That's some really nice colour pics from a b&w movie.
Okay, obscure stuff : the initial plans were to have Drac himself in a flashback sequence but that didn't happen. Still, Bela Lugosi was put on standby and ended up collecting a paycheck for not being in a film. There is a wax model of him, though, you can see it in the last pic above.
The film has a strongly implied lesbian subplot
that caused it to have censorship trouble in some places.
Unusually for a sequel, the film opens only seconds after Dracula 1931 ends with Van Helsing being arrested for murder since he cheerfully admits having staked Drac. For some strange reason, he's called VON Helsing here. You'd think that since it's the same actor he might have noticed.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Excellent posters…and excellent info - thanks both 👏🏻😁
The posters are beautiful, as is the look of the film itself (sets, costumes, and the like). It's one of those movies where it's clear no expense has been spared. Also if you like opera (I don't) it's a beautiful sounding film.
Claude Rains makes a good phantom, as one might expect. It's a part where the voice is vital, since he's wearing a mask most of the story bar a brief flashback, and he'd had practice in that as we saw earlier in this very thread.
And that's about it for the compliments. The romantic leads are wooden, get far too much screen time, and spend far too much of that singing even for a film with "opera" in it's name. The intended comedy falls flat. As one ctitic of the time said: too much opera, not enough phantom.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Claude Rain…? 🤨
Claude Rains was usually very good in anything he did.
From the golden age of posters, the 5th is my favourite.
I mentioned all I know about this one above under the 1st in the series, ie Clint Eastwood is here in his debut and the plot was reused in "Jaws 3D". It's not as good as the 1st but better than the 3rd.
If I were to buy posters that weren't Bond and hang them on my wall the magnificent 2nd above would be one of them. Definitely not the 5th and 6th (? Italian) which are very unrepresentative.
This is the one Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder based "Young Frankenstein" most closely on. Basil Rathbone plays the title role, returning to his father’s castle where he meets the Monster, plays darts with the local police inspector, and finds himself an unexpected right hand man called Igor. No, not EYE-gor.
Good as Rathbone and Lionel Atwill as the inspector are the film is dominated by Bela Lugosi as Igor, which vies with Dracula himself to be his best part.
He's almost unrecognisable under the make-up and proves that he really could act, rather than simply wear a cape and not drink ... wine.
Karloff is subdued here. This film sets the pattern for the Monster to spend a lot of his time lying down before some stomping around later in the movie. Since this is the longest of the Universal Frankenstein series there's a bit more of that but unlike the two films before it there's very little opportunity to act though of course he does those well - perhaps the best moment being
when he and Rathbone look in a mirror together.
The biggest fault IMHO is the child playing son of son of Frankenstein, who is very irritating. He was also the voice of Bambi, if you wonder where you've heard him before.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Yes, that second poster really is something special 🍸
And Son of Frankenstein is a movie I’ve enjoyed several times…but then I’ve always enjoyed watching Basil Rathbone…he has an amazing voice 😁
Thanks once again to @Barbel for all that added information, I didn’t know the Bambi connection for instance.
Yes, some of the foreign posters are not so good. The style of the Italian ones would continue into the spaghetti westerns posters in the 60’s and 70’s.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Thanks CHB, I hadn't seen that 3rd poster or the colourised lobby cards.
This isn't a sequel to the earlier Mummy movie but a reboot, though of course they didn't call it that back then. No Karloff, cowboy actor Tom Tyler is under the bandages. Dick Foran plays Steve Banning, as he would in the sequel "The Mummy's Tomb". The Banning name would be carried into the first Hammer Mummy film.
It plays as a fun adventure, until Kharis (the mummy's name) starts killing members of the expedition. Some good moments, esp when you see that the mummy's eyes have been blacked out.
There's poor comic relief from Wallace Ford, a fiesty (that was the term) heroine in Peggy Moran, and George Zucco radiates evil as the villain. He's back in the sequel too despite dieing here - it's a Universal monster movie, death never stops a character returning in the next one.
Edit - parts of the Karloff film are reused in a flashback. That tendency grows more pronounced later.
Love those European posters, haven't seen them before.
I'll keep this one brief: Karloff certainly played Dr Jekyll and very well too, but once he drinks his potion it's stuntman Eddie Parker as the athletic Mr Hyde, saving the ageing star from all that tedious makeup and running along rooftops etc. Saved time, too - Parker could be getting made up while Karloff filmed a scene and be ready to take over as necessary.
Universal stuntman Eddie Parker also doubled (very obviously) for Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein Monster and Lon Chaney as the Mummy (some say he did most of the scenes in the 3 Mummy movies Chaney starred in, since Lon Jr was well known for getting drunk on set and it was hard to tell once the bandages were on anyway) before officially playing the Mummy himself when that character met Abbott and Costello. He doubled for many of the others, too. Hmm, I suspect I might be repeating some of that later.
Hammer's equivalent was the similarly named Eddie Powell who doubled for their stars as necessary.
So much for being brief ....
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Once again it's the foreign language posters I'm most intrigued by.
The last was the kind of thing issued by studio publicity depts to make it easy for local journalists to do favourable write-ups (and sometimes without the effort of seeing the film itself). I say "was", maybe they still do that online.
Chaney was just right for the Wolf Man but so wrong for Dracula, or Alucard as he's called here. Still, it's a good horror pic if you ignore that with a different kind of story, a Southern Gothic atmosphere, and an ending that's not predictable from the first five minutes.
And you also have to ignore rubber bats, but that's not unique - Hammer were still using those 30 years later.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Yes, they got their monies worth with those rubber bats 🤣
Universal's first go at a werewolf movie, this didn't hit it off well enough to justify a sequel or series - that would have to wait till poor Larry Talbot made his debut.
The character here wasn't as sympathetic and the make-up didn't help. The then current Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, played a previous lycanthrope in competition with him. The young Valerie Hobson, still a teenager, had previously been in "Bride of Frankenstein" as ... er ... the bride of Frankenstein.
The makers hadn't yet worked out how to do the transformation scenes and the film has dated worse than not only the Wolf Man series of only a few years later but earlier horrors of the 30s.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Great posters as usual…I’ve always liked the ones with ‘warnings’ to the cinema goers 🤣
That first one's the winner for me, and the fifth is bottom of the list.
Karloff had temporarily left the series, but permanently left playing the Monster (other than a gag shot many years later on TV's "Route 66"). Next in line was Lon Chaney Jr who gave an undistinguished performance until the ending (which I'm not spoiling) where he's very good.
Back from "Son of" was Lugosi as Igor with a drop in pay and billing, which didn't prevent him from stealing the whole film again. Lionel Atwill also returned, as he would in all the remaining Frankenstein movies from Universal until his death, in different parts each film though usually as a police inspector - not here, where he's a mad scientist (on the right in the last colour pic above).
Overall it's a step down from "Son of" though it still has some good moments and the little girl here (first lobby card above) beats the little boy in Son hands down.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 31,081Chief of Staff
Yep - the first poster is the best…it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie…
Comments
That's some really nice colour pics from a b&w movie.
Okay, obscure stuff : the initial plans were to have Drac himself in a flashback sequence but that didn't happen. Still, Bela Lugosi was put on standby and ended up collecting a paycheck for not being in a film. There is a wax model of him, though, you can see it in the last pic above.
The film has a strongly implied lesbian subplot
that caused it to have censorship trouble in some places.
Unusually for a sequel, the film opens only seconds after Dracula 1931 ends with Van Helsing being arrested for murder since he cheerfully admits having staked Drac. For some strange reason, he's called VON Helsing here. You'd think that since it's the same actor he might have noticed.
Excellent posters…and excellent info - thanks both 👏🏻😁
And thank you, Sir Miles.
UNIVERSAL HORROR #12 - PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943)
Phantom is currently on the Comic Strip thread.
The posters are beautiful, as is the look of the film itself (sets, costumes, and the like). It's one of those movies where it's clear no expense has been spared. Also if you like opera (I don't) it's a beautiful sounding film.
Claude Rains makes a good phantom, as one might expect. It's a part where the voice is vital, since he's wearing a mask most of the story bar a brief flashback, and he'd had practice in that as we saw earlier in this very thread.
And that's about it for the compliments. The romantic leads are wooden, get far too much screen time, and spend far too much of that singing even for a film with "opera" in it's name. The intended comedy falls flat. As one ctitic of the time said: too much opera, not enough phantom.
Claude Rain…? 🤨
Claude Rains was usually very good in anything he did.
Were Claude Rains best roles where we couldn't see his face?
UNIVERSAL HORROR #13 - REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955)
From the golden age of posters, the 5th is my favourite.
I mentioned all I know about this one above under the 1st in the series, ie Clint Eastwood is here in his debut and the plot was reused in "Jaws 3D". It's not as good as the 1st but better than the 3rd.
UNIVERSAL HORROR # 14 - SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939)
If I were to buy posters that weren't Bond and hang them on my wall the magnificent 2nd above would be one of them. Definitely not the 5th and 6th (? Italian) which are very unrepresentative.
This is the one Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder based "Young Frankenstein" most closely on. Basil Rathbone plays the title role, returning to his father’s castle where he meets the Monster, plays darts with the local police inspector, and finds himself an unexpected right hand man called Igor. No, not EYE-gor.
Good as Rathbone and Lionel Atwill as the inspector are the film is dominated by Bela Lugosi as Igor, which vies with Dracula himself to be his best part.
He's almost unrecognisable under the make-up and proves that he really could act, rather than simply wear a cape and not drink ... wine.
Karloff is subdued here. This film sets the pattern for the Monster to spend a lot of his time lying down before some stomping around later in the movie. Since this is the longest of the Universal Frankenstein series there's a bit more of that but unlike the two films before it there's very little opportunity to act though of course he does those well - perhaps the best moment being
when he and Rathbone look in a mirror together.
The biggest fault IMHO is the child playing son of son of Frankenstein, who is very irritating. He was also the voice of Bambi, if you wonder where you've heard him before.
Yes, that second poster really is something special 🍸
And Son of Frankenstein is a movie I’ve enjoyed several times…but then I’ve always enjoyed watching Basil Rathbone…he has an amazing voice 😁
Thanks once again to @Barbel for all that added information, I didn’t know the Bambi connection for instance.
Yes, some of the foreign posters are not so good. The style of the Italian ones would continue into the spaghetti westerns posters in the 60’s and 70’s.
UNIVERSAL HORROR #15 - THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940)
Thanks CHB, I hadn't seen that 3rd poster or the colourised lobby cards.
This isn't a sequel to the earlier Mummy movie but a reboot, though of course they didn't call it that back then. No Karloff, cowboy actor Tom Tyler is under the bandages. Dick Foran plays Steve Banning, as he would in the sequel "The Mummy's Tomb". The Banning name would be carried into the first Hammer Mummy film.
It plays as a fun adventure, until Kharis (the mummy's name) starts killing members of the expedition. Some good moments, esp when you see that the mummy's eyes have been blacked out.
There's poor comic relief from Wallace Ford, a fiesty (that was the term) heroine in Peggy Moran, and George Zucco radiates evil as the villain. He's back in the sequel too despite dieing here - it's a Universal monster movie, death never stops a character returning in the next one.
Edit - parts of the Karloff film are reused in a flashback. That tendency grows more pronounced later.
Thank you for the continued info drop, Barbel, it makes this feature worthwhile!
UNIVERSAL HORROR #16 - ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE (1953)
Love those European posters, haven't seen them before.
I'll keep this one brief: Karloff certainly played Dr Jekyll and very well too, but once he drinks his potion it's stuntman Eddie Parker as the athletic Mr Hyde, saving the ageing star from all that tedious makeup and running along rooftops etc. Saved time, too - Parker could be getting made up while Karloff filmed a scene and be ready to take over as necessary.
Universal stuntman Eddie Parker also doubled (very obviously) for Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein Monster and Lon Chaney as the Mummy (some say he did most of the scenes in the 3 Mummy movies Chaney starred in, since Lon Jr was well known for getting drunk on set and it was hard to tell once the bandages were on anyway) before officially playing the Mummy himself when that character met Abbott and Costello. He doubled for many of the others, too. Hmm, I suspect I might be repeating some of that later.
Hammer's equivalent was the similarly named Eddie Powell who doubled for their stars as necessary.
So much for being brief ....
Nice posters…and fabulous extra info 😁
A lot of good information there, Barbel, thank you.
UNIVERSAL HORROR #17 - SON OF DRACULA (1943)
Once again it's the foreign language posters I'm most intrigued by.
The last was the kind of thing issued by studio publicity depts to make it easy for local journalists to do favourable write-ups (and sometimes without the effort of seeing the film itself). I say "was", maybe they still do that online.
Chaney was just right for the Wolf Man but so wrong for Dracula, or Alucard as he's called here. Still, it's a good horror pic if you ignore that with a different kind of story, a Southern Gothic atmosphere, and an ending that's not predictable from the first five minutes.
And you also have to ignore rubber bats, but that's not unique - Hammer were still using those 30 years later.
Yes, they got their monies worth with those rubber bats 🤣
Going back a bit, Peggy Moran was lovely...
UNIVERSAL HORROR #18 - WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)
Great posters, hadn't seen most of those.
Universal's first go at a werewolf movie, this didn't hit it off well enough to justify a sequel or series - that would have to wait till poor Larry Talbot made his debut.
The character here wasn't as sympathetic and the make-up didn't help. The then current Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, played a previous lycanthrope in competition with him. The young Valerie Hobson, still a teenager, had previously been in "Bride of Frankenstein" as ... er ... the bride of Frankenstein.
The makers hadn't yet worked out how to do the transformation scenes and the film has dated worse than not only the Wolf Man series of only a few years later but earlier horrors of the 30s.
Great posters as usual…I’ve always liked the ones with ‘warnings’ to the cinema goers 🤣
Me too @Sir Miles I can hear Harry Enfield’s Cholmondley-Warner saying “To hysterical women” “Shut your eyes!” 🤣
And more great info from Barbel, thank you!
UNIVERSAL HORROR #19 - THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942)
That first one's the winner for me, and the fifth is bottom of the list.
Karloff had temporarily left the series, but permanently left playing the Monster (other than a gag shot many years later on TV's "Route 66"). Next in line was Lon Chaney Jr who gave an undistinguished performance until the ending (which I'm not spoiling) where he's very good.
Back from "Son of" was Lugosi as Igor with a drop in pay and billing, which didn't prevent him from stealing the whole film again. Lionel Atwill also returned, as he would in all the remaining Frankenstein movies from Universal until his death, in different parts each film though usually as a police inspector - not here, where he's a mad scientist (on the right in the last colour pic above).
Overall it's a step down from "Son of" though it still has some good moments and the little girl here (first lobby card above) beats the little boy in Son hands down.
Yep - the first poster is the best…it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie…