All five Mummy movies (Karloff/Tyler/Chaney) on this set…the original Invisible Man plus a buncha sequels I’ve never seen here…and, finally the three Creature flicks on this one.
The Mummy set is a no-brainer for me, having grown up on a strict tanna leaf diet, and the Creature set is important because I haven’t seen The Creature Walks Among Us since I was about 12 and caught it on the UHF station horror-movie rotation. And while I’ll always prefer the MST3K version of Revenge of the Creature, I’ll also need this set for digital scrutiny of the Julie-Adams-in-really-tight-short-shorts scenes in the original film.
I don’t know about the Invisible Man collection, though…how are those sequels? Do they suck? Anyone seen any of 'em? Do I need this for any reason other than getting the complete Universal set?
You’re a good man, Ukulele Ike. I followed da’ link and bought da’ Mummy. (I also added in Mad Monster Party and The Changeling for good measure.)
I never saw the Invisible Man series, and, truthfully, never had any interest in them. With the exception of Frankenstein, the “science gone wrong” theme never appealed to me, so without nolstalgia being involved, I doubt I’ll ever get 'em. (Unless Universal comes out with another three-series collection with the busts of the Mummy, the Creature and Mr. Rains. I’m a sucker for busts.)
The great thing about these sets is that they each contain at least one film that is worth the price of the set- a price which really isn’t much higher than most single film DVDs.
When I bought the Frankenstein set I would have paid the same price had they released Bride of Frankenstein on it’s own. All the other films feel like really great DVD “extras”. Ditto Dracula and Wolfman.
I don’t know the Invisible Man sequels either, but the original The Invisible Man with Claude Rains is so friggin’ awesome that I’ll definitely be buying the set- and I’ll be happy with it even if the other films suck. I’ve been eagerly awaiting a The Invisible Man DVD release.
I’ve never seen any of the Mummy or Creature films. You guys will have to give me the low-down. Can I get a more detailed review/recommendation from anyone?
THE INVISIBLE MAN: Directed by James “Bride Of Frankenstein” Whale, this one is a classic, and well worthwhile.
THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS: Not bad, if you’re a Universal Monsters fan.
INVISIBLE AGENT: Made during the war, this is an odd hybrid – a wartime spy movie crossed with an Invisible Man movie. Kind of light and fluffy, but not bad.
INVISIBLE WOMAN: Actually pretty funny by today’s standards; in the other Invisible Man movies, the fact that the invisible person is naked is no more than incidental. In THIS one, though, they never let you forget for a minute that you are SEEING A GORGEOUS WOMAN RUNNING AROUND COMPLETELY NUUUUDE, and the only reason they can show it is because she’s invisible! The scene with the stockings is the topper, here.
Sure, I’ll buy 'em. For the price, it’s great entertainment, and good nostalgia value – I grew up watching these flicks on Saturday afternoons.
A set of this kind will not be comlete without “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” It just rounds out the whole thing.
I remember seeing it several years ago around this time of the year, and TCM had it introduced by Jerry Garcia. It made a huge impression on him as a child. He talked about that a little and then did a dead-on impression of Boris Karloff saying “Friend…friend.” and “We belong dead.”
Man, to have had the opportunity to sit down for about a week and just shoot the shit with that guy…oh, the places we could have gone.
In the films featuring Abbott and Costello, the comedy team took center stage. These weren’t scary movies; they were comedies, and relegated the monsters to backseat status.
Include 'em in the *Abbott And Costello Collection * if you want, but I’ll take my monsters straight up, if you please.
Well. The original Mummy, 1932, features Boris Karloff in mummy wrappings ONLY for the first few minutes of the flick, when Bramwell Fletcher reads off the ancient manuscript that brings him back to life. He shambles out of the casket and grabs the scroll, leaving Fletcher a hopeless giggling lunatic. For the rest of the flick Karloff is “Ardath Bey,” a wrinkly old wizard looking to regain his lost princess, reincarnated in the delactable form of Zita Johann. This film owes a lot to Dracula…David Manners and Edward Van Sloan reprise their performances, and a spooky Old Eastern Evil is hot for young Aryan girlflesh.
The rest of the Mummy flicks…Hand, Tomb, Ghost, and Curse…are an entirely different kettle of fish. A succession of Egyptian priests bring the Mummy to life by spooning in a brew of tanna leaves (“During the cycle of the fooooool mooooon…three leaves to give him LIFE…NINE to give him MOVEMENT and TREMENDOUS STRENGTH…”). Hand takes place in Egypt, and features cowboy actor Tom Tyler as Kharis. Tomb and Ghost move the action to suburban Massachusetts: in the first, Kharis (now played by Lon Chaney) throttles a bunch of old people (the desecrators of his tomb, from Hand)…it’s the most unpleasant of the Mummy features. Ghost is a little more interesting – Kharis finds a reincarnated mate, drags her to a swamp, and sinks into it, while she turns from a brunette hottie into an ancient desiccated crone.
Curse moves the location to Louisiana, for no reason anyone could see either then or now. One very cool scene where the reanimated female mummy rises from her grave. shakes off her dust, and emerges as the mega-cute Virginia Christine.
Now, the Creature movies are quite different. It’s the 1950s now. Just look at that figure on Julie Adams, and you can tell.
First flick takes place entirely in the Black Lagoon, some spooky tributary off the Amazon river. VERY claustrophobic and atmospheric. The heroes are stuck down there on a boat, and SOMETHING unpleasantly anthropomorphic is living under the water.
Second film…Revenge…has the Gill-Man captured and shipped up to Miami to be an attraction at Sea World, or whatever they had back in 1955. He escapes and scurries around the motels, looking for chicks. Dumb film, rightfully skewered by Mike and the bots on MST3K.
The Creature Walks Among Us has the Gill-Man re-captured, and turned into an air-breather by yet another mad scientist. I don’t know too much about this one, having only seen it once, as a lad.
Actually, I had started buying the Universal monster movies before the “Legacy collection” tarted coming out, because I could get good-quality movies plus the "Making of… " features (most of them done by David Skal!) So I’d already bought Brie of Frankenstein before the collections came out, and Dracula. I didn’t mind buying the Frankenstein Legacy set, even though it duplicated Bride, although I’v balked at getting the DRacula set (I really don’t need Son of Dracula and Dracula’s Daughter that badly. But I wouldn’t mind having House of Dracula).
The Mummy is a weird flick, based in part on a play, written by one of the guys who wrote the stage play Dracula, and introducing that plot about searching for his re-incarnated lover that was later grafted onto two versions of Dracula (not o mention the recent Brendan Fraser Mummy). as nted above, Karloff only spends a brief period of time as the bandage-wrapped Mummy before reappearing as the dried-out Ardath Bey. It’s pretty boring, actually. Later Mummy movies (including the later Universal films, the Hammer films, and the recent big-budget ones) kept the Mummy literally uner wraps for the whole film – what fun is a mummy that doesn’t look like a mummy? That later films changed the mummy from Im-Ho-Tep (the name of an actual and important Egyptian) to “Kharis” and added the whole Tana Leaf thing. His last outing was in Abbot and Costello Met the Mummy, which starred a few faces to become familiar on TV (Richard Deacon, from the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Michael Ansara, TV’s answer to Yul Brynner and Anthony Quinn, who played all ethnic types from Indians to Arabs to Klingons). At the end, “Klaris” is blown up by a stick of dynamite, leading Famous Monster editor Forrest J. Ackerman to suggest the next sequel be “The Attack of the Inch-High Mummy Parts”, starring Kharis Borloff.
I’ll admit it’s not packed with thrilling action, but it’s worth seeing for Karl Freund’s direction (Freund was the cinematographer behind The Golem, The Last Laugh, Metropolis, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and The Good Earth…also directed Peter Lorre in Mad Love…and was the director of photography for “I Love Lucy”).
It’s also got Boris in his prime, and one of Zita Johann’s few film performances: Johann was better known for a Broadway performance, originating the role of the Young Woman in Sophie Treadwell’s great Expressionist play, Machinal. And for being John Houseman’s first wife.
A quick post to point out that Creature From the Black Lagoon was originally a 3-D feature, and I was lucky enough to see it at a revival house in all it’s 3-dimensional glory. It was awesome.
I’ve seen i in 3D , too, and it’s one of my favorites 3D movies, in art because the 3D isn’t “forced” – it comes naturally from the way things are suspended in the water. Even in a scene where they don’t go out of the way to set things up, there are bits of plant matter at various planes in the water, not to mention the swimming figures and the bubbles. Very well done.
