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Pretty Good

good back-story, and good acting

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This documentary about the unique horror franchises that came out of Universal studios during the 20s and 30s, pretty much ending with the Wolfman in 1941, really is universal, in that the documentary makes ties from the Universal films to the German silents that were their forerunners, and even ties the Universal monsters to subliminal guilt some felt over WWI, embodied in its often deformed survivors. Maybe this guilt is one reason isolationism held the U.S. from entering WWII until it was almost too late? But I digress. The film analyzes in detail the Dracula, Frankenstein, Invisible Man, and Mummy franchises, and talks a little about the Wolfman. They entirely omit any discussion of Creature from the Black Lagoon, probably because that was the 50s, and after the nuclear bomb and the Nazis who is really afraid of a giant fish anyways? The documentary mentions that the production code and the loss of Universal by the Laemmles is what really ended the classic cycle of horror at Universal, because the new owners just never got the hang of making horror with the same insight into the public's subliminal fears like the films from the 20's through 1936 did.Commenters include author Ray Bradbury, who says he drew some of his inspiration from these films, and James Karen, giving his boyhood memories of seeing these films in the theater as a child. He had no ties to anybody at Universal, but just seems like someone who is young at heart. He is still with us and soon to be 94. Film critic David Skal gets annoyingly enthusiastic, but maybe horror is his passion. He is being shot in a room full of horror memorabilia, but, hey, maybe he has rooms in his house each dedicated to all different kinds of film including anime? Boris Karloff's daughter Sara, Gloria Stuart - once a Universal contract player, and Carla Laemlle also talk about their experience in and around the sets of these famous Universal horror films.Horror films from other studios are also mentioned such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde as well as Mystery of the Wax Museum and King Kong.This film does a very thorough job of discussing Universal horror films in general, and ends with a bit of a mystery, almost sounding like a curse. Carl Laemmle Jr., head of Universal at the time the Laemmles went into bankruptcy, came down with an undiagnosable illness and lived the rest of his life as an invalid. A chilling end to a chilling and fascinating documentary.It only makes me wonder, how can a studio make such a great documentary filled with thorough understanding of their own film history, and then treat that film history so shabbily? Probably Paramount and Universal are the two worst studios about giving no care at all to their catalogue of classic films.

Kevin Brownlow is an important film historian and has made some truly amazing and complete documentaries about such topics as European cinema between the wars, the work of various silent comics as well as Mary Pickford. For his very hard work, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar a few years ago. So, this being a Brownlow film, I KNEW I had to see it....and for the first time I was rather disappointed.For me, calling the film "Universal Horror" was a HUGE mistake. While about 90% of the picture does concern the horror movies made by Universal Studios...many of them weren't and it seemed odd to have films like "King Kong", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and many others featured in the documentary. It really was NOT about Universal...at least not completely. Additionally, MANY of the great Universal Horror films were never even mentioned--such as the Mummy series of the 1940s, the Creeper, Freaks and many other important movies. Woefully incomplete and NOT an exhaustive or even close to complete look at the subject in hand. Sad...but still enjoyable...though WHY did the film keep asking James Karen what he thought about these films?! He seemed to have nothing to do with horror films...so why him?

This documentary on classic horror is found on the DVD of the 1932 version of The Mummy. It consists of interviews with actors, crew, experts and those who have been inspired in various ways by the movies, clips of them(from different decades, silent and spoken alike, and you can see the evolution of film-making), behind-the-scenes footage and stills as well as narration(Branagh seldom lets us down, and this is no exception). The amount of journalism alone is impressive here, and the presentation is so smooth and compelling that you end up not able to take your eyes off it. I'm not used to being this captivated by something presented in this medium which is not fiction. They cover a massive amount in the well-paced 95 minutes that fly right by. The technical aspects, different language versions(some of them superior to the American originals!), Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, make-up, the connection to WWI(the popularity of the thrilling flicks was partially on account of grotesquely hurt and disfigured people(victims of the war) living on, because of medical advances), the accusation of these pictures causing real life crimes, European styles and look, Gothic, Bauhaus, expressionism, art, etc. They even give away how some of the FX were done(including an early version of blue-screen!), and you really understand why these were beloved. Editing is crisp, and this never dwells excessively on anything. There is a lot of disturbing content, gory and violence in this. I warmly recommend this to every single fan of the medium, not just of the period or the specific genre. 8/10

This is really one of the better horror movie compilation/documentaries out there. A big reason for that is because of it's subject: Universal Pictures. This is the studio that produced the definitive versions of such films as Dracula, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, The Wolfman and on and on. This documentary is interesting as it traces influences on these movies. It brings out that facial disfigurement in the movies was perhaps a reflection of veterans of World War I coming home with injuries from war, the idea of evil in ordinary looking people who were truly monsters was a reflection of the normal looking men who were otherwise nazi monsters. Traces origins in movies of the most famous Universal characters, showing clips from silent movies and also tracing the careers of various directors and the Laemmles who were in charge of Universal. People who were in these movies are interviewed and also, as a treat for the horror fan, well known personages in the Horror fan community such as Forrest Ackerman and others are interviewed and they share their earliest memories of seeing Universal films. Recommended to the horror fan. If you are new to classic horror films of the 1920s through the 40s, this would be a great education and shows you the most important and influential films to track down.