At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

The 1940s was one of greatest decades for filmmaking and it was also one of the worst. It is common for old codgers such as myself to complain about the endless reboots and sequels that are plaguing the cinema screens today; but this is nothing new and the 1940s was a fairly sequel happy decade. The biggest offender was Universal Studios and their endless monster movie series.   First, let’s back track a minute: In 1932, Universal released The Mummy, a moody tale of supernatural romance (and essentially a reworking of Dracula) to great success. However, by 1936 Universal’s first cycle of horror movies had come to end with Dracula’s Daughter and the studio moved on to other projects.   In 1938, a Los Angeles theatre staged a triple feature of Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong, and the overall results were impressive. Universal capitalized on this momentum by putting into production the terrific Son of Frankenstein. The movie was a success and revitalized Universal’s mons

When I finally caved in and bought a DVD player, one of the first DVD sets I purchased was “The Monster Legacy DVD Gift Set,” which included fourteen movies, and small busts of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man; all for the reasonable price of fifty six dollars! It was money well spent as I was concerned.   As a kid growing up in the 80s, the local station used to play these movies every Saturday night (and a few Hammer movies thrown in for a good measure).   There were books in the school library devoted to the classic monsters and I frequently checked them out.   Therefore, it pains to me say that I find the original Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, to be incredibly dull. It is the one film in the collection that is an absolute challenge to watch; House of Dracula may be a terrible movie, but at least it is entertaining. The first twenty minutes, set in Transylvania, are superb and heavy on the atmosphere: Terrified villagers warn Renfield not to go up t