I am a huge fan of the movies. I read just about anything that gets written about the movies, and I kind of wish that I had worked in the movie industry (instead of the boring career in engineering that I got trapped in). Anyway, for my fellow movie buffs-what explains the plethora of monster flicks made in the 30’s and 40’s? We had DRACULA (Bela Lugosi). the FRANKENSTEIN series (Boris Karloff), and the WEREWOLF seires (Lon Chaney Jr.) What was it about the times that made people want to be scared? Were these movies fairley cheap to produce? Or did the studios like them because they could be made into endless sequels? I can understand why musicals were so popular in the 1930’s-what with the depression and hard times, people needed a lift-but why these monster films? I note that many of these films used techniques borrowed from the german -Expressionist films of the 20’s (Like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, and METROPOLIS)-was this something that Hollywood just latched on to?
For the record, I find these films to be as good today as they were when they were made.
I suspect that it is an age-old Hollywood phenomenon. Find something that works and then beat the hell out of it. Then, it was monster movies. Now, Hollywood either blows things up or, what’s even worse, remakes old movies with much lesser talent (Adam Sandler comes immediately to mind).
Well, I suspect it’s because they allowed them to put on screen things that were visually interesting, had wide appeal, and did things that you couldn’t do in the (“legitimate”) theater. Carl Laemmle got a bug for horror flicks, and they were profitable (See David J. Skal’s The Monster Show, as well as his other books).
My question is this – why weren’t other companies as successful? It’s not well known today, but Columbia put out several monster films in the same time period. Some of them – The Mystery in the Wax Museum, Doctor X --were even in color! But nobody remembers them today except film buffs. (The same thing happened with their cartoons – who remember Columbia’s color cartoons from the 40s? Things like Li’l Abner.)
Smaller studios, trying to make profitable films with low budgets, also cranked out horror flicks, but that’s because there was a good profit to cost ratio. You can’t say this stopped with the 40s – cheapie companies continued and proliferated through the 1950s (American International). I suspect that, by then, the big sudios had other toys to keep the public amused – color was becoming more common, they started various “wide screen” processes that are still with us. And Carl was gone.
They were made because they did well at the box office. If Frankenstein and Dracula had failed, the trend would have died quickly. There was no plan to make sequels of the early ones – remember, Frankenstein’s monster died at the end of the first movie – but the big box office made the idea of a sequel appealing to the studio.
Why? It helped that they were good movies. Also, with the depression, people wanted escapism. A vampire or werewolf or monster was a good way to be scared about something other than where your next meal would come from.
I think there’s two parts to this question–why were these films popular then, and why are they popular now?
Then–Universal really hit it on the head with their original three horror films, “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, and “The Wolfman” (four, if you count “THe Mummy”). Maybe it was the times, maybe it was the fact that these are three really great films–excellent direction, fine performances by the lead characters, and just downright scary. Naturally, with such a group of hot properties on its hands, Universal flogged them to death, with a host of sequels. In the days before TV, this was not unusual; 20th Century Fox had their Charlie Chan series, MGM had scads of “Thin Man” movies, and Republic Pitcures had Roy Rogers.
Now–In the early days of TV, Universal became one of the first studios to package its films for syndication. The public consciousness became saturated with the images from the classic Universal films (that’s why the characters start popping up in bad 50’s SF films, like “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein”, etc.).
Not to be a pain in the ass, but Dracula and Frankenstein were realeased in 1931. The Wolfman was released in 1941.
(The Mummy was 1932.)
I wonder if there was a social factor with the Great Depression.
Escapist Cinema seemed like it was huge, look at the popularity of the Shirley temple films and the Our Gang shorts.
As for the OP I will go with most and say Hollywood just grabbed on a money making style of film and beat it into the ground with as many films or variations of the theme.
All that being said, consider the number of films released in those two decades I’m not sure what the percentage of horror films was compared to say the 1980s My guess is that it was low.
Also from 1942 to 1945 I’m sure their numbers were miniscule compared to the number of War films and Hardboiled detetective stories (Film Noir)
Another idea regarding the horror movies just popped into my head-you did not need really exacting screenwriters to churn these movies out-the plots already existed, and better yet, many (like DRACULA) were already in the public domain. However, casting bela Lugosi as Dracula was an act of genius-he looked the part, and sounded the part as well-that Hungarian accent really defined the screen vampire for me! How sad it was to see Lugosi at the end of his career-burnt out on dope and nearly penniless! Hi son (now a successful entertainment lawyer) looks just like him!
Boris karloff also had an interesting and long career-I remember him appearing on TV in the late 1960’s-always a soft spoken gentleman!
One guy I don’t know much about-Lon Chaney Jr.-anybody know if this actor had a life after the horror movies?
Check out the Internet Movie Database. Always a good ref.
Lon Chaney had some good non-horror roles (Of Mice and Men, where he was the original Lenny, and High Noon), but I think he was typecast even before he started – being the son of Horror legend Lon Chaney had to prejudice people. AFAIK, he’s the only one to have played most of the “classic” Universal monsters during the heyday we’re talking about. He was The Wolfman in at least three films, he played The Son of Dracula, and if I’m not mistaken he played the Frankenstein Monster once. He also played the Monster on TV in the 1950s, and played a sorta Mummy on TV’s Route 66. In the 1950s he made cheapie monster flicks like The Indestructible Man, and he appeared in the weird 1960s flick Spider Baby, which some consider a classic. The last film he appeared in was a horror film, just before he died circa 1970.
After the time period of the OP, Universal Pictures presented the fifth of their great monsters - the gill-man, as seen in “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) and its sequels.
You left out that he also played the Mummy three times in Universal films as well. Of all his monster roles, that was the one he hated the most. He played the Wolf Man five times, if I recall correctly, and always referred to that role as “my baby.”
Chaney also came to something of a sad end. Everyone knows about Bela Lugosi’s problems with morphine. It’s less well-known that Chaney was an alcoholic, which eventually took its toll on both his appearance and his performances. His final few roles are quite painful to watch. The film most readily available, if you really want to see it, is Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. Chaney basically plays a variation on Lenny, but without any dialogue and without the pathos. That may have been his final film.
My personal opinion is that Lon Chaney was miscast in horror movies. He got steered into them because of his father’s fame, but he never struck me as the horror type. He was a big, husky, all-American fellow with an affable screen persona. I’ve always thought he would have been more at home in Westerns. Which is where he had his most notable non-horror successes (I’m stretching things and calling Of Mice and Men a Western).
Universal got lucky. They bought the rights to the play Dracula when Cheney was the intended star. He died, so they glomed onto Lugosi who had played the part in the play for two years. Who else would they have gotten?
And, I just dug out my Cinema, A Critical Dictionary by Richard Roud. Articles written on directors, etc., by pretty knowledgable people.
The writer of the essay on Tod Browning who directed Dracula made a cogent point: the horror film couldn’t come of age until you had sound.
The desire was there, it only needed sound.
Not to nitpick the nitpicking, but there was a 30s werewolf movie : Werewolf of London . Also there were 2 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde during that time period (one in 1931, the other in 1932)
No. Vampires were in the public domain, but Dracula was not in the public domain in the 1930s. Count Dracula was the creation of English writer Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula. Although there was vampire literature long before then, there was no Dracula literature.
The 1931 movie Dracula was actualy made from a stage adaptation of Stoker’s novel by John L. Balderston and Hamilton Deane that was also under copyright.
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was in the public domain in 1931, but again, the film was actually made from a stage adaptation by Peggy Webling and John L. Balderston (him again!) that was under copyright.
Well, yeah, but that one was a one-off. The Wolf Man character was the Money Part: Lawrence Talbot, played by Lon Junior every time. The original, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Lon Chaney Jr played the Monster in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN
(Karloff in the original, BRIDE OF & SON OF; Lugosi in F MEETS THE WOLF MAN; Glenn Strange in HOUSE OF F, HOUSE OF DRAC & ABBOTT & COSTELLO).
According to David Skal’s HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC, for some odd reason, Stoker’s DRACULA was in public domain in the US in the 1930’s, & might
have been in the 1920s during the Deane-Balderston production but they still thought it better to get Mrs Stoker’s permission.
I read a compilation of FRANKENSTEIN stage plays a few years back that included the Webling play & I can’t see the resemblance to the movie at all. It also had the early 1800’s production PRESUMPTION OR THE FATE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which was just weird & full of bad attempts at comedy but was a commercial hit at the time, praised by Mary Shelley herself.
Lon Chaney Jr played the Monster in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN
(Karloff in the original, BRIDE OF & SON OF; Lugosi in F MEETS THE WOLF MAN; Glenn Strange in HOUSE OF F, HOUSE OF DRAC & ABBOTT & COSTELLO).
According to David Skal’s HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC, for some odd reason, Stoker’s DRACULA was in public domain in the US in the 1930’s, & might
have been in the 1920s during the Deane-Balderston production but they still thought it better to get Mrs Stoker’s permission.
I read a compilation of FRANKENSTEIN stage plays a few years back that included the Webling play & I can’t see the resemblance to the movie at all. It also had the early 1800’s production PRESUMPTION OR THE FATE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which was just weird & full of bad attempts at comedy but was a commercial hit at the time, praised by Mary Shelley herself.
John Balderston made an American adaptation of Peggy Webling’s stage play of Frankenstein, and the 1931 film was based on Balderston’s adaptation. Perhaps Balderston’s adaptation is more like the 1931 movie.
That’s not hard to guess. Without getting permission from Bram Stoker’s estate, Universal couldn’t distribute their movie of Dracula in the United Kingdom, where the novel was still under copyright.