[Robert_Dunbar]

I love this. You never hear people mention Rondo Hatton in conversation anymore. (I did try to organize a Rondo Hatton look alike contest once, but for some reason it just didn't catch on.)

Personally, I've always been partial to the extended-monster-family films.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is magnificent. (I've always thought Tod Browning incredibly overrated -- I know, I know, an unpopular sentiment. But James Whale! Now there's a genius.)
DRACULA'S DAUGHTER may not have a whole lot going for it -- the plot fairly creaks -- except for Gloria Holden ... who is more than enough to carry the film. Such presence. One of the great horror performances.
SON OF DRACULA probably qualifies as one of those indefensible secret vices, which one would never dream of giving up. Chaney is certainly no Lugosi. (And has anyone else noticed that the title means nothing?) But the film generates an almost deliriously fatalistic atmosphere, as though everyone involved with it had suddenly lost their minds ... to the audiences' delight.

As for the others, nothing really compares with THE MUMMY. It's elegant, obsessive, chilling. Karloff and Zita Johann bring a level of artistry to their performances that always seemed (to me) representative of the best that Universal had to offer. Karl Freund, the director, was actually responsible for those Gothic moments in DRACULA that most people remember with such fondness. (He'd been the cinematographer on that film. The later, clumsy, pedestrian sequences, where interesting things always seem to be happening just off screen, are much more typical of Browning's talking pictures: poor soul never really got comfortable with the technology.) And David Manners and Edward van Sloan are both on hand from the earlier film to further enhance the similarities, their performances considerably more polished now.

Plus I have my caveats.

THE WOLFMAN is entertaining but principally because of its production values. Chaney is a pathetic, hulking lump of an actor, alcoholic, violent, xenophobic. (And, one hears, when in his cups "sexually confused." Oh dear.) And if tiny, elegant Claude Rains was meant to be his father, what the hell are we to assume that mom looked like? But Chaney does bring a convincing pathology to the role (especially if it's viewed as a metaphor for alcoholic blackouts). The forthcoming remake of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is generating a lot of interest just now, but the original remains just a mildly amusing (and mildly embarrassing) trifle, certainly not in a league with the studio's earlier masterworks. Just my two cents.

It's wonderful to see how much discussion this topic has generated. Years ago, I reviewed a book called UNIVERSAL HORRORS, the Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946 (by Michael Brunas, John Brunas and Tom Weaver). I heartily recommend it to anyone with a real interest in cinema history. And Mark Vieira's "HOLLYWOOD HORROR from Gothic to Cosmic" is truly brilliant as is "PROJECTED FEARS" by Kendall Phillips. (Okay, so Kendall is a friend -- it's still an awesome book.)