The Monster Mash

  

The other night I stumbled upon the fact that iTunes had several classic horror/monster movies at very low prices. I picked up what many consider the unholy trinity of OG Halloween films: Lugosi's Dracula (1931), Karloff's Frankenstein (1931), and Chaney's Wolfman (1941).

It had been decades since I had seen any of these and could hardly pass up the chance to add them to my library. All three films are short (under 90 minutes each), so I watched them over the last couple of nights. There have been so many attempts to remake and reboot these stories in film over the years, I was eager to go back to the source a bit. I have read Stoker's book, but not Shelley's. The Wolfman was an original screenplay.

Rather than enter into an exhaustive review of each film (You can find those online, and written by better qualified critics than your truly!), I thought I'd talk a little about what struck me after having not seen these films after so many years.

First of all, leaving aside things like primitive special effects (Any movie 70+ years old gets a pass there!), I was struck at how simple these films were. I don't mean they were crude, but they were distilled down to only the bones of the story. In both Dracula and Frankenstein's  cases, to the point where large chunks of the original story were simply dropped. Obviously at the time these were made, the studios didn't necessarily know they were filming anything that would become so iconic. They were making movies to sell tickets at the matinees.

The theme that ran through all three of these films was that modern man scoffed at the supernatural or divine at his peril. This is an idea that is still used quite a lot today. But back when these movies were made, the medium of film was, if not novel, the dominant form of entertainment and there were still new things to see.

In Dracula we see Renfield (his character was combined with Harker's) dismissing the villagers' warnings about going on to the castle at night. When the Count arrives in London society, Mina and the others accept him at face value. When van Helsing arrives, his greatest challenge is getting the people to believe that there are such things as vampires and the Count is one of them. The actual slaying of Dracula takes place off screen and is almost anticlimactic.

Frankenstein sets a wonderfully gloomy tone with the doctor and Fritz (no, not "Igor") robbing a grave. His fiancé and friends are worried about his odd behavior and confront him at the lab, where he is ready to bring his creation to life. He succeeds but is horrified at its violence ("Bad Brain!"). At the end, after the creature has gotten loose and wreaked its havoc, the doctor joins the villagers in hunting it down. After the monster is destroyed in a burning windmill, the doctor convalesces at his father's home. The implication is that his efforts to destroy the monster, along with the mental strain of his realization that it was a bad business to begin with, caused a breakdown.

Both of these cases are man vs. monster. There is an evil loosed upon the modern world. Men must recognize and defeat the evil.

But the Wolfman is different.

Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry, the 2nd son of a lord who had gone to America to make his own way. When his brother dies, Larry returns as heir apparent. He and his father begin to reconnect and Larry notices a pretty girl in a shop. After some frankly creepy stalking by today's standards (watching her through a telescope), he convinces her to walk out with him to a gypsy camp where they can have their fortune's told. The upshot is one of the gypsies (played in fact by Bela Lugosi) is a werewolf and attacks one of the girl's friends. Larry beats the creature off with a silver handled walking stick but is wounded. The werewolf dies from the battering and turns back into Bela.

I tell this much of the plot to set the scene on Larry waking from his ordeal after being brought home. For a large stretch of the remaining film, it could be viewed as Larry losing his mind. It's in many ways a psychological thriller. He believes he killed a wolf, but instead there lies a dead man. He's told the legend of the werewolf and how surviving victims become wolves. His father, his doctor, and the local law are rational men and believe Larry is simply traumatized. And the argument could be made for it. Does he really change or is he suffering from a split personality? His victims can't say, they're dead! You could watch it from either perspective until the end, when the monster is confronted and defeated by a surviving witness.

What made the Wolfman different? I'm not sure. Perhaps it was the fact it was an original story instead of an adaptation. Maybe it was because it was made later. What I can say is that, after watching these classics through a much older pair of eyes, I was happy to revisit all three. But I would pick Chaney's film as the best "horror" movie.