Boo and all that.
Happy Halloween everybody – one of the few times of the year that lets me be me.
And being me I’ve been watching the old Universal Horror line up – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man and the Creature of the Black lagoon.
It’s interesting to note, of the five monsters here only two are supernatural in origin – Dracula and The Wolf Man. The invisible man and the Frankenstein Monster are the products of science and The creature of the Black Lagoon is simply something living by itself until a group of scientists start screwing about in its own home. You understand his anger – you’d react the same way.
And the Frankenstein monster is in a lot of way a victim of circumstances – nobody asks to be a reanimated corpse pieced together from the bodies of the dead (if you do you are maximum weird)
The Wolf man doesn’t really do anything to deserve his fate – Larry Talbot tries to save a woman from a wolf and ends up turning into a monster when the moon comes up. One odd note – in the original Wolfman (the 1940 one) you never see the moon. I don’t know why – maybe they forgot.
Still thinking about it, there is a sense of something wrong with Larry Talbot – there’s a sense of vulnerability and instability even before he gets bit – and his inner conflicts contribute to his emotional collapse – granted discovering that you turn into a blood thirsty half man half wolf by the light of the full moon is going to be something tough to deal with but you have to think that a less fragile psyche than Talbot’s might have responded very differently to this. But where would be the fun in that?
Even Bela’s Count Dracula has a sense of being pushed to what he does – the exchange early in the film – where the count says “to be dead to be really dead that must be glorious.” When one of the women makes a comment Bela fixes her with a stare and says “there are far worse things awaiting man (long pause here) than death.”
Not that this inner awareness prevents him from draining the life out of one victim and trying to kill another. The later Hammer “Horror of Dracula” had Van Helsing postulate that a vampire is like a drug addict hating the habit but unable to quit.
Maybe they are just thirsty.
Supernatural horror doesn’t seem to work well these days – at least the traditional ones don’t – the Mummy’s latest incarnation was more of a thrill ride than a horror movies and the vampire has become a short hand for self impressed trendy people who go to clubs a lot (at least it seems that way).
And for some reason Zombie films kind of leave me cold, as do slasher films – the one that didn’t was the first Halloween where there is a hint that there is something more to Michael Meyers than just a serial killer.
One thing that makes the old 30’s films as oddly intense as they are was of course the times they were being made in – the 1930’s were a time of crisis and emotional repression – there was a sense especially in the early 30’s in the utter depths of the depression before FDR was president that society itself was collapsing from its internal rot as the depression grew worse and the only actions anyone could come up with were more of the same things that hadn’t worked. Tack on to that the typical American weirdness about sex (The Hays code took effect in 1930 and condemned married people in movies to years of bead rooms with double beds) and well there’s a lot more going on underneath than what you see.
This could explain why Japanese horror films are so interesting these days – there’s a lot of unspoken tensions and conflicts in Japanese society which emerge in symbolic form in their horror films.
Well more some other time – work and all that.
Peace Love I am Dracula I bid you welcome
And being me I’ve been watching the old Universal Horror line up – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man and the Creature of the Black lagoon.
It’s interesting to note, of the five monsters here only two are supernatural in origin – Dracula and The Wolf Man. The invisible man and the Frankenstein Monster are the products of science and The creature of the Black Lagoon is simply something living by itself until a group of scientists start screwing about in its own home. You understand his anger – you’d react the same way.
And the Frankenstein monster is in a lot of way a victim of circumstances – nobody asks to be a reanimated corpse pieced together from the bodies of the dead (if you do you are maximum weird)
The Wolf man doesn’t really do anything to deserve his fate – Larry Talbot tries to save a woman from a wolf and ends up turning into a monster when the moon comes up. One odd note – in the original Wolfman (the 1940 one) you never see the moon. I don’t know why – maybe they forgot.
Still thinking about it, there is a sense of something wrong with Larry Talbot – there’s a sense of vulnerability and instability even before he gets bit – and his inner conflicts contribute to his emotional collapse – granted discovering that you turn into a blood thirsty half man half wolf by the light of the full moon is going to be something tough to deal with but you have to think that a less fragile psyche than Talbot’s might have responded very differently to this. But where would be the fun in that?
Even Bela’s Count Dracula has a sense of being pushed to what he does – the exchange early in the film – where the count says “to be dead to be really dead that must be glorious.” When one of the women makes a comment Bela fixes her with a stare and says “there are far worse things awaiting man (long pause here) than death.”
Not that this inner awareness prevents him from draining the life out of one victim and trying to kill another. The later Hammer “Horror of Dracula” had Van Helsing postulate that a vampire is like a drug addict hating the habit but unable to quit.
Maybe they are just thirsty.
Supernatural horror doesn’t seem to work well these days – at least the traditional ones don’t – the Mummy’s latest incarnation was more of a thrill ride than a horror movies and the vampire has become a short hand for self impressed trendy people who go to clubs a lot (at least it seems that way).
And for some reason Zombie films kind of leave me cold, as do slasher films – the one that didn’t was the first Halloween where there is a hint that there is something more to Michael Meyers than just a serial killer.
One thing that makes the old 30’s films as oddly intense as they are was of course the times they were being made in – the 1930’s were a time of crisis and emotional repression – there was a sense especially in the early 30’s in the utter depths of the depression before FDR was president that society itself was collapsing from its internal rot as the depression grew worse and the only actions anyone could come up with were more of the same things that hadn’t worked. Tack on to that the typical American weirdness about sex (The Hays code took effect in 1930 and condemned married people in movies to years of bead rooms with double beds) and well there’s a lot more going on underneath than what you see.
This could explain why Japanese horror films are so interesting these days – there’s a lot of unspoken tensions and conflicts in Japanese society which emerge in symbolic form in their horror films.
Well more some other time – work and all that.
Peace Love I am Dracula I bid you welcome
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