Dracula. To avoid paying Stoker’s
heirs any money, the filmmakers changed the
name of the film and switched all the scenes from
England to Germany. But they did use Stoker’s
plot with only a few changes.
In Nosferatu. the vampire was called Count
Orlock, and a frightening creature he was. Orlock
was played by an actor with a most appropriate
last name: Max Schreck, which means “fright”
in German. In fact, the name was so appropriate
that it may have been made up to add on extra
dash of terror. The make-up man gave Count Or¬
lock staring eyes, clawlike hands and long, pointed
teeth that were enough to frighten anyone.

30
Nosferatu. Max Schreck (Prana, 1922).

In the film, a young German businessman visits

Count Orlock’s creepy castle in the Carpathian
Mountains and nearly falls victim to the vampire
count. With that bit of terror over, Count Orlock
packs up his coffins and sets sail to the city of
Hamburg. (In the novel, the vampire’s destination
is London.) It is a ghastly ocean voyage on a mys¬
terious ship full of scampering rats, creaking masts,
and any other horror you can imagine.
When Orlock reaches Hamburg, a plague breaks'
out, as a mysterious force brings out an army of
rats. But the young man who visited Orlock’s

31
 Great Monsters

castle has escaped back to Hamburg, and he and

his young sweetheart realize that the plague was
caused by the vampire. At the climax of the movie,
the young woman sacrifices herself to kill the vam¬
pire, saving the man she loves and the city as well.
Her method is simple: knowing that the vampire
cannot live in the light of day, the girl uses her
charms to prevent Count Orlock from getting back
to his coffin before sunrise. As the sun comes up,
the vampire is struck by a beam of light and lit¬
erally shrivels away. As he dies, the castle in the
Carpathians also collapses into ruins.
Many fans of horror movies feel that Nosferatu
does not come up to the level of Caligari, mostly
because everything is spread a bit thick in Nos¬
feratu. In trying to frighten their audiences, the
filmmakers always go a little too far, making every¬
thing unrealistic. But some of the scenes are ex¬
cellent. To heighten the feeling of terror, some
scenes are shown in negative film—everything
that should be black is white, and vice versa. The
ghostly ship is also truly chilling. Still, if you see
the movie today, you would find much of it laugh¬
able or boring. It was not until ten years later, when
Bela Lugosi played the role, that Dracula really
achieved its movie horror potential. Nevertheless,
this 1922 film still is a “must” for moviegoers
who want to learn all about the art of frightening
32
 Creat Monsters
the audience, it only because it was the first it
long line of vampire epics.
As times grew more difficult in Germany and
Hollywood began to flourish, the United States
became the filmmaking center of the world—and
that included horror films, of course. One brilliant
actor stood out above all others during the era of
silent horror films. He was Lon Chaney, whose
skill with make-up earned him the name, “The
Man of a Thousand Faces.”
Chaney had a strange childhood that helped
him acquire a taste for the unusual. Both of his
parents were deaf mutes, and Chaney had to “talk”
to them not with words but with sign language,
gestures, and facial expressions. When he grew
up and became an actor, Chaney began to special¬
ize in parts that demanded unusual efforts to
achieve strange effects. He often suffered to play
these grotesque roles. In one film, Chaney played
an armless man. He wore a tight strait-jacket that
held his arms rigidly against his sides. In other
roles, Chaney used similarly extreme devices that
made the audience gasp.
In London After Midnight, Chaney played a
vampire. He achieved his weird appearance by
using thin wires which made his eyes bulge, and a
set of sharp-pointed teeth which were so painful
34
 Great Monsters
that he could wear them only for brief periods.
In the movie, Chaney played two roles: the vampire
who prowled the moors of England, and a Scotland
Yard inspector whose appearance was perfectly
normal. Viewers who were carried away by the
movie’s vampire scenes were relieved to learn at
the end that those scenes actually were staged by
the detective, who was using them to capture a
murderer.
In one of his greatest roles, Chaney played The
Phantom o f the Opera, a strange, disfigured musi¬
cian who lives in the vast, mysterious maze of
cellars beneath the Paris Opera. The Phantom falls
in love with a younger singer, and helps to make
her a success. But he becomes furious when an¬
other singer replaces the girl he loves. The phan¬
tom cuts loose the giant chandelier of the opera
house, sending it crashing down into the audience.
Then he lures the young girl into the cellars, wear¬
ing a mask so his face will not frighten her.
But the singer, curious to see the man who has
helped her, suddenly tears away the mask—and
then recoils in horror. The phantom allows her
to return to the surface, on condition that she tell
no one about him. Naturally, she does tell some¬
one—the man she loves. She does not realize that
the phantom is listening. The next evening she is
carried away by the phantom. But she is saved by
36
 The Pioneers
a crowd of Parisians who corner and kill him after
a chase through the sewers of Paris.
The story is based on a novel by Gaston Leroux,
a French writer, and has been remade at least twice,
but the Chaney version is still regarded as a master¬
piece of terror. Even though the techniques in use
then now seem crude and primitive, no one has
topped Chaney’s ability to make the phantom seem
both monstrous and yet somehow human. The
viewer fears the phantom and feels sorry for him
at the same time. And, of course, Chaney’s unfor¬
gettable make-up—which also caused him great
pain—has never been surpassed.
Lon Chaney was at the peak of his career when
the era of sound fdms arrived. He might have gone
on to make many more great movies. But he fell
ill and died in 1930, at the age of forty-seven. The
movies have not seen his equal to this day.

37
: Karloff (right).
 Three
Frightening
Men
Do you recognize these two pleasant-looking men?
Do you find them frightening? You should, be¬
cause between them they probably have fright¬
ened more people than any other two actors.
The man on the left with the big, quiet smile
is named Arisztid Olt. The man on the right with
the beaming grin is named William Henry Pratt.
You don’t recognize those names? Then try these:
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, the stage names
of these two gentlemen.
39
 Great Monsters
Even though it has been many years since either
Lugosi or Karloff has made a film, their names
should be enough to send a chill down the back
of monster movie fans. And their movies will show
you why—especially if you are lucky enough to
see one of these classic films all alone, late at night,
on television.
Lugosi and Karloff hardly ever appeared in a
movie together, but their names naturally go to¬
gether. Both achieved fame as screen scarers in
the same year, 1931, when two of the greatest of
all monster films were released: Frankenstein,
which featured Karloff as a man-made monster,
and Dracula, which starred Lugosi as the vampire.
Those two films opened the modern era of the
monster movie.
Both Lugosi and Karloff had been acting on
the stage for many years before 1931, but neither
achieved true fame until they set out to frighten
people. They did so well at it that they set a pat¬
tern for all vampires and monsters to follow. Any¬
time you imitate a vampire, you really are imitating
Bela Lugosi, and anytime you picture Franken¬
stein’s monster, you always see Boris Karloff.
In real life, Arisztid Olt and William Henry
Pratt were no more frightening than any other
two men you might meet on the street. But when
they put on their make-up, stepped on the movie
set and began to play their roles, they were un-
40
 Three Frightening Men
like any other beings you ever hope to meet. They
wanted to scare people, and they did an excellent
job of it.

In Castle Frankenstein, located in an eerie East

European country, Dr. Henry Frankenstein is
busily working on his hobby: building a man in
his spare time from parts he has assembled him¬
self. With the help of his twisted little assistant,
Hugo, Dr. Frankenstein has put together enough
parts to form a man, who he hopes will be a scien¬
tific triumph, a creature perfect in every way.
(What Dr. Frankenstein does not know is that
Hugo has made a mistake, and has used the brain
of an executed murderer.) Now the moment has
arrived when Dr. Frankenstein will try to breathe
life into his artificial man.
That is the start of one of the greatest horror
films, Frankenstein. The doctor and Hugo have
equipped themselves with a laboratory that was
up-to-date by the standards of those times. Now
that the creature is assembled, the two mad scien¬
tists are about to take the next step. Slowly, the
lifeless body is lifted to an opening in the ceiling.
A storm is raging, and kites strung with wire are
being flown to attract lightning. As bolt after bolt
of lightning surges through the body it slowly
begins to stir. “He’s alive!” Dr. Frankenstein
41
 Great Monsters
shouts in triumph. “He’s alive, I tell you! He’s

Alas, the scientist soon finds out that the man

he has brought to life is far from perfect. In fact,
the creature is just the opposite. It is a monster—
Frankenstein’s monster.
At this point, we pause to remind you that you
should not call the monster Frankenstein; that is
the name of the scientist who made the monster.
The monster itself does not have a name. Call it
anything you like, but not Frankenstein.
Aside from being a monster and a box-office
smash, the creature is also a masterpiece of movie
make-up. Jack Pierce, king of the make-up men at
Universal Pictures, worked for hours every day
and applied pounds of make-up to turn the pleas¬
ant face of Boris Karloff into the inhuman, scarred
visage of the monster. Although monsters have
come and gone by the dozens since 1931, no one
has surpassed the terror of Jack Pierce’s creation.
When anyone wants to show a monster these days,
it is almost automatic to draw the flat-topped,
sunken-eyed creature with bulging brows and two
bolts sticking out of his neck (that was how elec¬
tricity flowed into the body).
In the movie, Frankenstein keeps the monster
chained. But the creature has enormous strength,
and he breaks loose and kills Hugo, who has been
tormenting him. Then the monster runs away.
42
 Three Frightening Men

Frankenstein. Boris Karloff is the monster (© 1931 Universal

Pictures an MCA, Inc. Company).

He has a few quiet moments at the side of a stream

with a young girl who is sailing flowers on the
water. But the inhuman being cannot tell the
difference between the girl and the flowers; he
throws her in the water and she drowns. Then the
monster flees, pursued by a crowd of villagers led
by Dr. Frankenstein.
The two—the monster and its creator—finally
43
meet on a mountaintop. After a struggle, the
monster overpowers the scientist and carries him
to a windmill. There they are cornered by the
villagers, who set the building afire. As the flames
mount, Frankenstein and the monster begin to
fight. The monster throws Dr. Frankenstein from
a window, breaking his arm. But a crueler fate is
in store for the creature. As the villagers watch
in grim satisfaction, fire consumes the windmill,
and the monster as well. The nightmare started
by Dr. Frankenstein’s strange experiments is

The combination of lames Whale’s direction.

Jack Pierce’s make-up, and Boris Karloffs acting
made Frankenstein a movie that still can frighten
viewers after all these years. The film’s makers
and cast realized what Lon Chaney knew: to be
truly effective, a screen monster must be sym¬
pathetic as well as scary. At one and the same
time, Karloff managed to show the monster’s
weirdness and its humanity. Even though you
are afraid of this clumsy, powerful creature whose
strength is fantastic, you still can feel some sym¬
pathy when it tries to be a real human being. The
film brought to the screen the same gripping char¬
acteristics that made Mary Wollstonecraft Shel¬
ley’s novel of the same name such a success.
 Three Frightening Men
Frankenstein was so successful that Universal
Pictures came back with a sequel just four years
later. Using the same director (James Whale),
the same actor as Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive),
and the same leading man (or monster, Boris
Karloff), The Bride of Frankenstein added a new
ingredient—a female monster, acted by Elsa
Lanchester. To everyone’s surprise, The Bride of
Frankenstein was an exception to the rule which
says that sequels are never as good as the movies
they follow; many critics believe that Bride is even
scarier than the original Frankenstein.
To make the movie, the director and script
writer had one big problem to solve: bringing the
monster back to life. (Remember, Frankenstein
ended with the creature dying in the blazing wind¬
mill.) Their explanation: the fire had not killed
the monster at all. Instead, he had escaped by fall¬
ing into a water-filled basement. The movie opens
as the fire burns itself out, watched by one old
couple who remained when the mob left. To their
horror, the monster slowly emerges from the
charred ruins. Both fall victim to the creature,
which then wanders off. A woman’s scream at his
appearance attracts hunters, and the monster is
captured by villagers after a chase. He is tied up,
brought back to town, and chained in a dungeon.
But (of course) chains cannot hold the monster.

45
 Great Monsters
In a moment, he snaps them in two and flees

Then comes the only happy time in the monster’s

existence. He comes to the isolated hut of a blind
fiddler. Unable to see the horrible face of his guest,
the fiddler takes him in and treats him kindly,
even teaching the monster to speak a few words
and occasionally playing the violin for the guest’s
amusement. But this does not last. A visitor sees
the monster, a fight begins, and the creature must
run for safety again.
This time the monster has a more sinister en¬
counter. In a cemetery he meets Dr. Praetorius,
who is Dr. Frankenstein’s teacher of old and who
wants to carry on his student’s evil experiments.
Praetorius brings the monster to Castle Franken¬
stein. Even though Dr. Frankenstein wants to stop
the experiments, Praetorius threatens him until
Frankenstein agrees to work toward a new goal:
creating a bride for the monster. Together, the
two scientists begin to assemble a woman.
Then the remarkable climax. As sparks shoot
through the laboratory, the female figure slowly
rises. She is a grisly sight, with a dead-white face,
staring eyes and a streak of lightning-like white
hair. The monster is enthralled by her, but she
does not return his admiration; in fact, he revolts
her. For a few minutes, the monster tries to win
his bride in what must certainly be the strangest
46
 Three Frightening Men

courtship of all times. But soon he realizes it is

hopeless. Now the monster has no hope and no
reason to exist. Warning Dr. Frankenstein to
leave with his (Frankenstein’s) wife, the monster
traps Praetorius and the female creature and
pulls the lever that blows up the laboratory. As
the Frankensteins flee to safety, they look back
to see the castle blow sky-high.
The same combination of excellent make-up,
acting, and direction make Bride as successful
as Frankenstein. The movie somehow manages
to make the eerie love-hate story of the two crea¬
tures realistic, when it might have been just laugh¬
able. As the title role, Elsa Lanchester is both
human and monstrous. As the monster, Karloff
actually makes you understand how this strange
creature could yearn for a companion. With a
minimum of creaking doors, echoing footsteps
and other such tricks, the movie still is gripping.
Despite its strange plot and cast of characters,
The Bride of Frankenstein makes you believe
(almost) that it might really have happened. And
that is the secret of a good horror movie.
Unfortunately, success made the movie’s pro¬
ducers go back to the same theme again, and again
and again. Because fans wanted to see more mon¬
ster movies, the monster had to keep coming back
to life. But its later appearances were much less
believable than the first two, which are considered
47
The Bride of Frankenstein. Left to right: Colin Clive, Elsa
Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger (© 1935 Universal
Pictures an MCA, Inc. Company).
 Great Monsters

the best of the lot. “They don’t make them that

way any more” is a frequent comment of monster
movie fans. They are referring more to the old-
style plots and acting than to the frightening face
of the monster. Anyone can create a horrible being
by a heavy application of make-up. But it takes
more than that to make a good monster movie.
Frankenstein and Bride had that extra dash of

Even though most movie fans will always re¬

member him best as Frankenstein’s monster, Boris
Karloff acted in a number of other good films
during a long and distinguished career. He played
a wide variety of roles, enough to prove that he
was a good actor even when playing an ordinary
man, not a monster. But Karloffs ability to fright¬
en people insured that he would continue to play
starring roles in horror movies.
One of his best was made in 1932, between
the production of the two Frankenstein movies.
It was The Mummy, in which Karloff played a
peculiar Egyptian archaeologist with two strange
interests: he wanted to prevent the opening of the
tomb of an ancient Egyptian princess named
Ankana, and he kept stalking a beautiful British
girl who was visiting in Cairo.
50
 Three Frightening Men

The Mummy. Boris Karloff is in the case (© 1932 Universal

Pictures an MCA, Inc. Company).

Gradually, the audience learns the archaeolo¬

gist’s weird secret: he actually is an ancient Egyp¬
tian who had been in love with the princess Ankana
thousands of years earlier. When the princess died,
he tried to bring her back to life by using a for¬
bidden ritual. But he was discovered and was
mummified alive and thrown into the tomb, with
none of the sacred Egyptian rites that would send
his soul to rest in the hereafter. So the commoner
has lived on through the centuries, never able to
rest. Now he wants to prevent modern man from
51
 Great Monsters
opening and desecrating Ankana’s tomb. He is
also drawn to the British girl because of her re¬
markable resemblance to the princess Ankana.
Eventually,' the tomb is opened, and the prin¬
cess’s mummy is brought to a museum. The arch¬
aeologist is discovered as he kneels beside Ankana’s
mummy one night, once more attempting to bring
her back to life as he had tried in ancient Egypt.
Again, the attempt is unsuccessful. Eventually,
the archaeologist dies by fire, and the centuries-
old curse is ended.
The Mummy had a plot that easily could have
been laughable. But Karloff and director Karl
Freund made it believable and spine-tingling.
Karloffs burning eyes and ramrod-straight de¬
meanor gave the ancient Egyptian an impressive
dignity, and lent realism to the love that had lasted
through centuries. The Mummy may not achieve
the heights of the Frankenstein movies, but Karloff
fans will find it well worth seeing.
The same Karloff charm—if that is the right
word for the ability to make fright both realistic
and enjoyable—shows up under different coats
of make-up and through a variety of plots. Among
other roles, Karloff donned Oriental make-up
to play the sinister Chinese villain in The Mask of
Fu Matichu. People go to see this movie more as
a museum piece than as a real horror movie these

52
 Three Frightening Men
days. Fu Manchu was out to conquer the world,
and he had all sorts of slaves and machines to
help him (kind of a James Bond in reverse). Some¬
how, he never made it because the hero was always
smart or lucky. The movie is fun if you do not
take it too seriously.
You might also catch Boris Karloff as The Man
They Could Not Hang (a scientist who comes back
to life to avenge himself on those who condemned
him to death), Die, Monster, Die, and The Man
With Nine Lives, among other films. While none
of these movies is particularly earthshaking, Kar¬
loff always gave a creditable, honest performance.
He gave a good many enjoyable chills to a lot of
people and could always be counted on to give
the best performance possible. As man or as mon¬
ster, Boris Karloff was an excellent professional.
It is late at night at Castle Dracula, deep in the
heart of Transylvania. Jonathan Harker, a young
Englishman, has just arrived at the castle to dis¬
cuss business with its owner. Already, Harker is
feeling uneasy. For one thing, the stagecoach driver
who dropped him off at the crossroads drove off
as quickly as he could, without a word. Then the
carriage that took Harker from the crossroads
to the castle had a strange driver indeed—a man
who disappeared when the carriage stopped, leav¬
ing only a bat to flap off into the night. The castle

53
 Great Monsters
itself is not a place to make anyone feel cheerful.
It is dark and empty, almost in ruins, choked with
cobwebs. As Harker looks around him uncom¬
fortably, he hears footsteps on the staircase, and
sees a tall figure gliding slowly down the stone
steps. As the figure nears the bottom, slashing
at the cobwebs that bar its path, it stops. A dis¬
tinguished-looking man in impeccable evening
clothes turns his hypnotic eyes on Harker and
speaks: “I am—Dracula.”
That is the opening scene of Dracula, one of the
most famous monster movies ever made. The

playing the vampire Count Dracula, and those

three words he spoke were enough to open an era
in screen horror.
Lugosi was made for the part of Dracula. He
already had acted the part on the stage in the play
that had been a London and New York hit. His
unforgettably accent, his stiff, elegant appearance
and his stern, intent face are unforgettable. No
screen vampire has come close to equaling the
impact made by Lugosi.
Unfortunately, the movie itself could have been
better. The opening sequences, which ended with
Harker becoming Dracula’s victim, were the best
in the film. When Count Dracula comes to Lon¬
don, the film tends to be rather talky and slow-
moving. The viewer can work up some chills as
54
Dracula stalks his victims (usually beautiful young
women, who somehow almost always are asleep
in white nightgowns), but more imaginative direc¬
tion could have scared people a lot more.
But no one doubts that without Lugosi, the film
would have been a lot worse. Above all, he seemed
to be a vampire who truly lived for his work, going
after fresh blood and lovely young throats with a
zeal and spirit that were impressive. The movie¬
goer never has the same sympathy for Dracula
that he occasionally does for Frankenstein’s mon¬
ster, but Bela Lugosi’s vampire wins a respect that
the monster could never earn. The monster is
terrible when he is aroused. But you would much
rather meet him in a dark alley than the merciless
(and always thirsty) Count Dracula.
Despite his murderous habits, Lugosi had at¬
tractions for women fans. In the years of his suc¬
cessful frights, he got hundreds of fan letters a
week. Most of the mail came from women, who
were intrigued by a man who could be both hor¬
rifying and charming at the same time.
Like Karloff, Lugosi found that a single ex¬
posure of the monster he had created was not
enough. In 1935, Lugosi was back in a movie called
The Mark of the Vampire, which gave him more
fresh throats to attack. Unhappily, this was one
of those sequels which does not come up to the
original. Other Dracula movies followed, and the
56
vampire remains a screen standard. But many
fans believe the high (or low) spot was hit with the
very first picture, and with the first ten hair-
raising minutes of that picture.

Even more than Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi is

identified with one role, the vampire in Dracula.
One reason is that Lugosi never quite achieved
the success that Karloff did after playing that tole.
After his triumph as Count Dracula, Lugosi made
a number of horror movies, but his career was
something of a disappointment. The movies gen¬
erally were not too good; most of them relied more
on heavy make-up and crude effects to make the
monsters look frightening than on realistic plots
and believable characters. Still, there were good
moments for those who followed Lugosi through
the years.
One excellent, scary movie in which Bela Lugosi
played a relatively minor role was Island of Lost
Souls, which was based on a novel written by H.
G. Wells. In the movie, a young American (played
by actor Richard Arlen) finds himself stranded on
a small, out-of-the way island which is ruled by
a mysterious Dr. Moreau, a juicy part played to the
hilt by the noted actor Charles Laughton. Strange
screams and grunts are heard echoing through
the night, and the odd-looking servants shrink
57
Island of Lost Souls. Bela Lugosi (middle, left), Charles Laugh¬
ton (right) (© 1933 Paramount Pictures).

from any mention of the sinister “house of pain”

operated by Dr. Moreau.
As time passes, the American begins to learn
the eerie truth. Dr. Moreau is a mad scientist who
was forced to leave his native country because
of public horror about his evil experiments, in
which he' tried to cross animals and humans. Now
he is carrying on those experiments again, with
58
 Three Frightening Men
frightening success. The servants in the house
are products of those experiments. So is the beau¬
tiful but strange young woman who finds the young
American attractive. Near the house is a more
sinister group of Dr. Moreau’s creations: a group
of half men, half beasts who are kept under con¬
trol by a hairy leader—Bela Lugosi, cleverly
made up.
The film’s best moments include those in which
Lugosi leads the pack of man-beasts in a recitation
pronounced by Dr. Moreau to keep them in order:
“What is the law?” “Not to spill blood, that is
the law.” “Are we not men?” The answers, given
in peculiar grunts, are truly chilling. (In the illus¬
tration, the whip-wielding Dr. Moreau is holding
off a group of man-beasts led by Lugosi, the crea¬
ture in the middle.)
Eventually, Dr. Moreau meets poetic justice.
His creatures, enraged by his treatment, revolt
and carry him off to the house of pain. The young
American, escaping in a boat, hears the screams
of the Island of Lost Souls echoing in his ears,
but never looks back.
Less successful than Island of Lost Souls was
The Ape Man, made in 1943, in which Lugosi
played a mad scientist who was transformed into
a not-very-convincing hybrid between man and
beast. Most critics prefer to remember Lugosi in
his role as Dracula, and in other horror movies,
59
 Great Monsters

such as those in which he and Karloff starred:

The Black Cat, a tale of two competing villains;
The Raven, in which Lugosi played a mad surgeon
and Karloff his assistant; and Dracula's Daughter,
which was not bad for a sequel. Despite the low
spots in his career, Lugosi had enough high spots
to be remembered for a long time to come.

In 1941, a new screen monster man joined

Karloff and Lugosi. He was a second-generation .
merchant of fright: Lon Chaney, Jr., son of the
famed “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Christened
Creighton Chaney, the son changed his name to
Lon when he became an actor. For years, he had
little success, getting only minor roles- in Holly¬
wood. His first fame came when he gave a memo¬
rable performance as the physically powerful but
mentally dull Lennie in the movie Of Mice and
Men in 1939. Two years later he was given the
leading role in The Wolf Man, which was released
just as the United States entered World War II.
The Wolf Man started Chaney on a new career
in horror. Once again, make-up man Jack Pierce
claimed part of the credit for the yak-hair outfit
that turned a man into a hairy, toothy beast that
no one would want to meet in a full moon.
Chaney’s role in the movie was that of Law¬
rence Talbot, a college student and son of a wealthy
60
A double-feature movie poster.
 Three Frightening Men
landowner who has just returned home from school.
Strolling through the woods near his father’s
Balkan estate one night, Talbot sees a young girl
being attacked by a werewolf. When he goes to the
girl’s aid, Talbot is bitten by the werewolf—and
so he becomes a werewolf himself. (The werewolf
who bites Talbot is played by Bela Lugosi.)
Talbot commits several murders in his wolf
form during the full moon. Finally, an old gypsy
woman tells him the truth he has begun to sus¬
pect. The gypsy shows Talbot the dread five-
pointed marking, the pentagram, on his body,
and tells him that only a silver bullet, or another
silver object, can kill him and thus end his wolfish
career of murder.
Revolted by what he has heard, Talbot tries to
persuade others to stop him from killing. But no
one will listen to him. The end comes when Talbot
attacks his own father and is clubbed to death
with a silver cane. In a peculiar way, it is a happy
ending for the unhappy werewolf.
The Wolf Man rates high on the monster fright
scale. Fans appreciate its opening moments, when
this macabre poem appears on the screen:
Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night,
Can become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the moon shines bright.
63
 Great Monsters
The mist-covered forests of the Balkans, the
impressive transformation of man into wolf, the
good acting by the rest of the cast helped make
The Wolf Man a success—even though many
critics believe the movie ranks a shade below
Frankenstein and Dracula.
For Lon Chaney, Jr., The Wolf Man was the
start of a frightening career. Even though the
werewolf was dead, its success at the box office
insured that it would be brought back to life again
for future frights. And since Chaney could scare
people, his monster future was secure.
But in many ways, The Wolf Man was some¬
thing of a high point in Chaney’s career. Like
Lugosi, he was to play in many monster movies
over the years, but many of them were poorly done.
The career that had started so promisingly with
Of Mice and Men tailed off disappointingly. Still,
Chaney made enough good movies, and had enough
good moments in not-so-good films, to be re¬
membered approvingly by many fright fans.

In 1943, someone at Universal Pictures had a

bright idea: if one monster makes a movie scary,
two monsters will make it at least twice as terrify¬
ing. The result of that thought was a movie called
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which brought
together Lon Chaney, Jr., as the wolf man, and
64
 Three Frightening Men
not Karloff, but Bela Lugosi as Frankenstein’s
monster. As the illustration shows, Lugosi used
the same Jack Pierce make-up as Karloff had used,
but with less effective results. Most people who
have seen the original Frankenstein found Lugosi’s
monster a weak substitute.
The makers of horror movies were used to re¬
viving monsters who had died for sure in previous
films, so the plot did not even try to explain how
Lawrence Talbot, the werewolf played by Chaney,
had come back to life. The movie started with
Talbot alive again, still a wolf man, still consulting
the same gypsy fortune teller. This time she tells
him that there is only one man who can help him—
Dr. Frankenstein, naturally. Going to Franken¬
stein’s village, Talbot finds that the doctor and
his monster have perished in flames (naturally).
What to do now? Before Talbot can decide, the
full moon arrives, and with it his transformation
into a wolf. On one of his nighttime visits, the
wolf man is chased by villagers. He stumbles into
the ruins of Frankenstein’s laboratory. There he
finds the monster, who is frozen solid in a block
of ice.
Talbot thaws the ice, but finds that the mon¬
ster is not much help. Frankenstein’s daughter,
who is visiting in the village, proves to be of more
value. She agrees to send her father’s diary to a
friend, Dr. Mannering. The hope is that Manner-
65
 Great Monsters
ing will learn Frankenstein’s secrets, destroy the
monster and then help Talbot shake the curse
of the werewolf.
Unfortunately, Dr. Mannering picks up Frank¬
enstein’s bad habits by reading the diary. He re¬
stores the monster to full strength—just during
the full moon, of course. That leads to a fight
which Universal proclaimed as the “battle of the
century”: werewolf against monster, going for
each other with no holds barred in the mad scien¬
tist’s laboratory.
The fight ends in a draw. Instead of waiting to
see who wins, the villagers blow up a dam, flood
the laboratory, and sweep both creatures away to
destruction (until the next film, that is). Manner¬
ing and Frankenstein’s daughter escape to a new

The movie has its moments, including a good

performance by the beautiful Ilona Massey as
Frankenstein’s daughter, and effective acting by
Patric Knowles as Mannering. Unfortunately,
the film started a trend that was to hurt the quality
of monster movies in the years that followed.
That trend was multiple monsters. Since the
public liked seeing two monsters battle, filmmakers
kept adding monsters, until you could see a wolf
man and Frankenstein’s monster, a vampire and
a mummy, or any combination that caught the
producer’s eye. There is a thin line between being
66
 Three Frightening Men
frightening and being funny, and too many of these
fdms crossed that line. No one would ever think
of laughing at Lugosi’s Dracula or Karloffs mon¬
ster, but too many of the later “monster rallies”
could hardly send a chill down anyone’s back. In¬
stead, the moviegoer is more likely to chuckle at
the sight of all those monsters. It was a sad way
to end an era.

67
 The
Big
Beasts

In 1929, Merian C. Cooper, a maker of documen¬

tary movies, went to Africa to shoot scenes for
an adventure film. While he was there, Cooper
conceived the idea of a movie whose central figure
would be a giant gorilla. He outlined some specific
scenes for the film—the gorilla would fight a giant
lizard, and then would run wild in a city before his
violence was ended. Cooper even invented a name
for the gorilla: Kong.
69
 Great Monsters
For two years, Cooper did nothing with his idea.
But in 1931, when he went to work at RKO Studios,
Cooper was able to convince David O. Selznick,
who was head of production there, that the gorilla
movie would be a success. He even found the man
who would insure success: Willis O’Brien, who
already was famous for his special effects that
had brought dinosaurs and other outlandish beasts
to the screen.
O’Brien had a special technique which he had
perfected in a 1925 silent movie, The Lost World.
He had used small models of dinosaurs with mov¬
able joints. By shooting one frame, moving the
models slightly, shooting another frame, moving
the models again—over and over, with great care
—O’Brien got film on which these beasts actually
walked, ran and battled to the death. As a test
run for the new movie, Cooper and O’Brien made
a model of a gorilla and shot a short film using the
same technique. It was so impressive that they got
the go-ahead for a full-length film.
Making the movie was hard work. The “giant”
gorilla, Kong, in most scenes was just a 16-inch-
high model that was filmed against special back¬
drops. The models used in the film were works of
craftsmanship, with limbs, eyes and a mouth that
moved realistically; for some scenes, detailed
models of dinosaurs were used. The technicians
would shoot one frame, move the models, then
70
 Great Monsters
shoot another frame. After ten hours of work,
the result was no more than 25 feet of film, enough
to fill only 30 seconds on the screen.
For scenes with the human actors, O’Brien
used a number of techniques. Sometimes he had
the heroine, who was played by actress Fay Wray,
held in a giant ape hand that was built to be 8
feet long. Sometimes O’Brien combined live actors
with the miniature models by special projection
methods. Some of his other methods remain a
secret to this day.
King Kong was finally ready for release in 1933.
It was an instant smash hit, holding audiences
spellbound by, the realism of its scenes. The plot
even worked up some sympathy for the giant
gorilla, who was jokingly described as “the tallest,
darkest leading man in Hollywood.”
By today’s standards, the plot of King Kong
is slow-moving and crude. The film starts as a
movie producer, Carl Denham (played by Robert
Armstrong), sets off for mysterious Skull Island,
off the coast of Africa, to film a mysterious creature
which legend says lives there. Once on the island,
the producer and his crew fall afoul of the in¬
habitants. Just as Fay Wray is about to be sacri¬
ficed to King Kong, the huge gorilla makes his
first, frightening appearance, snatching up the
girl and lumbering away.
Then begins one of the most breath-taking
72
 The Big Beasts
sequences in the movie, as Denham and his men
chase Kong through a series of unbelievable perils.
Kong kills a dinosaur in a fierce battle, he shakes
men off a log bridge one by one like ants, and he
dangles the hero at the end of a string like a Yo-
Yo—always holding onto the beautiful actress,
who obviously has captured his gorilla heart.
Finally the producer subdues King Kong with
sleeping gas, and brings him back to New York
for exhibition. On opening night the flashbulbs
of newsmen’s cameras enrage Kong. He breaks
his chains and is off on another rampage. It is
another masterful sequence, showing a giant gorilla
on the loose in a great city. Kong tramples walls,
destroys an elevated train, and causes panic. Mean¬
while, the actress has been taken to a hotel room
by the hero. As they give thanks for their safety,
the huge, staring face of Kong appears in the
window. Sweeping the hero aside, Kong grabs
the screaming actress (the director told Fay Wray
to scream as long and as loud as she could, and
she did just that) and carries her away.
The next morning finds Kong on top of the Em¬
pire State Building, which had just been com¬
pleted as the world’s tallest structure. In the film’s
climax, fighter planes are called in as a last resort.
They buzz around the bewildered gorilla like flies,
pouring bullets into his body. Kong slumps, puts
Fay Wray on a safe ledge, then falls to his death.
73
His epitaph, spoken by Carl Denham to a police¬
man: “ ’Twas Beauty killed the beast.”
By general agreement, King Kong is the best
movie of its kind ever made. Even though some of
the scenes look odd by today’s standards, O’Brien’s
special effects have never been bettered. But that
was not all. Kong is more than just a bundle of
tricks. He manages to have a personality. The
moviegoer watches as Kong becomes entranced
with the beautiful actress, sees the gorilla enraged
at his enemies, even sympathizes as the beast is
killed. In the excitement of it all, many viewers
forget that Kong is not real. Once the action starts,
King Kong is as exciting today as it was in 1933.

Naturally, the success of King Kong at the box

office called for a sequel. This time, however, the
producers could not bring the monster back to
life, King Kong had been killed too effectively for
that—a fall off the Empire State Building is too
much, even for the world’s largest gorilla. The next
alternative was to invent a son for Kong, and that
is exactly what the producers did.
But Son of Kong, which was released just a
short time after the first hit, did not work out too
well financially. One big reason was the great work
done by Willis O’Brien in King Kong. Even though
the special effects in Son of Kong were just as good,
76
 The Big Beasts

Son of Kong. (1933 copyrighted—RKO Radio Pictures a

division of RKO General, Inc.).
they could not possibly top the original. King Kong
was too fresh in the public’s mind for a sequel to

And Kong’s son turned out to be just a pale

shadow of his father—a smaller, white gorilla
who wanted to play almost as much as he wanted
to fight. The plot of the movie followed the original
Kong story fairly closely. This time, Carl Denham
leaves New York secretly, because he cannot pay
for the damage caused by King Kong’s rampage.
After beating about the Pacific for sometime, Den¬
ham hears of Kong’s son and finds him. Then
follow some of the same kind of scenes that had
77
 Great Monsters
thrilled audiences in King Kong. But this time,
most audiences just yawned. Son of Kong never
grew up to be the ape that his daddy was.
Some years later, Willis O’Brien had another
try at the same theme, in- the 1949 movie, Mighty
Joe Young. The director of the two Kong movies,
Ernest B. Schoedsack, was back to direct the saga
of this new giant ape. This time, the gorilla was
even smaller (about 10 feet tall) and even tamer
than Kong’s son. In the movie, Joe Young is the
pet of a beautiful girl (played by Terry Moore)
who lives in Africa. He is so friendly that a few
bananas keep him as a household pet. When an
American cowboy visits Africa and falls for the
girl, she is persuaded to take Joe Young to the
United States for exhibition.
You know what happens. On opening night,
Joe Young is quite the opposite of the snarling,
hateful King Kong—at first. He appears on stage
holding the girl and a piano in the air while she
plays the gorilla’s favorite song, “Beautiful Dream¬
er.” But once again, the gorilla becomes frightened
by the noise and lights, and breaks loose; the scene
where a screaming audience fights to get away
while Joe Young wrecks a night club and frees
the animals in a menagerie, is the best in the movie.
The police hunt the gorilla down fairly easily,
and prepare to kill him, even though the girl pleads
that he is only misunderstood. To save Joe, the
78
 The Big Beasts
cowboy hires a van and arranges the biggest kid¬
naping (or apenaping) of all times. As the police
close in, Joe Young stops to save some orphans
who are trapped in a burning building. This proof
of his good nature wins his release, and he goes
back to Africa and happiness. It is all rather sticky.
While King Kong was a movie that terrified
adults, the two sequels are really for the young in
heart. Mighty Joe Young has none of the menace
of Kong. He is enjoyable, but not unforgettable
like Kong, the greatest ape of all.

Over the years, even before King Kong and up

to the present day, the gorilla remains one of the
most popular movie menaces. Curiously enough,
these giant apes are really quite gentle if left alone
in their jungle homes; they eat vegetation and not
meat, and they will not harm a human unless they
are attacked. But their burly build and ferocious
looks make them natural movie monsters. Movie¬
makers of all countries have used fake gorillas
of every size and in every imaginable plot.
Of course, the skill with which gorilla movies
are made varies quite a lot. Just for fun, there is
the gorilla menace in an episode from an old-
time serial, Tim Tyler's Luck. It is fairly obvious
that this gorilla is an actor wearing a monkey
suit. The actress who is being “carried away”
79
 The Big Beasts
is also obviously having a hard time looking frigl
ened; it might help if her spotless clothes were
mussed or dirtied just a little, or if the scenery
did not look so well-bred. Even the gorilla’s fur
looks a trifle mangy. Still, it is good clean fun
for those who fancy runaway gorillas.
At the other extreme is the huge gorilla in a
Japanese movie, King Kong Vs. Godzilla. The
gorilla is frightening, all right—much too fright¬
ening, in fact. It is too big and too inhuman to
have the same personal impact that the original
King Kong did. This film brought King Kong
back to life as part of a series of movies whose
star was the lizard-like Godzilla, a durable mon¬
ster who always survived whatever was thrown at
him by the army, navy, and inventive scientists.
Godzilla always amazes the actors in his latest
movie when he heaves himself up out of the sea
and begins to trample the scenery into smithereens.
City after city in Japan is smashed into ruins in
these movies, whose special effects are excellent.
But the monsters created by the Japanese film¬
makers, while technically perfect, often fail to
capture anyone’s imagination or sympathy. What
they do is entirely predictable, from the moment
they appear until the last minutes of the picture,
when they are beaten off until the next time.
It is interesting to watch Godzilla stamp a city
into splinters under his giant feet, or Rodan rise
81
 Great Monsters

Rodim. (© Toho Co., Ltd., 1957).

from the waves, and fascinating to watch the latest
developments produced by the special effects
men. But somehow, it isn’t the same as watching
King Kong, who had a real personality and could
always surprise the viewer.
As the skills of moviemakers have improved,
the creation of any monster, no matter what size
or description, has become almost routine. At
82
 The Big Beasts

It Came from Beneath the Sea. (Columbia, 1955).

the same time, the plots of monster movies have
tended to slip into a rut. Almost any time you go
to see a monster film these days, you know pretty
well what to expect.
In many of the movies, the monster is created
as the result of radiation from atomic bombs. This
theme is especially common with the Japanese,
who must live with the memory of the atomic
83
 Great Monsters
bombs that were dropped on their country during
World War II. Rodan, an indescribable sea rep¬
tile, is one of these radiation-spawned creatures.
In other cases, the monster is a well-known
animal blown up to supernatural size by an un¬
known cause, as with the American-made octopus
in It Came from Beneath the Sea of 1955. No mat¬
ter what, the monster is out to get the human race,
either because it has been attacked by people or
because it is just plain mean. Buildings are crum¬
pled, people are trampled, and the military is called
in to fight the crisis.
Invariably, the armed forces turn the best of
their weapons against the monster, but it doesn’t
do any good. Unlike King Kong, who suffered
and died from just a few machine-gun bullets, the
new breed of monsters just laughs as bullets,
bombs, flames, and any other missile bounces
off harmlessly.
That gives the hero his opportunity. Either work¬
ing alone or with a beautiful girl scientist to help
him, the hero comes up with an ingenious scheme
that takes advantage of the monster’s only weak
point. That invention always comes just at the nick
of time, as the monster closes in for the kill. The
climax of the movie comes as the monster moves
in with destruction in his eyes. The streets are
full of crowds of people, streaming away to safety,
84
 The Big Beasts
screaming as they go. Women cry, men faint, and
the generals throw up their hands. The hero
watches tensely, then gives the signal. The secret
weapon—whatever it is—is unleashed. For a
moment, nothing happens. Then, slowly, the mon¬
ster stops. Soon, he is retreating. Sometimes the
producer even allows the monster to die. But
usually, the beast just vanishes into the sea, not
to appear again until the next sequel.
In movies featuring dinosaurs (as in Dinosaurus,
made by Universal in 1960), there are two alterna¬
tives: the heroes either go back in time or find an
unknown island where time has stood still. The
technical excellence of such films often is enough
to make you believe that the dinosaurs still sur¬
vive, as you watch them fight bloodily among them¬
selves while the men cower in fear. Then the dino¬
saurs turn on the human visitors, who wage amaz¬
ingly realistic battles against these extinct giants.
In the end, the unknown island may be destroyed
by volcano or sink into the sea, while the heroes
escape at the last moment.
Despite this predictability, monster movies re¬
main favorites of filmgoers. It is fascinating to see
the pictures from textbooks come to life through
the expert work of filmmakers who can create a
dinosaur as realistic as any that ever thrashed
across the earth’s surface 100 million years ago.
85
 Great Monsters
At the very least, these movies are good clean fun,
and audiences demand an endless supply. And so
the monsters keep on coming to your neighbor¬
hood theater.
 A Miscellany
of Monsters
The Wolf Man was the first hit about werewolves,
but it was not Hollywood’s first try at the subject.
In 1935, when movie monsters were riding high
with the success of Frankenstein, King Kong, and
Dracula, Universal Pictures decided that man-
into-beast could also be a box-office attraction.
And so was born The Werewolf of London. A dis¬
tinguished stage star, Henry Hull, was selected
for the starring role, and once again, Jack Pierce
was chosen to create the teeth, hair and pointy
87
ears that would make the werewolf properly fright¬
ening to those who had already seen the great
monsters of the screen.
The plot of Werewolf of London was ingenious.
It centered around a little-known legend that
linked a cure for a werewolf to a flower. The movie
starts as a British botanist by the name of Wil¬
fred Glendon (played by Henry Hull) sets off on a
voyage to Tibet in search of the fabled flower,
which is named the marifesa. Because the marifesa
blooms only by moonlight, Glendon must go out
after dark to seek it. During his search, Glendon
is attacked by a mysterious creature—a werewolf,
in fact—and is bitten. Not knowing that the bite
has made him into a werewolf, Glendon returns
to London, where he tries to make the marifesa
bloom in his laboratory.
Then the full moon arrives. Glendon is trans¬
formed into a wolf. He prowls the streets and kills
a woman. Realizing what he has done, he becomes
horrified. He rents a cheap room in a boarding
house and locks himself in. It doesn’t work. When
the moon is full again, man becomes wolf and
kills once more.
Now Glendon is desperate to have the marifesa
bloom, so that he can be cured by the blossom.
But he knows that someone else wants the rare
flower: an Oriental scientist named Yogami, who
has visited Glendon to tell him about the marifesa’s
The Werewolf of London. Henry Hull (top) (© 1935 Universal
Pictures an MCA, Inc. Company).

miraculous power. Yogami wants the flower be¬

cause he, too, is a werewolf—the very werewolf
who bit Glendon in the first place. (Yogami was
played by Warner Oland, an actor who achieved
fame by playing Charlie Chan, the Chinese detec¬
tive, in a long series of mediocre mysteries.)
89
 Great Monsters
Inevitably the showdown comes. When the
marifesa blooms, Yogami steals the blossom. It
is the full moon, and Glendon again is transformed
into a werewolf. Unable to cure himself because
the flower has been stolen, he finds himself with
the murderous urge of a movie wolf (quite dif¬
ferent from the moderate behavior of a real wolf).
To his horror, Glendon finds himself attacking
his own beautiful young wife. Before he can kill
her, Glendon is shot by a silver bullet—a sure
way to kill a werewolf. As he dies, the wolf turns
into a man again. Glendon has just enough time
to gasp a few last words of regret before he dies.
On paper, the plot is convincing enough and
critics speak highly of many scenes in Werewolf
of London—including Glendon’s Cockney land¬
lady, whose terror about her mysterious tenant was
highly amusing. Despite this praise, the movie was
not a success. Henry Hull was not the convincing
monster that Lugosi or Karloff was, and that con¬
tributed to the film’s failure.
Another reason was the success of an entirely
different movie, a new version of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s classic story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
which starred Fredric March and had been re¬
leased only a short time earlier. That film also fea¬
tured a man who turned into a monster, and it was
a smash hit. The feeling in Hollywood was that
the public was getting tired of half-men, half-
90
 A Miscellany of Monsters
monsters, and wanted to see all-out monsters like
Dracula and Kong. It took six more years and
much hairier make-up for Lon Chaney, Jr„ to
turn a werewolf into a box office triumph.

As has already been mentioned, the standard

rule in Hollywood is that one good movie deserves
another—except that the second movie usually
is not as good as the first. That is because a good
movie has just the right combination of talent—
the right director, the right writer, the right actors.
A sequel usually fails to match that perfect com¬
bination no matter how hard it tries. You have
seen some exceptions to that rule, such as The
Bride of Frankenstein, but the rule does hold good

Son of Dracula, released by Universal in 1943,

was one of the exceptions. It starred Lon Chaney,
Jr., in the role of Count Alucard (spell it back¬
wards to learn his secret) and actress Louise Allbrit-
ton as his lovely vampire assistant. Director Robert
Siodmak achieved a good air of terror in the
scenes showing Alucard prowling through the
foggy streets of London, involved in efforts to
bring his lady love under his control. One notable
feature of the film was the death outlined for Count
Alucard: he returns to his coffin after a busy night
on the town, only to find it in flames. When the
coffin goes, so does Count Alucard.
91
 Great Monsters
Although critics gave Son of Dracula good re¬
views, most of them thought that the original
Dracula was better. Lugosi obviously was a vam¬
pire who loved his work—a Count who can hardly
wait to sink his fangs into a juicy neck after a long,
hard day in the coffin. Lon Chaney, Jr„ on the
other hand, was a respectable vampire, but he
did not radiate the same gleeful menace as Lugosi.
Instead of wanting to attack a throat, it seems
to be something he does because it is expected
of him. Still, Son of Dracula has its share of chills
for the terror-lover.'
A not-so-bad remake. The Phantom of the
Opera, was done again by Universal Pictures in
1943, eighteen years after the famous silent ver¬
sion starring the elder Lon Chaney. This time, the
movie was far from silent—in fact, the critics
complained that instead of concentrating on ter¬
ror, the film spent too much of its time listening
to the singing of its two romantic stars, Nelson
Eddy and Susanna Foster. The Phantom in this
version was played by Claude Rains, who was an
excellent actor but who did not have the unequaled
mastery of fright that Lon Chaney did. Wisely,
Rains did not try to outdo Chaney’s make-up.
Instead, he wore a mask that hid his face for almost
all of the movie.
The plot was pretty much the same, except that
Rains played a composer who was scarred by acid
92
 A Miscellany of Monsters
and who then descended into the cellars of the
Paris Opera as the Phantom. Even in his bitter
self-exile, the Phantom works to make an opera
star of his pretty, talented young daughter. There
is the same theme of jealousy, the same falling
chandelier, and the same thrilling hunt for the
Phantom through the cellars of the Opera.
True to the movie remake tradition, The Phan¬
tom of the Opera was filmed once again, this time
in England in 1962, with actor Herbert Lom play¬
ing the horribly scarred Phantom—this time very
visible. Most critics believe the latest version was
not the match of the first two. But they are waiting.
Now that Phantom has been remade twice at in¬
tervals of about twenty years, another try might be
coming up again. If the same rhythm holds, you
can expect the fourth version of The Phantom of
the Opera to appear on your screen about 1981.

Sometimes film critics would just as soon for¬

get about sequels. But movie horror fans are so
enthusiastic about monster movies that many of
them will go to see a bad film if a good one is not
available. And so the sequels keep coming, often
with the same old monsters in slightly different
plots. That has one advantage: it gives some variety
to the horror movie fan and the television stations
that delight in showing old movies.
93
 Great Monsters
For example, if mummies are your special kind
of monster, you have a wide choice of films, includ¬
ing The Mummy’s Curse, The Mummy’s Ghost,
The Mummy's Hand, and The Mummy's Tomb,
not to mention a new version of The Mummy,
made in England in 1959. The picture on the next
page happens to be from The Mummy, but it could-'
just as well be from any of the others.
You may remember that in the original Mummy,
Boris Karloff was the starring monster. The later
sequels all have brought out a living (?) mummy,
heavily bound up in the familiar bandages and
fresh from the tomb. Almost always, the mummy
has come back to life because its tomb has been
violated by modern archaeologists who scoff at
the thought of a curse. Needless to say, the ones
who scoff the most are the first to go, and there
is a long round of bandaged hands clutching at
throats, creaking coffin lids, dark shadows, and
other assorted frights before the hero finds a way
to dispose of the mummy. The mummy’s fate
may seem final, but you know that the mummy
will rise again for another try in a new monster

Another trend that bothers many horror movie

fans is the tendency to play monsters for laughs.
One result of that trend was the film titled Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which threw in
the Wolf Man for good measure. This film is the
94
 A Miscellany of Monsters

end of a long, long line of movies that started

off with true horror and ended up malting fun
of themselves. It is a movie that children may en¬
joy, but adults probably will not. Just imagine:
the monsters who terrified an entire nation now
are reduced to being straight men for two movie
comediansl
The film had good actors—Bela Lugosi as the
monster, Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolf Man. But
everyone was more interested in the jokes than in
terrifying the audience. As far as horror went,
95
 Great Monsters

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the

end of the line for these monsters. From then on,
monster moviemakers and fright-mongers had to
start looking for new ideas.

In the mid-1950’s, new actors and directors

in the good old monster movie style created a new
era of chills in both the United States and England.
On this side of the Atlantic, a talented director
named Roger Corman began making a series of
films based on the horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
The films included The Pit and the Pendulum.
The Fall of the House of Usher. The Haunted
Palace, The Masque of the Red Death and The
Raven. Much of the time, the movie plot did not
have a lot in common with the original Poe story,
but the gloomy atmosphere was the same.
Most of these films starred Vincent Price, who
managed to be terrifying even when he gave the
impression of not quite taking the whole business
too seriously. Corman’s direction featured much
more gore than the old monster movies did, prob¬
ably on the theory that much more is needed to
shock people today than years ago. Still, Vincent
Price always keeps the terror under control, some¬
times kidding with the plot a bit but always main¬
taining at least a hint of horror.
Roger Corman still is active in filmmaking, and
96
 Great Monsters
is branching out to new subjects. He is one of the
fastest workers in the business; one of his movies
was made in just three days, an unbelievably short
time for these complicated years. Corman had
finished a movie a trifle early, and so he whipped
up another film that used the same sets and many
of the same actors. While the Corman-Price movies
are not regarded as hitting the same peaks of
fright as the classic monster films of the 1930s,
they do keep the old tradition alive and vibrant.
On the British side of the Atlantic, a small com¬
pany named Hammer Films began turning out new
versions of the old movie greats. The first remake
was The Curse of Frankenstein, released in 1957,
which was followed the next year by The Horror
ofDracula, and on and on to this day.
Hammer’s favorite director is Terence Fisher,
who had two leading actors, Peter Cushing and
Christopher Lee; usually, Cushing plays the scien¬
tist in these movies, while Lee plays the monster.
In the illustration, Cushing, playing Dr. Franken¬
stein in The Curse of Frankenstein, is inspecting
the heavily scarred face of his creature, played by
Christopher Lee.
Cushing brings a touch of British coolness to
his films, always remaining calm even when the
worst is happening. Lee suffers from the fact that
new make-up has to be created for the old roles
(Universal, for instance, has copyrighted the origi-
98
 Great Monsters
nal Frankenstein’s monster make-up and pro¬
tects it fiercely). In The Curse of Frankenstein,
Lee’s gruesome scars and bulging eyeball did not
come up to the Karloff monster of old. It was Cush¬
ing and Lee again in The House of Dracula (with
Fisher directing); Lee died a typical vampire’s
death when he encountered a crucifix and daylight.
The plots of these two films were essentially the
same as the earlier Dracula and Frankenstein.
But the new movies are in color, and they give the
viewer plenty of blood and other gory details. Gore,
and plenty of it, is typical of most Hammer films;
the studio piles on as much as it thinks the audience
will take. In some cases, Hammer has released
different versions of a film for different countries,
depending on that nation’s taste for gore.
With all the blood, Cushing provides the same
stability as does Price. His crisp British sense of
authority never wavers. Using Fisher, Cushing,
Lee, and other talent it has developed, Hammer
is running through the full range of traditional
monster themes, from mad scientists to werewolves.
Times may change, but the monsters keep march¬
ing on.

American-International Pictures, which released

many of the Roger Corman-Vincent Price films,
has always had a strong bent for the teen-age

100
 A Miscellany oE Monsters

market. A young producer by the name of Herman

Cohen looked at the combination of millions of
teen-age filmgoers, and their taste for monster
movies, and came up with a logical product: teen¬
age monster movies. The results of that endeavor
include two big box-office hits, I was a Teen-age
Werewolf and l Was a Teen-age Frankenstein.
While neither of these films will ever make the
horror hall of fame, both of them provided a lot
of fun for youthful viewers.
Both films used youth-minded variations on the
standard monster movie plots. For example, the
teen-age Frankenstein (the monster was the teen-
103
 Great Monsters
ager, not the doctor) was assembled by a mad
scientist from the American branch of the Franken¬
stein family. This mad scientist used parts of teen¬
agers only to produce his creature, and the mon¬
ster had many of the habits of teen-agers, including
a keen eye for pretty, young non-monster girls.
The teen-age monster movies proved several
points. One is that working conditions have im¬
proved greatly in the laboratories of mad scien¬
tists. Not only do mad scientists use up-to-date
equipment these days, but they also have done
away with the cobwebs, bats, and mossy stones
that made old-fashioned laboratories unsanitary
as well as spooky.
It is also obvious that the monsters of today are
much more clean-cut than the old brand. Even
though the young werewolf is both long in the tooth
and hairy in the best tradition of man-tumed-
beast, he does look something like a college stu¬
dent who will be back at his books, preparing for
the big exam, as soon as the full moon disappears
from the night sky.
Basically, these movies played their monsters
more for laughs than for chills. But the American-
International films did introduce many young
moviegoers to the world of monster films. They
also served to pave the way for several television
series that have featured monsters. These series
still can be seen, in reruns, on many stations.
106
 A Miscellany of Monsters
One series, The Addams Family, was based on a
weird brood of beings created by a cartoonist,
Charles Addams, Another, The Munsters, has a
father who was the image of Frankenstein’s mon¬
ster, a mother who resembled a vampire, a were¬
wolf son and a grandfather who bore a strong
resemblance to Bela Lugosi. The viewer of these
two series knows better than to be frightened by
these sights; it is all in rather mild fun. Even
though Rod Serling has written several series of
television shows that set out to terrify the viewing
audience at home, television had not had much
success with monsters. The exception was a daytime
serial, Dark Shadows, whose unearthly cast of
characters achieved some popularity. But that
serial went off the air eventually. The movies still
reign supreme in the monster field.
While some filmmakers stick with the old stand¬
bys, others are going down new paths of fright.
In particular, the age of the atom and of space
has given the movies any number of new ways to
create blood-curdling monsters. They can come
from outer space, from the ocean depths, from the
atom’s radiation, and from just plain imagination.
And they keep coming.
In The Day of the Triffids, the villains were
vegetable-type creatures who invaded the earth
from another planet; the idea of a walking, think¬
ing vegetable is even more frightening than that
107
 A Miscellany of Monsters
of an animal monster—usually, vegetables are
harder to get rid of than giant animals. A good
vegetable monster has seasoned many a modern
monster movie.
In The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the
villain was a kind of super-frog—actually, actor
Ricou Browning dressed up in an excellently de¬
tailed monster suit that might have been just a bit
too perfect to frighten actress Julie Adams. Even
though the monster is too well groomed for its own
good (shouldn’t a creature that lives in a black
lagoon be dripping with seaweed and barnacles?),
The Creature from the Black Lagoon was success¬
ful enough to spawn a couple of sequels.
Films such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,
released by Columbia Pictures in 1948, testify that
Hollywood’s skill with special effects lives on, as
you can tell from the realistic duel between a man
and a skeleton. The man responsible for the special
effects in Sinbad is Ray Harryhausen, who is truly
carrying on the tradition of Willis O’Brien; Harry¬
hausen was O’Brien’s collaborator in making
Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen has created
equally imaginative special effects for a series of
movies including Jason and the Argonauts and
The Mysterious Island; indeed, he also created
The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Even when
the plots of these movies happen to be slightly
109
 A Miscellany of Monsters
weak, the special effects are always worth seeing.
And finally, there is the preview of things to
come in an Italian movie which was released in
the United States under the title of Planet of the
Vampires. Even when man goes into space in cen¬
turies to come, it seems, the monsters of old will
be there to frighten him as before—if only in
imagination, and even if they are always con¬
quered in the end. Man has come a long way from
the dark forests and shadowy caves that were the
homes of the first monster stories. But even though
we conquer the solar system in ultramodern space¬
craft, there still is that deep-down need to be de¬
liciously frightened for a few hours, until it is time
to come out of the theater into the light of modern
day again. Apparently monsters will be with us
for some time to come.

113
 Index

Abbott and Costello Meet Arlen, Richard, 57

Frankenstein, 94-96 Armstrong, Robert, 72
Adams, Julie, 109 Background music, 5-6
Addams, Charles, 107 Black Cat, The, 60
Addams Family, The (TV Black magic, 13
African folk tales, 10 21, 45, 47, 91
Allbritton, Louise, 91 Browning, Ricou, 109
American Indians, 10 Browning, Tod, 22-23
20 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The,
Ape Man, The, 59 26-30, 32
115
 s, The (TV series).
107 Schreck, Max, 30, 31
Mysterious Island, The, 109 Sea serpent theme, 20
Selznick, David Q., 70
Nosferatu, 30, 31, 32 Serling, Rod, 107
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,
O’Brien, Willis, 70, 78, 109 The, 109, 110-11
Octopi theme, 20 Shelley, Mary Wollstone-
Of Mice and Men, 60, 64 craft, 16, 17, 44
Oland, Warner, 89 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 16
Olt, Arisztid. See Lugosi, Silver bullets, 9, 11-12
Siodmak, Curt, 23
Siodmak, Robert, 91
Son of Dracula, 91-92
Phantom of the Opera, The Son of Kong, 76, 78
(1925), 35, 36 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 90
Stoker, Bram, 9, 12, 30
(1943), 92 Sullivan, Barry, 112
Phantom of the Opera, The
(1962), 93 Teen-age monster movies,
Pierce, Jack, 21,42, 44, 60, 100, 103-05
Television, 6, 107
Thesiger, Ernest, 47-48
Tim Tyler’s Luck, 79, 80
Transylvania, province of,

Vampire theme, 4, 7-10, 12,

Prometheus, legend of, 16 13, 30-32
Veidt, Conrad, 27
Rains, Claude, 92 " Voodoo, 13
Raven, The. 60, 96
Reed, Oliver, 103 Wells, H. G„ 57
Romain, Yvonne, 103 Werewolf of London, The,
Rome (ancient), 10 87-90
118
Werewolf Iheme, 10-12, 13 World War I, 26, 27
Whale, James, 21, 22-23, 44 World War II, 84 ’
Wiene, Robert, 27 Wray, Fay, 72, 73
Wolf Man, The, 60, 63, 87
Wolfsbane (plant), 11 Zombie theme, 12-14

119
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HISTORY

1MMM

The monsters are coming!

Most of us like to escape from the
ordinary or enjoy the thrill of a good
fright. One of the most popular scary
entertainments in this century has been
the parade of monster movies. Vam¬
pires, werewolves, and gigantic beasts
are just a few of the terrifying creatures
that have made these movies famous.
This survey covers the legends behind
the stories, and the brilliant directors,
technicians, and actors who created
some of the most successful horror
films. Stills of such classic villains as
King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula, and
the Wolf Man add to the fascination and
delight of this book for all monster-
movie buffs.
“... a brief but entertaining history_
The extensive use of film stills should
please all of those who love a monster.”
—Horn Book

Cover photograph: 1932 Copyrighted-RKO Radio

Pictures, a division of RKO General, Inc.
*

i/l

it
1
3
|
 Great Monsters
of the Movies (1973)
Edward Edelson

Buy an original!