Hello, and welcome to How Did This Not Get Made?
This is the podcast all about the movies you've never seen, the scripts that were never
filmed and the ideas that never even made it to the page.
My name is Daniel Kawka.
And I'm Lexcee Riley.
[music]
It's my turn.
Oh, fun.
We're going to jump in.
There's not nerve wracking at all.
This is great.
You're going to be fine.
[laughter]
So, we started doing this because of the spooky season.
The Universal Classic Monsters are a spooky season staple.
So we have Frankenstein with the Squared-Off Head and the Neck Bolts that is just as iconic
as horror itself.
There's the bride with three minutes of screen time and she's got a visual legacy as
infamuses the others.
So, Dan, right out the grave.
I'm going to quiz you.
I give you two out of technically eight classic monsters.
Can you name the official eight?
So there's the Gill Man.
Yes.
The creature from the Black Lagoon is his technical name.
Technical name.
We have Dracula.
Yep.
The Wolf Man.
Yep.
The Invisible Man.
Yep.
Oppressing her.
Yep.
And the Mummy.
Didn't you just name the Mummy Toys?
No.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Because I named our lady.
Our one lady, our Scarlett Johansson of the Avengers is the bride of Frankenstein.
So, those are our eight Dracula was the first followed by Frankenstein then the Mummy,
the Invisible Man, then our bride, the Wolf Man, the Phantom of the Opera and the creature
from the Black Lagoon was the last.
Which one is owned by Universal?
They're all owned by Universal.
Are you sure about that?
Yeah.
These versions.
They're all based on prior books or novels or we'll get into all that.
The creature is technically their new creation.
A lot of their stories are based off of other books.
There are a couple original characters that are really great.
So.
With a lot of these early studios, I know that they were trying to look for stories that
were in the public domain.
Right.
And Disney went the route of...
Fairy tales, the Grims.
And the Hans and all that.
The Grims and the Hans.
Yes.
For Universal, Carl Lemley was like, well, have you heard about this Dracula character?
We'll get there.
But before we get there, enjoy this ad.
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I can't.
Art fam.
So the classic era of monsters ran from 1931 to 1956.
But before we dive into our complete monster roster and the universe they could have been
a part of, we have to go all the way back to the beginning.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't for...
Carl Lemley.
If you live in Southern California and you're thinking of certain theaters, yes, we're
talking about the same family.
They're opened, owned, and run by his cousins.
The movie business seems to be a family business for Uncle Carl.
Small business.
When Carl was 39 years old and living in Chicago, which means Dan, we still got lots of time.
He pivoted careers from a bookkeeper to an owner of his very own motion picture company.
And life only gonna go up from there.
From Chicago, he would then move to a New York City and form the independent moving picture
company or IMP.
Next year's later, now 45.
Carl would join forces with Pat Powers of the Powers Motion Picture Company.
Mark Denton Fast of the Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company,
David Horsley of Nestor Film Company, as well as Charles Bowman at Adam Kessel of the New
York Motion Picture Company.
These men merged their companies to form...
Captain Planet.
Yes.
When all their rings were combined, they formed the Universal Film Manufacturing Company.
Is this sound familiar?
Yeah.
Warmer weather, cheaper labor, and ongoing legal battles with Thomas Edison, inspired
and moved to the West Coast.
Thomas Edison, the more I look into him, I realize, is such an ass hat.
Yeah.
He is...
He wanted the moving pictures to himself.
He was a patent troll in a way.
Oh, 100%.
And he would take things that other people have made and just kind of took it as his own.
The invention of the light bulb.
I remember he gathered together a bunch of scientists who were trying to do essentially
the same thing and once they came together, made the light bulb.
He's like, that's mine now.
He's going to take this over here.
So it wouldn't be surprising that when he discovered or found the motion picture technology,
he was like...
The motion pictures.
That's mine now.
Just going to add this to the pile of inventions?
Yes.
So Carl, now in the San Fernando Valley, serving as president of the company, would go on
to open a 230 acre.
The world's largest motion picture production facility.
Is it the entertainment capital of Los Angeles?
That's right.
It is.
On March 15th, 1915, Universal Studios Hollywood would open.
By this point, Carl had already actually done one monster movie.
He had produced Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913 under IMP.
So we are predating the classic monsters a little bit because we are still in this silent
era.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Yes.
I'm surprised was not part of the original monsters.
It is technically the first.
Is the first one?
Yeah.
The distinction that I've come to realize is that they don't consider the silent films part
of the monsters.
Okay.
So the train coming to the station is not a monster.
No.
It's the talk is, but we'll get there because it's 1913.
He's still working for IMP.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is based on the 1886 Gothic novella, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson.
Dr. Jekyll sends a note to his fiance saying that he cannot accompany her to the opera
because he has to tend to his patients.
His colleagues on the other hand tell him that his research is too dangerous, but he's
going to proceed anyway.
After reassuring his fiance yet again, his experiment begins.
He drinks a vile intending to release the evil.
The opposite happens.
He's conscious and contorts and Mr. Hyde appears.
He goes into the night terrorizing a nearby tavern, continuing his evil doing until one
day he hurts a young man just so injured man with a crutch.
I've also taken a shot of tequila.
The town's people catch him in the act and Hyde offers to pay for the boy's injuries.
He goes back, takes the potion and turns back into Dr. Jekyll.
However, the transformation becomes uncontrollable.
They call for an antidote, but it's too late.
He's gone.
This film is 27 minutes long, which is actually long for its time, but that's why that story
feels very rushed.
That's back when he had like Nickelodeon's.
Right.
It's written and directed by Herbert Brennan and starring King Baguette.
King Baguette?
B-A-G-G-O-T.
I like that bakery.
Yeah.
The biggest silent movie actors of the time.
So hence why?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In order to achieve the personality shift, they used a dissolve effect.
George Blasdell of Moving Picture World commented about Jekyll and Hyde.
It's through the means of dissolving process that the transformation is made peculatively.
Pecularily.
Peculally effective.
You see the change of the man of good to the man of evil right before your eyes.
This theme is going to get touched on in every Universal Monster movie.
It's the eternal fight of man's self of good versus evil.
Very simple at its core.
As we go through the horror team, you can see the question being asked over and over again.
So are these monsters or are they just tragic heroes?
Merely different than us.
That was a theme that I came across when I was doing the research for Creature from Black
Lagoon, where it's mostly just like a misunderstood person.
And there was always that question that came up.
Is he attacking these people for the sake of attacking people?
Or is he simply just defending his land?
Yeah.
Carl would go on to make two more silent monster films.
Do you know what they are?
Is one of them Nosferatu?
No.
Nosferatu, not Universal.
It's not Universal.
Also, they technically didn't acquire the rights correctly.
Didn't pay for them.
And so one point Nosferatu was going to get burned.
Oh, wow.
The first one.
Also, a Disney movie.
I'm going to guess Sleeping Beauty.
No, it is the hunchback of Notre Dame.
Oh.
Well, there's not a lot of ladies in the monster of the lineup.
The hunchback of Notre Dame was in 1923 and was Universal's most successful silent film.
But more importantly, we meet Lon Cheney.
Cheney was a really big character of the time, but he is an integral part of our movie
history.
In 1925, we have The Phantom of the Opera.
Again, this stars Lon Cheney as the Phantom.
Carl Lemley actually read Gaston Laro's 1910 novel of the same name in one night.
Bought the film rights.
All for Lon Cheney to star in.
Carl's niece Rebecca, professional and known as Carla Lemley, also appeared in the film.
Cheney was a master of makeup, garnering the nickname "The Man of Thousand Faces."
This Phantom reveal would go down in horror history as one of the most horrific moments,
with several reports of screaming and fainting coming from the theaters.
I'm kind of skeptical of whenever I hear these stories of people in theaters just freaking
the fuck out.
I remember in film school, I was told about the train coming to the station and people
running out of the theater because they feared that a train was coming out.
How much of that is true or how much is it embellished when the world was on the radio?
In fact, not that many people actually freaked out.
Some people were calling the police, but the newspapers really embellished how big the reaction
is and how many people actually believed it was real.
It's very, very true and I also was skeptical, so I looked it up.
It's terrifying.
So there's Christine Crapen.
It creates an element of horror itself.
I have that bust on my bookshelf.
He stares at me whenever I watch television.
How does he not make you scream and faint?
Well, after I famed it the first dozen times, I had to turn him around.
He no longer basis us.
But he did all of that makeup by hand himself.
Whoa.
I did not know that.
Yeah, accentuating his own features to look more skeletal.
In real life, Cheney was a very private man, so much so in his will.
He stated that his grave go unmarked stating between pictures, there is no lawn, Cheney.
In 1929, a shift began to happen in the moving pictures.
Silent films were on their way out and the talkies were on their way in.
I heard the story when I worked at Warner Bros.
They used to have part of the jazz singer as part of the intro video that they had there.
And there's a part where he says, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Yeah.
He ends with that and then it cuts to black and there was like this really old lady in the
theater and she goes, oh, you're awesome.
So as the talkies were on their way in, Uncle Karl, father Karl, Lemley, hired his son,
Karl Lemley Jr.
For creative.
And Jr.
As we're going to refer to him and as many did for clarity sake, so potential in drag,
and universal legally acquired the rights for $40,000.
Legally.
Now he was the one that really pushed for horror.
Yes.
From my understanding, from the history that I like vaguely remember is that they just wanted
to be just another studio, just making movies and he was the only one that was really pushing
for horror films.
He was pushing for horror films also because most studios were sort of like at this point
getting their claim to fame of like what they were good at.
And because it was this shift into talkies, universal hadn't quite gotten its claim to
fame yet.
And he was like, vampire.
Yeah.
It was an untouched market at this time.
So that is how our monsters begin.
So we're going to leave the Lemley's behind and go straight into monster territory.
Welcome back from our ad break brought to you by coffee.
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I'll survive.
Good luck.
We left off with the universal acquiring the rights to Dracula of $40,000.
Our classic monster era begins with our favorite fangtooth man, Dracula in 1931.
I am Dracula.
Which is based on a 1927 play based on 1897, Brahmsdokers Dracula making this the first sound
adaptation of the novel.
Interesting.
I don't know if you have this fun fact in there, but I did learn that with Brahmsdokers
Dracula the novel Dracula actually has an aversion to the garlic flower, the tulip that
grows from the garlic seed and it's not actually the garlic bulb itself.
So garlic we eat yes, yes, yes, flower you smell.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
So if you have garlic around your neck and doing anything, no, that's not going to do.
I think it's the flower in particular.
I like that lore.
I love that.
That's the aversion.
Well casting to find Dracula wasn't nearly as smooth.
Originally they wanted Conrad White, a German actor who you might know better as a major
stressor and Kassablanca.
However they feared his English wasn't good enough for the talkies.
I mean that is kind of a odd moment of switching over from silent film to the Dracos because
all of a sudden it's like, oh, you have a real weird voice.
That's very singing in the rain.
Like we've got a W.
And Junior wasn't a fan of the Broadway Dracula that was Bella LaGosi.
So this search expanded John Ray who had just come off of all quiet on the Western front
was considered and they also considered our favorite Phantom Lone Cheney, but he tragically
died in 1930.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was exacerbated by fake snow, lodged in his throat.
Do you know what fake snow was made out of before we knew that it was bad?
Wasn't it asbestos?
It was asbestos.
Yeah.
There is no account that says exactly what the snow was made out of when he was filming,
but that's sort of what they were using at the times who wouldn't be surprised.
But it just looks so good and they just don't make snow like they used to.
But with Cheney gone, options were limited.
And LaGosi fought very hard and took a pay cut in order to play the famous count.
Fun fact, there was a Spanish language version of Dracula shooting at the exact same time.
So the Dracula.
In fact, Todd Browning's English version would film during the day and the Spanish version
would shoot on the exact same set at night.
Oh.
I feel like if you're shooting a Dracula movie, I would prefer the night shoots, but...
I mean, if you're inside of a soundstage, time does really...
But they're not always inside of a soundstage.
Because if you've ever taken the Universal Studio Stewart, I think they call it Little Europe.
This is not anywhere in my notes.
They're outside sometimes.
Maybe on those days they flip-flopped it.
The story of Dracula goes that Renfield was traveling to Dracula's castle and mourned
not to go because of the vampires.
Renfield goes anyway.
With a driver who is actually just disguised Dracula.
That's most horror films in how they begin in the 30s, 40s, 50s.
Even into the 70s, this is like regular dude goes to town.
Everyone in the town is like, "What are you doing here?"
Please go away and he's like, "I'ma do it anyways."
And be like, "Well, you're gonna deserve to die."
Yeah, we're doing a little synopsis of each of these monsters because it is super important
to see the common theme and where it veers later.
So Renfield goes anyway just before reaching the castle, poof, driver disappears.
But a bad leads the horses.
Renfield gets to the castle meets Dracula who hypnotizes Renfield who faints as a bad
appears.
Now everybody's on a ship and now it's time for Dracula to post up at Carfax Abbey in
England.
This is where the blood carnage ensues.
He first meets Mina, her fiance John Harker, and her friend Lucy.
Dracula feasts on Lucy first, but his sights are set on Mina.
Meanwhile, an insect eating Renfields analyzed by none other than Professor Van Helsing.
Dracula bites Mina and when Dracula comes to revisit later, there's no reflection.
We're on it.
Oh, right, we're on it.
I've become one vampire.
Which Van Helsing and Harker notice and deduce that he is our vampire.
With Mina now Dracula's Van Helsing and Harker prepare for a fight.
Van Helsing prepares a wooden stake while Harker searches for his fiance.
Van Helsing finds Dracula, stakes him, killing him, and a girl Mina returns to the normal.
Let me be clear, this is the abridged synopter because so much happens in Dracula.
When Dracula was originally released, it doubled its box office.
What do you mean doubled its box office?
Like it made double what the-
What the budget was?
Yeah, which is at that time fairly new.
The original ending was cut to more coincide with the motion picture code's censorship.
When these first couple movies are coming out, that's not a thing yet.
But the original held an epilogue with Edward Van Sloan who played Van Helsing, speaking
straight to the audience.
Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, a word before you go.
We hope the memories of Dracula and Renfield won't give you bad dreams.
So just a word of reassurance.
When you get home tonight and the lights have been turned out and you are afraid to look
behind the curtains and you dread to see a face appear at the window, why just pull yourself
together and remember that after all there are such things as vampire.
With that word of warning, we go on to our next monster, a mere ten months later.
Frankenstein based off Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus.
We're about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man
after his own image without reckoning upon God.
The classic story we all know and love.
Dr. Frankenstein sources get ever parts from the local cemetery, so as we together, kaboom,
lightning.
And then through a series of basically accidents, our monster kills and the town mob ensues,
chasing our poor fellow to the windmill and lighting on a fire.
Here with a commentary, Frankenstein, fire, mad!
And we are believed that he is left for dead.
There are several infamous scenes from this film, but I want to note the scene with the
little girl.
Yes.
Moments before a monster appears, she asks her father, "Daddy will you play with me?"
The dad is busy, wanders off, and our monster appears.
The little girl as children often do, don't see him as a threat.
They make boats out of daisies, they smile, gentle and kind.
Then he picks up the girl.
No, you're hurting me!
No!
And he throws her into the lake.
It's evident pretty quickly she can't swim.
Our monster tries to help.
Looks for help.
There's no use.
So Frankenstein, like Dracula, ran into moral censorship.
The scene with the little girl originally shortened.
To when he reaches for her, we never go to see her thrown in.
And the famous scene, the "It's a Live" was actually a little different.
It was a few lines longer when the doctor says, "I know it feels like the big arm."
Oh, yeah, I can't have that.
No.
If you watch the film now, both scenes have actually been put back in.
This was the first time I'd watch this in a very long time, and I get why they shortened
the scene with the little girl.
That moment holds up, still very horrifying.
It's through a lack of education of understanding that he murders a child.
In a sense.
Yeah.
Years later, when the father in shock, he's carrying his daughter's lifeless body through town.
It is not a quick scene.
He carries her for a long time.
There is also an unsettling modern image now that comes with it of a large man attempting
to talk to a young female child that is aged in an interesting way over time.
So I would say the movie still really holds up.
Frankenstein was another hit in box office, a success for Universal.
It was also James Wales' first monster film.
To go on to make two more monster films and his vision is a stamp on the monsters forever.
Frankenstein's monster is probably like the spider man of the DU, the Dark Universe is
what I'm going to call it.
While Frankenstein and Dracula share in popularity, I would say the vampire lore as we were just
talking about vacillates.
Sometimes they're shiny, big litter, sometimes garlic reflection, but flour.
Frankenstein's origin story and his imagery, super well known.
He was Jack Pierce who was tasked with creating a creature look which took four painstaking
hours to complete.
The look originally had to be done by none other than Bel Lagosi.
However, Lagosi wanted to play Frankenstein himself and not the monster.
And this was for the best because the role went to William Henry Pratt.
You know how that is?
Is that Boris?
It is Boris Carloff who is another like Loncini formative player in the monster mash.
Carloff would go on to play the mummy.
In 1932.
In Ote.
I preached in the temple of the sun at Carna.
Four Othello know what could you have done to make them treat you like that.
An execution for treason, I suppose.
Story of the mummy went through several rounds to get to Emoepep.
Originally inspired by the curse of King Tut's tomb and its subsequent opening in 1922,
Richard Sair and Nina Wilcox puttinum pulled from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Ring of
Toth, an Alessandro Cuglio Stroto, an Italian occultist.
To write a nine page treatment in which a 3,000 year old magician used nitrates to stay
alive.
Yeah.
John L. Baldurstorm was hired to write the script.
And John was actually a journalist in 1922 and covered the opening of King Tut's tomb.
So he changed it to the name of the architect of Joseph's step pyramid, which was Emoepep.
And changed this one little point of Emoepep from enacting revenge on all women who looked
like his ex to reviving his old love instead.
So thanks, John.
As far as the Emoepep story goes, the mummy is quite similar to its 1999 remake with the
exception that 10 years passed.
And Emoep fits into society, changing his name to Ardeth Bay before he starts searching
for an oxenemun.
So Emoep isn't that the monster mummy thing in the mummy ride?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Emoepep is super monster lore at this point.
That is the mummy's name in the OG.
It is the Brennan Frazier's villain.
And yes, if you go on the ride.
But it was named after an architect.
Named after the architect.
Oh wow.
Yeah, it's super cool.
It's like, well, I can't read Hieroglyphics, but I can read this guy's name.
Yep.
The original is actually far more horror.
There's more death and murder and shocker the mummy dies at the end than its action romance
predecessor.
At this point, we are seeing that pattern form.
Monster does bad thing.
Monster gets caught.
Monster dies.
But our next monster is actually more of a man, an invisible man by the name of Jack
Griffith in 1933.
You're crazy to know why I am, aren't you?
All right.
I'll show you.
We open on the lion's head in.
In a stranger with bandages, sunglasses, full incognito mode.
He has like a prosthetic nose, walks in, goes to his room, some time passes.
Our stranger makes a mess.
He's late on rent.
He's throwing people down the stairs.
All things attendant should never do.
So who shows up?
The police.
And laughing like a crazy person, he begins to unravel his bandages and disrobe, leaving
him, you guessed it, invisible.
All but his shirt, he runs around the table while laughing maniacally.
While the setting is absolutely ery, this movie, like a great horror movie, has really
funny moments.
So he's just winning the pooling around.
Yes.
Laughing maniacally.
Yes.
He wreaks havoc on the town, like runs out and then we cut to a lab where we are discussing
a missing Jack Griffin.
And monarchy.
It's a drug that's made from a flower that's grown in India.
It draws color from everything it touches.
It destroys material.
It's meant to bleach.
It turns a dog, dead white and raving mad.
Jack visits his old friend, Dr. Kemp.
And he says, you'll feel better if you can see me and demand clothing.
He forces Kemp to work with him for, you know, just some murder.
And they go back to grab his notes on invisibility.
Turns out the police are on him.
And Jack and his invisible state attacks the officer and motives him.
He finally runs into his fiance, Flora.
Kemp is betrayed him.
And the real murder's pre-begins.
The invisible man has the highest kill count of our monsters, including a trained enrailement
and the killing of Kemp and several others.
Yeah.
He actually warns Kemp that he's like, I'm going to kill you tomorrow at 10.
Yeah.
You figure out that he has followed him.
There's a whole time.
He's interrupted by Aesno Storm from more murder and seeks shelter in a barn when the
police find out, you know, they said it on fire.
Because again, fire, another monster motif, forcing Griffin out and shooting him wounded.
And in the hospital, he talks to Flora stating, I meddled in things that man must leave alone
and dies.
This is the second monster film directed by James Whale.
And he keeps a more psychological theme going in his monster movies.
Keep in mind, it's 1933.
Green screen is not around for another decade and is not going to be at least popular
until the 1980s.
So how did they get the visual effect?
They used an all black set and black velvet floors to get rid of any reflection, which is
ironic considering that the rumor originally was that they used mirrors to achieve the
invisibility completely false.
This is one of those movies where the special effects knowing the time it was made.
You can kind of tell that like the special effects were discovered first and then the movie
revolved around it.
Everything that is not exposed properly, so when you have dark spots, the celluloids that
are on the film just don't react, which gives you the opportunity to then go in and basically
film over the same role of film again and it gives you that effect of that.
So like with the invisible man, if he is dressed all in black, you're not exposing that film
and then when you expose it to like the scene where people reacting like he seems invisible,
there's a very impressive shot.
There is one shot in particular where he's standing in front of the mirror and it was a composite
shot that took them four times to go through and I just knowing the process, knowing how
it had to line up is just still incredibly impressive.
Yeah, they went in hand painted with a brush and die frame by frame to fix any imperfections.
It's the amount of thought that has to go into it in pre-production to make sure that this
effect works.
It just blows my mind.
Especially for the time period, it's really cool.
I think my favorite scene is the unraveling scene.
This is when all of the police come burging in and he's like, "Ah, you can't see me.
Claude Reign who plays the invisible man is actually hidden inside the jacket."
And there's a small wire frame supporting each of the bandages as they are wind.
So they're not using the basically black screen for that.
It's a completely different invention of special effect, which I think is really cool.
That's amazing.
The special effects artist, John Peafolton.
The film's final budget because of so many effects was $328,000.
Whales monster films tend to have wire budgets, including The Bride of Frankenstein, which
is going to come in 1935 and came in at $397,000, which is $100,000 of a budget in 1935, so far
over budget.
Because this is often listed as one of the best monster films and also I'm a little biased.
I'm going to say it's worth it.
For The Bride of Frankenstein, we start off with two men praising Mary Shelley for her story
of Frankenstein.
I will say that I watched this movie in preparation for this episode and I was kind of thrown
off because I knew how the first one ended.
I had not seen Bride of Frankenstein.
I've only seen the original Frankenstein.
And I was like, "Wait, are they doing a meta thing where they're actually talking to
Mary Shelley?"
I was like, "I'm not talking about her book that she wrote."
Do you know who plays Mary Shelley?
I don't know her name.
Elsa Landcaster?
Do you know who she plays?
She also plays The Bride.
She does.
Yeah, because I looked it up later because it said in the credits, it's like Frankenstein's
mate.
Question mark.
Yeah, and they don't say it in there, but...
Did you see what the cast list says?
It says a good cast is worth the Phoenix because they were doing these at the beginning
in the end of the movie.
Yeah, this is definitely a time where the credits, because we're still trying to figure it
out, the credits would always come before the movie and then the movie would just end
without any credits at the end.
And then that's when the trailers began to show you what the next movies that were going
to be out there.
But I was shocked that it was the same actress between the two.
Yeah, she does a really good job.
I think if it wasn't in the credits twice, I don't know that I would have noticed.
Because her name already appears as Mary Shelley.
I wonder if that might have been a legal reason to be like, you can only listen to any
once.
And that's it.
And that's why they put it there or either that or it might just be just a gimmick.
I think it's a gimmick.
I really do because she's not in a lot because she appears so late and is so mysterious.
I really do think it's a gimmick.
Yeah.
I wonder if maybe the director just felt bad for the actress to be like, you're such a big
moment in this and yet you're only on screen for three minutes, like Max.
You gotta get you some time.
I think James Whale, if you look at the three movies that he's done, because this is his
third and final monster movie, they are like I said, much more psychological.
And I think there is something to be said about Mary Shelley also being like the object of
affection.
I think it comes from more of a psychological story, place based on the way that he's directed
all of these films to bring it back.
I just kept thinking of the predator, the actor who plays the predator.
Not John Claude Van Dam, the guy after him, but John Claude.
John McTiernan felt so bad for him because he's such a great actor and knowing you have to
see his face, that he made him one of the soldiers in the beginning of the movie as well.
And that was my thought with the actress who played Mary Shelley, just like, oh, you're
on screen for such a little amount of time.
You're not really recognizable with like all that makeup and all that and be like, we
gotta like get your pretty face somewhere else in this movie somehow.
You can't be like the town hag who's yelling at people.
I was a fan of this movie as a kid and rewatching it.
There's a reason that this holds up over time.
There's gotta be like a layer to the Mary Shelley bride thing.
It was how all of his films were.
That's where we start off is we pull a very meta like thank you for your story Mary.
And then we jump back to the exact moment the Frankenstein ended and we thought that the
monster was dead, but he's not.
His hand comes out of the.
Also Henry Frankenstein still very much alive and still very much an aqueous degree life,
a different life.
He now like condemns the monster that he has his fiance Elizabeth's not happy either
way.
Like, please stop with your weird experiments.
Once healthy again, he goes to his mentor, Dr. Pretorius, which is one of the most interesting.
I thought Dr. Pretorius like showed up at his door and was like, I got something for you.
Yes.
Cause he like he was sent up to his room and he's like, I'm not well.
He's like, well, get well because I need you to do this.
Pretorius and Henry get together to create more life, even though Henry's like, I don't want
to do this.
I've done it.
I don't want to do this again.
But Dr. Pretorius is one of the most like fun characters.
He is one of their now original characters.
He is written for this sequel because the sequel is actually really just part two of Mary
Shelley story.
And he delivers the now famous line to a new world of gods and monsters and.
And Pretorius begins to make a mate for the monster much to Henry's disagreement.
It's okay.
Our monster friend, he's already got his own friend.
He found this hermit and they smoked together.
They drink together.
They spend more time together than our monster actually spends with his bride.
So I have to admit something.
I watched young Frankenstein a lot.
Yeah.
Not seen bride of Frankenstein.
I remember watching the scene where that Frankenstein Frankenstein goes and finds the blind
man and there's that comedic scene where he's like pouring the tea, pours it in his lap.
And the perfect comedic duo is always clumsy monster and blind man.
So I was like, oh, that's just a funny moment.
And then I saw this scene, which is like the pivotal scene.
I feel like they're kind of course correcting from like the little girl from the first movie
to be like, oh, because he doesn't see that he looks like a monster.
He can look past that and be like, oh, he's just a friend.
I suddenly put it all together and be like, oh, he's paying homage to it.
He learns the words friend and good.
Yeah.
Wine good.
Right.
Friend good.
Smoke good.
Unfortunately, their time together comes to a stop when 200s recognize the monster attack
them and burn down the cottage.
We're just lighting everything on fire again.
Yeah, we're not learning anything.
Fire is still bad.
The monster makes his way back to Pretorias, which I'm always like, oh, here we go.
And he learns of the making of the mate and they just eat some dinner.
There are a lot of very relaxed scenes in this movie, which is a movie that's 88 minutes
long.
It's a very short movie.
Long for that time though.
There's a lot of like slow burns, the amount of time that he spends with the blind person.
There's a long time.
If you shorten that to today's standards, it would be a tight five.
Yeah.
They have their dinner.
Pretorias needs Henry's help though.
But you know, now Henry and Elizabeth totally married.
Henry refuses.
Pretorias calls upon the monster to kidnap Elizabeth.
Assures Henry.
She'll be safe as long as you help us with the mate making.
Oh, and of course, there's a storm brewing.
Henry and Pretorias are actually excited about finishing this creation, which I don't
know if you caught it.
It feels like a flip to me.
Henry's like super invested all of the sudden.
He's like, maybe this one will be a good one.
Right.
We've got our lightning again.
Boom.
And we've got a bride.
We see our bride at roughly an hour and nine minutes into the film out of a one hour
and 14 minute film.
That's what baffled me is that she was being created.
I remember watching the movie and I'd paused it and I was like, I think 45 minutes in.
I was like, we haven't seen a bride at all yet.
And I was like, she's got to be like around the corner or something like that.
And then when they got to that scene, I was like, clearly, this is the beginning of act
two.
No.
No, I'm like, how is it that she got struck by lightning and there is like two minutes
left of the movie?
What are you going to do?
But what's great is her movement is terrifying.
Yeah.
She is jittery and frantic and all feral.
She's like a bird.
She is a wild animal.
Also she got struck by lightning and is just in a room full of dude staring at her.
I would also be like, what is happening?
She doesn't speak, but she does have this incredible scream.
Yes.
So does this make her the first true scream queen?
I believe so.
Yeah.
That happens and the monster says she hates me.
The monster shows more emotion and heart in this movie than any of the actual humans and
kudos to Carl off because he shed several tears in that incredibly heavy makeup.
The monster then ushers out hen rein Elizabeth saying go live before turning to pratorious
and then the bride you stay.
We belong dead.
That moment where he comes to the realization of like, I'm going to destroy not only myself
because I'm a monster, but I'm going to destroy the actual monster.
Yeah.
There is a lot of discussion around dr pratorious specifically over time he has been identified
as homosexual.
Even though for 1935, they can't actually reference it, but whale was openly gay.
The Hollywood production code changed none of the doctor's behavior.
And so it's interesting that over time, his mannerisms and the absence of the bride in the film
and their relationship with the hermit has become a bigger story.
Oh, I like that.
Yeah, but I also think it's really interesting because whale directs it so that hen rein Elizabeth
go and the monster very specifically and sternly like he snaps his neck to pratorious to have
him stay.
There is like a deeper level to this movie than I think most people talk about.
And as I get older and we actually are talking about these things in society, I love that
it's been unchanged and that pratorious is such a fan favorite character.
So the monster pulls a lever, destroys the laboratory and dr pratorious and his bride
are dead in the destruction.
Oh, you live.
Oh, you stay.
We belong dead.
And then we have a bit of a gap in 1941, so six years later, the Wolfman hits theaters.
Oh, we have, is bitten by a werewolf and lives becomes a werewolf himself.
Oh, it could happen to me that.
You're just wasting your time.
The wolf bitch you didn't do.
Yeah, starring.
Lon chaining, but both dropped the junior and owed to his father or probably more and like
an ode to the business that we call show.
This is technically universal's second werewolf movie with the first being 1935's werewolf
of London, but they consider the tried and true wolf man is cheney's Larry Talbot.
Larry returns to wales to deal with his family matters when he falls in love with Gwen.
He buys a cane with a silver wolf's head to get a chance to talk to her and she gives
him the werewolf lore.
A man changes at certain times of the year and a pentagram appears in the palm of his next
victim through much persuading.
They wind up going on a date with Gwen and Gwen's friend, third wheel Jenny.
On this date, they have their fortunes read by none other than Bella, the ghostly character
name Bella.
Oh, Bella sees a pentagram on Jenny's hand.
He warns her sons are off and not too much later.
We hear screams from Jenny.
Larry goes to save her beats the wolf with his new cane, but is bitten in the process.
The next morning his wound completely healed.
Bella warns Larry that the wolf that bit him was her son Bella.
Son's name is Bella.
Not the fortune teller.
The fortune teller is Bella.
Fortune teller.
There's so many bella Bella LaGosi plays fortune teller.
Who warns the victim that that's going to happen and then turns out werewolf also Bella.
Yeah, okay.
She warns him that he is now a werewolf too, that Larry is now a werewolf because Bella
bit Larry and that the only thing that can help is silver.
She gives him his charm to stop his transformation and Larry gives this charm to Gwen for protection
instead.
The next night Larry has the first wolf rampage killing a villager with no memory of this
the next morning.
The next night the town sets trap but Bella's mother uses a spell to set him free and now
understanding the truth that he is in fact a werewolf.
He goes to say goodbye to Gwen and sees the pentagram on her hand.
Larry goes to his father for help explaining that hey, I'm a wolf.
His father's like no, you're not and to prove that you're not I'm going to tie up this
chair real quick.
That's what you do when you don't believe your child.
You are a delusional man and I'm going to tie you to this chair.
When the moon rises and his wolf form comes out, he attacks Gwen.
His father uses the silver cane to beat the wolf and when Bella's mom, Malayva, she uses
that same spell again and then now dead werewolf transforms into dead Larry.
That's the iconic scene where he's like laying down it like fades.
They really avoid showing the transition until that moment.
That transition I imagine would take so long.
They have this character and I'm sure they I think they shot in reverse where they had
him lay down and then they get to the makeup chair put a little bit on him lay down again
in the same spot and just like progressively until he was like full wolf.
Yeah.
So Jack Pierce who designed Frankenstein's monster and the wherewolf of London is back to
design this makeup but they wanted to see more of the face.
So it took five to six hours to get Montenegro in your into full makeup.
And he'd get on set and to do these scenes he had to sit completely motionless for hours
while they shot frame by frame and apparently the crew would sometimes just break for
Lenzhen leave him.
I read one account where they were actually like nailing some of the parts of his fingers
to keep him to stop from moving.
I believe they're trying to like nail the wolf part but like sounds like some finger got
in there.
So not super nice for him.
So Wolfman became so popular that Cheney would go on to reprise his role four more times.
Even though Larry Talbot never actually gets his own sequel the makeup would get easier.
Lenzhen your junior would go on to play the mummy Frankenstein's monster and count allocard
count allocard is just Dracula backwards.
In other various monster films meaning he played each of the core four at one point or
another.
Yeah.
Next up we have the 1943 Phantom of the Opera and this is the Phantom of the Opera that
is based on the book based on Lenzhen original senior's version.
This is the one that is technically in the monster lineup.
Oh.
Yeah.
Even though a lot of art uses Lenzhen's version and to me that seems like it makes more sense
if we're going with the rules that they are the talkies and not the silent ones this is
technically our Phantom.
He's played by Claude Reins who played.
He's played by Claude Reins.
We're just keeping all of our contracted actors working.
I mean this is around the time where when you signed on an actor they weren't just freelance
and could jump around to different studios like you own them and if a note studio wanted
to use them you would have to put them out on loan with the contract with that different
studio so it makes sense to be like right we're going to keep you employed.
There were stories I heard at Warner Brothers that like Jack Warner would yell at the writers
to say like hey we have Humphrey Bogard we need to keep filming with him and he would tell
them to write a script over the weekend so they could start filming on Monday.
Yep.
It seems like this is a time when studios are talkies have been around for a minute so now
we're sort of shifting yet again this studio in particular itself was suffering from a
lot of financial problems and this is the reason why movies are starting to take another
minute to get out instead of having you know two three a year.
It's also the time Carl Lemley and Carl Lemley Jr. both removed from the company.
Oh yeah.
It's okay they started a movie theater company.
Those are the cousins.
But they're removed and the original talks of the phantom were for Boris Carlov.
Now we're in 1943 we got Claude Reins and this is the story that is more popular in
today where it's Christine Dubois if you're a musical theater nerd like I am she's Christine
Dye is a young soprano who the phantom of the Paris Opera House falls in love with or
just sort of like wants to see her succeed little fuzzy in this one.
Raul is also in love with Christine so is Anatole so film has kind of a love triangle quadrangle
going on but Raul hatches a plan to catch the phantom by not letting Christine perform.
Technically it works phantom comes out of hiding crashing down the chandelier and grabbing
Christine in the process.
Down once more into his underground layer Christine sneaks up and removes the mask seeing
the phantoms disfigured face.
It's not the same impact.
Not the uh yeah it's not as uh everybody scream and faint in the theater.
Anatole and Raul follow downward and they find them and things begin to cave in quite literally.
Our phantom gets trapped on there the trio escapes they ask Christine to choose between
them but she chooses herself.
Well rather her singing career.
Good for her.
Right.
The most feminist thing will have in this.
The film came out to mixed reviews.
It wasn't as frightening like I said.
Monshanie Jr. a little miffed that he didn't get asked because he was still under contract.
Oh yeah.
In between the main eight we have a lot of sequels.
We have Dracula's daughter son of Frankenstein and the mummy's hand.
The invisible man has returned.
We've even gotten an invisible woman and an invisible agent.
It's around this time that the crossovers start to begin.
In 1943 right before phantom we did have Frankenstein meets the wolf man.
He harbored a monster in his house.
I think created by black magic.
Dr. Frankenstein.
Dead.
Which by the way in this one Lon Cheney returns as wolf man but Frankenstein's monster
played by Bella Legosi.
Oh.
The role he was made for.
And then in 1944 we get house of Frankenstein.
The previous reports in 1943 said there was a film in production titled Chamber of Horrors
and this was announced by the Hollywood Reporter.
Noting that the cast would include Boris Karloff, Lon Cheney Jr.
Bella Legosi, Claude Reigns and more.
Chamber of Horrors never went into production.
Oh you got the rat pack together and they couldn't even make a movie.
Kurt Sodomac stated the idea was to put all the horror characters into one picture.
I only wrote the story.
I didn't write the script.
I never saw a picture.
Man this is really like the Avengers moment for them.
Right?
Almost like there's a cinematic universe being born.
The idea really took off though and that is when house of Frankenstein is born.
Now's the time.
We're going to get out some red string.
We're all going to have our best Charlie Day impression because the casting continues to
be wild.
Okay the monster not played by Karloff but Glenn Strange.
Even though Karloff is in this picture.
He's a doctor gooseed off and me met him.
Lon Cheney Jr. is back and actually plays the wolf man.
But Bella Legosi is gone.
But Dracula is still here.
Now played by John Caridine.
Claude Reigns, nor the invisible man, nor would he be found.
We're seeing.
The plot is bananas and real hard to follow so we're going to glide right by that.
But I think there's two fun things to note about the script of all the monsters that we
meet.
We also get a new character.
The name of Daniel.
Oh.
That's a good name.
It's a hunchback question mark.
And the new doctor's assistant.
Yeah.
That's Igor.
Yeah.
He got the Igor vibe at bottom.
And they just gave him a new name.
Yeah.
Just like Daniel.
He helps the doctor escape from prison and exchange for the promise of a new body.
And mainly this is just more fun because your name is Daniel.
The only thread that connects House of Frankenstein to its sequel House of Dracula is Frankenstein's
monster is clutching a skeleton of Dr. Neiman.
Again.
So we have Frankenstein's monster, which is originated by Boris Karolof.
Holding the skeleton of a new Boris Karolof character.
It's a hat out of hat.
So much more sequels would then come to fruition.
We've got the she-wolf of London.
The mummy has a ghost and a curse, but still no offspring.
And finally, we bring in Abbott in Costello.
Hey.
Who's springed?
You did.
I did.
Huh?
I know what Abbott Costello is.
You know.
Do you want to tell the people who Abbott and Costello are?
I mean, they were a comedic duo.
They're famous for who's on first.
What's on second?
They started running these specials where they would run.
They did.
They did four of them.
Yeah.
They would run into a bunch of the universal...
Yep.
They meet Frankenstein.
And then the title is Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
But Dracula and the Wolfman are totally in this one.
Then they meet the invisible man, the mummy, Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Hyde.
So they do go through most of the crew.
Yes.
The way that they present these specials, it's almost like a commercial...
Yeah.
These were shown on television to be like, "Ooh, these scary monsters, but I think it's
a way to soften the blow for anyone who isn't really into scary movies.
If you have Abbott and Costello who is well known to poke fun at them and be like, "Oh,
okay, maybe I can handle a Dracula type movie."
It's at this time that it seems like horror is kind of winding down, or at least the
call for the monsters.
So this is a way to keep them relevant, but also comedy is at a much bigger high, so you're
just keeping them in the comedy circle.
Yeah, and it's kind of keeping the franchise relevant, but it is definitely hitting one
of those moments where the franchise is hitting the low.
It's similar to Godzilla.
First Godzilla, second Godzilla is pretty great, but then eventually it just kind of devolves
into Godzilla versus monster.
This one is like crab monster or space monster or something like that, and that's kind of where
the monster universe at Universal just kind of went towards is like, "Okay, well we have
these established monsters.
What is an element on top of that that we can capitalize on?"
And brighter Frankenstein is like, "Put out there is like this is how you properly do a sequel,
but the thing is that they did not take what made brighter Frankenstein so great and apply
it to the other sequels."
They were just like, "Oh, we just add a new character.
That's all we need to do."
When you have Dracula's daughter and the son of Frankenstein, there are still decent sequels,
but I think when you have the bride of Frankenstein, which is also sort of said as one of the
best sequels of all time, is real hard, it's standard to keep up.
When things get tough, we sort of throw things out of wall, but out of those tough things
can also come really cool new things.
And this is when we got our last monster, which is also the original monster, not based
on anything.
Which we'll hear about after this ad break.
We are onto our final creature feature.
The creature from the Black Lagoon.
Could it possibly belong to a place to scene, man?
The chance is much greater than that hand belonged to an amphibian, Mark, one that spent a great
deal of time in the water.
Well then, how do you account for the structure of the fingers?
Obviously for land use.
One that I think you know well.
Yes, it's one of my favorite musicals.
I'm not going to go too deep into this one because you did such a nice job in the John
Carpenter, "Grader from the Black Lagoon" episode.
Yeah, so if you want to hear about that, stop this podcast now.
Listen to that entire podcast and then come right back, will we?
Yeah, we're just going to have silence.
Run while you do that.
The big abridged diversion in the scientific team goes to the Amazon to study fossils.
The creature spots the team.
There's this slight implication of the creature likes K, the female.
Implication?
He longingly looks at her in a bikini.
Yeah, anyway.
Okay.
The creature follows the Rita, which is their boat down the Amazon.
The creature kills some of the team members, attempts to abduct K, then finally does get
K, takes her back to his lair.
We're always taking a lady back to a lair, but the remaining team rescues K, shooting the
creature and his body sinks to the depths.
Or does it?
Bump, bump, bump.
Correct, because the creature will come back.
This is another one we've seen recently in the shape of water, which is Guillermo de Torres,
first foray into the monster world.
What's crazy about creature from the Black Lagoon, and this is something that I mentioned
in the John Carpenter episode as well, is that he comes so late in the game.
And for him--
And that was something that baffled me about the Gilman was that for all of my life, he's
just one of the monster cast members.
He's like one of the essentials, always has been.
And I figured that, you know, it was just like the other ones, Dracula, Frankenstein, established
right away and just kind of fades into sequels and whatnot.
So that's what I assumed, not knowing that the monster universe has been going on, it's
been fading out, abbing his cell, have entered the picture.
Now they introduce the creature from the Black Lagoon, and it's a huge hit.
And is now one of the essentials, just baffling.
And then they don't really go on to do much more after that?
It feels like if in the MCU, because we're definitely in that phase where it's--
Right.
We're at now.
We've met all of our Avengers.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden it's like, whoa, Deadpool is amazing.
Yeah, oh he is.
The Deadpool.
There are some elements of modern secrecy in these old stories.
There are reports that Boris Karloff had to wear a bag over his head when they were shooting,
so that no audience member would see his face until the monster's actual reveal.
Like apparently, do you need to go to the bathroom?
We're just going to go in there.
Do your thing.
You can do the bag off in there.
Like people were leading him around with the bag I said.
It's like Danny DeVito as a penguin.
Like they would have to really hide him on the lot so that no one would see him.
Yeah, that's how the invisible man was filmed in like intense secrecy because of the
advanced nature of the special effects.
So these are things that we think about now that we have social media.
You're constantly like, oh look at these pictures from set.
This wasn't a thing back then.
So these monsters are sort of a little bit ahead of their time.
And when you talk about a cinematic universe, I mean, come on Abbott and Castello to me
as we're jumping into discussing the dark universe, which came first.
Like chicken really, did the monsters have a cinematic universe first?
Because it kind of feels like they did.
Yeah.
I feel like this is more of a product of efficiency and marketing rather than a well thought
out how do we connect everything together?
[Applause]
This will unfortunately conclude part one of our episode about universal studios and the
history of the classic monsters.
Join us for part two when we go over the launch of the dark universe.
What went wrong in the future of classic monsters?
While you anticipate part two, you can connect with us on our socials.
We are on Instagram and TikTok @HowToThisKnockItMade and the platform formerly known as Twitter
@hdngm.
We also have a YouTube channel under the same name as the show.
If you follow us, you'll see art working content related to the subjects of our episodes
and you'll see behind the scenes video of us recording the show.
Until next time, bye bye.