Classic+Hollywood+horror

Classic Hollywood Horror: From AMC Filmsite

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**The Advent of Classic Horror Films of the 30s:** **The End of Silent Horror Films, The Rise of Universal Studios**

Actor Conrad Veidt and German expressionistic director Paul Leni were recruited by Universal's boss Carl Laemmle in the mid-1920s. Paul Leni was already known in his homeland for the spooky horror classics **Backstairs (1921, Ger.) (aka Hintertreppe)** and the expressionistic anthology **Waxworks (1924, Ger.) (aka Das Wachsfigurenkabinett)**. After moving to Hollywood, Leni directed **The Cat and the Canary (1927)**, a derivative from a stage-bound 1922 melodrama. The influential film is considered the first Gothic 'haunted house' horror film. Veidt was cast as an ever-smiling, grotesque carnival freak named Gwynplaine in Leni's next film for Universal, **The Man Who Laughs (1927)**, a superb romantic melodrama.

The first talkie horror film was also the second 'all-talking' motion picture from Warner Bros -- director Roy Del Ruth's **The Terror (1928)**, a stage-bound adaptation of Edgar Wallace's play regarding a haunted house terrorized by a homicidal asylum escapee. The film's many ads capitalized on the new feature of sound (creaking doors, howling wind, organ music), heard with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process: "It will thrill you! Grip you! Set you into tremors of awe. HEAR this creepy tale of mystery - the baffling story of a detective's great triumph. With voices and shadows that will rack your nerves and make you like it. Come, hear them talk in this Vitaphone production of the play that has gripped London for over 3 years."

By the early 1930s, horror entered into its classic phase in Hollywood - the true //Dracula// and //Frankenstein// Eras, with films that borrowed from their German expressionism roots. The studios took morbid tales of European vampires and undead aristocrats, mad scientists, and invisible men and created some of the most archetypal creatures and monsters ever known for the screen. Universal Studios, with many groundbreaking //silent// horror films, continued its tradition by providing //talkie// horror films derived from literature and other mythic-legendary sources. It was best-known for its pure horror films in the 30s and 40s, horror-dom's characters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, the Invisible Man, and the Wolf Man) and its classic horror stars, Hungarian matinee idol Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

**The First of the //Dracula// Films:**

According to //Guinness World Records//, the character most frequently portrayed in horror films is Dracula, with nearly 200 representations (at the present count). With Tod Browning's direction, Universal Studios produced a film version of Lugosi's 1927 Broadway stage success about a blood-sucking, menacing vampire named [|**Dracula (1931)**], released early in the year. [Lon Chaney, Sr. was one of many actors considered to play the title character, but he died in 1930.] The atmospheric, commercially-successful film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel played upon fears of sexuality, blood, and the nebulous period between life and death. The heavily-accented voice and acting of Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in his most famous portrayal as the 500 year old vampire was elegant, suave, exotic and stylish - and frightening to early audiences - while the undead villain hypnotically charmed his victims with a predatory gaze. [|Dracula (1931)] Peter Lorre's //first// American role was in cinematographer/director Karl Freund's melodramatic horror film **Mad Love (1935)**, an adaptation of Maurice Renard's 1920 novel //Les Mains d'Orlac// about an obsessed and twisted surgeon named Dr. Gogol who schemed to win the love of Parisian Grand Guignol theatre actress Yvonne Orlac (Francis Drake) by transplanting the hands of a knife-murderer onto her injured concert pianist husband Stephen (Colin Clive).
 * [An impressive-looking Spanish version, with director George Melford in place of Browning, was shot simultaneously on the same sets at night, but with a different cast and crew (Carlos Villarías replaced Lugosi, and Eduardo Arozamena as Van Helsing, along with provocatively-dressed actresses Lupita Tovar as Eva (Mina) and Carmen Guerrero as Lucia (Lucy)).]
 * [In director Tim Burton's horror/comedy **Ed Wood (1994)**, Martin Landau won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the aging, morphine-addicted horror star Bela Lugosi, a friend of one of Hollywood's worst directors.]

**[|M]** **The Original //Frankenstein// Film:** The first //Dracula// film was followed closely by the definitive, quintessential combination of science fiction and Gothic horror in a 'mad doctor' thriller. This classic monster/horror film - [|**Frankenstein (1931)**] - was James Whale's adaptation from Mary Shelley's novel about Dr. Henry Frankenstein with a virtually unknown actor - Boris Karloff. With a boxy forehead and neck electrodes (and other features created from Whale's sketches by make-up artist Jack Pierce), Karloff's poignant portrayal of the pathetic created Monster's plight gave a personality to the outcast, uncomprehending character with a lumbering and lurching gait. The next three films in the series (see later) were: The worst ignominy suffered by Chaney, Jr. was in Universal-International's hybrid horror-comedy **Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)** with the two screen comedians. Here was evidence that classic horror films in the genre were beginning to go out of style after the real 'horrors' of World War II, and Universal was attempting to crank out more and more sequels for younger audiences.
 * **Bride of Frankenstein (1935): [|Bride of Frankenstein Trailer]**
 * **Son of Frankenstein (1939) [|Frankenstein(1931)]**
 * **The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)**
 * **House of Frankenstein (1944)** (the first all-star get-together with Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster, John Carradine as Baron Dracula, Boris Karloff as mad scientist Dr. Gustav Neimann, and Lon Chaney, Jr. as Larry Talbot/the Wolf Man)
 * **House of Dracula (1945)** - an immediate sequel to the //House of Frankenstein (1944)// film, with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man, John Carradine as Dracula, and Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster - again

**Other Early Classic Horror Films:** Other classic horror films of the 1930s and early 1940s included one of the best adventure/horror films of all time - it was the "beauty and the beast" classic. Special effects expert Willis O'Brien created many of the models for the film. After his success with [|**Dracula (1931)**], Tod Browning directed the unusual, gothic **Freaks (1932)** with real-life side-show "freaks" - one of his best works. It told how a group of freaks took revenge on a beautiful gold-digging trapeze artist and turned her into a monstrous half-human, half-bird. This cult film redefined the concepts of beauty, love, and abnormality, but was so disturbingly ahead of its time that audiences stayed away in huge numbers, and it was even banned for 30 years in England. After this film, Browning's career would never be the same - he directed only a few more films through 1939 before retiring.

British director James Whale directed the spooky, dark comedy/ghost story **The Old Dark House (1932)** with Karloff in the ensemble cast (in his first starring role) as Morgan the butler and female lead Gloria Stuart (later revived by **Titanic (1997)**). Charles Laughton was H. G. Wells' crazed scientist Dr. Moreau (from the 1896 novel) in **The Island of Lost Souls (1932)** (banned in Britain until 1958, and re-made in 1977 with Burt Lancaster and 1996 as **The Island of Dr. Moreau** with Marlon Brando), responsible for turning innocent animals into grotesque hybrid-humans.

When Karloff refused the title role, Claude Rains starred as **The Invisible Man (1933)** in James Whale's second hit and Universal's critically-acclaimed film version of H. G. Wells' novel. [When the title character stripped naked in one scene to avoid the police, the trail of footprints in the snow revealed a pair of feet wearing shoes!] Laughton took the role of the horribly deformed bellringer who saves Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara) in the excellent **The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)**. Claude Rains appeared in the semi-musical remake of **Phantom of the Opera (1943)** as disfigured composer Erik. In the post-war years, George Sanders starred in classic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel **The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)** about a man (Hurd Hatfield) whose portrait showed physical aging while he remained youthful.