Universal Studios Monsters

I just finished reading Thomas Mallory's excellent book, Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror.  It's a comprehensive overview, featuring many stills and behind-the-scenes photographs I haven't seen before.  I recommend it to everyone in the group who hasn't read it already. It's well-written and quite witty, but nitpicker that I am, I found one small error in the text. It's the passage in the chapter on Dracula (1931).  "Lucy seems fascinated by Dracula, who makes her his first English victim." Actually his first English victim was the flower girl Dracula meets when first strolling the foggy streets of London at night.  Remember when he bites her on the neck? So Lucy wasn't the first.  

Someone has suggested to me that Dracula's first English victim might well be the captain of the Vesta, the ship that takes Dracula from Transylvania to London. For that matter, Renfield, the English real estate agent who meets Dracula in his castle at the beginning of the film, might well be his first English victim. But I assume Mallory was referring to Dracula's first victim on English soil.

Other than that, the book struck me as highly reliable, and a great pleasure to read. By all means, get a copy.

Halloween with The Wolf Man

I noticed an odd thing tonight while watching The Wolf Man (1941).  Early in the film, Lon Chaney visits the antique shop where Evelyn Ankers works so he can ask her out on a date. There's a sentimental piece of music playing in the background which sounded strangely familiar. Obviously many of the Universal horror films of the 1940s used the same stock music, but this sounded like a piece from a non-horror film, and I wracked my brains trying to remember which film it was. 

Finally it came to me:  Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), also released by Universal.  It's the same sentimental music used when Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane are together. But I wanted to make sure, so I went to the IMDb and looked for the composer of the original music for the Hitchcock film. Frank Skinner. Then I looked at the composers for The Wolf Man. Three names, one of them Frank Skinner. But Hitch was already too important a director to be using stock music for his films, so Skinner must have been recycling some of his sentimental romantic music for Saboteur.  At the very least, the two pieces of music are awfully similar and bear his imprint.  I'm sure a scholar of the film can flesh the details out for me.

As for the film itself, what can I say except... it's The Wolf Man! A film distinguished from other Universal horror films in my mind because of the immense sadness that hangs over the entire story. Larry Talbot doesn't want to be a werewolf, he doesn't enjoy killing people (at least when he thinks about it the morning after when he's returned to human form) and he gives his silver-topped wolf cane to his father, knowing that his dad -- the magnificent Claude Rains -- will protect himself from Larry with it. Which of course he does. Naturally, that doesn't stop Larry from coming back in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, where Chaney and Lugosi meet again. How ironic that Lugosi, as Bela the Gypsy, is the werewolf in The Wolf Man before biting Chaney and turning him into one.  Seems that Lugosi always gets the first bite.

So. A beautifully done film with an excellent script by Curt Siodmak, a superb lead and fine supporting actors, with admirable art direction and production design. Even makeup man extraordinaire Jack Pierce gets his name in the credits, even though we don't see the facial transformation of Larry into a werewolf in this particular film. But why quibble?  What's better than watching The Wolf Man on Halloween night?