This article was originally published on WordPress in September 2019. Revisions have been made to provide clarity and include additional research.
Quick! When I say the name “Frankenstein,” what image comes to mind? Probably that of a big, greenish-grayish fellow with a bad haircut and screws in his neck, walking around while a mad scientist shrieks “It’s alive!” and an Igor pulls a switch. Did those images come from Mary Shelley’s original novel? Nope — they were all invented by Universal Pictures in their landmark film adaptation of the story. How about if I say “Dracula”? Now you’re probably thinking of a dark-haired, clean-shaven older gentleman in a big collared cape who’s got a thick accent and says things like “I never drink…wine.” Is that what Bram Stoker came up with? Nope! Universal again.
The depictions of these two characters in particular are a world away from their 19th century source material. But even if you haven’t seen these films or barely know about them, you recognize these images as what Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula are “supposed to be.” That’s how powerful the impact of Universal Horror is, even after so many decades.
The story of Universal Horror — that is, horror films produced and released by Universal Pictures — is a long and detailed one that will take us through a century of film history and beyond. Of course I want to talk about all these movies because they’re great flicks that shaped pop culture and the evolution of the horror genre. But I also want to discuss them because they’re an important piece of film history beyond that. You see, long before our modern world of endless sequels and spin-offs, the Universal horror/monster movies pioneered not only the concept of a multi-film franchise but the concept of a shared cinematic universe. Before we had the MCU and DCEU, we had Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and several others. You might call it the original monster mash.
Like I said, we’ve got a long trip ahead of us. Universal has made and released so many horror movies that talking about every single one would take too much time, so I’m laying out some basic ground rules.
RULE #1: To qualify for my list, the film has to have been made and released by Universal, thus ruling out anything that was merely distributed by them in the States or elsewhere. Basically, it has to be a film that Universal claims as their own. Hammer Horror, for instance, wouldn’t qualify for this series because those films were made by a non-Universal production company. There will be some exceptions to this rule, but only because the films in question were made as explicit homages to Universal Horror.
RULE #2: With few exceptions, a qualifying film has to A) directly include or B) be narratively or thematically connected to a member of the group I am dubbing The Canonical Six. That’s the term I’ll be using in reference to Universal’s core lineup of horror characters — Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Invisible Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There are dozens of other films that I could discuss for this series, and I suspect I’ll circle back to them at some point. But movies about these six form the bedrock of Universal’s horror reputation, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on (with the exception of an occasional detour). I included the “narratively or thematically connected” option to expand our viewing options, because sometimes you’ll get a sequel where one of the Canonical Six doesn’t actually appear but makes their presence felt. Or you’ll have several standalone films that go on to influence the tone and/or mythology of an official entry. The latter is often the case with Universal’s werewolf movies, which don’t really have an ongoing narrative. So while you may not find An American Werewolf in London on an official list of Universal Horror, it merits a spot in this timeline because of what it borrows from The Wolf Man, how it influenced the remake of that film and its importance as a major milestone of horror makeup effects. Because you can’t talk about monster movies without talking about the makeup.
The series will be split into two parts. Part One will cover the Classic Era, which lasted from around 1930 to 1960 and was the “golden age” of Universal Horror. Then we’re going to jump ahead and cover the Modern Era, which starts around 1980 and goes up to the present day. By the time we’re done, we’ll have discussed over forty different films.
So with that in mind, let’s start our journey off simple with a brief prologue. How did Universal Pictures get started, anyway?
Before the Horror: The Founding of Universal
Let’s go back in time to January 17th, 1867. The revised edition of Frankenstein is about 36 years old, and Dracula won’t be published for another three decades. In one of the many kingdoms that will soon become Germany, a boy named Carl Laemmle has just been born. Our story wouldn’t be possible without him.
Laemmle (pronounced “lem-lee” in case you were wondering) grew up and immigrated to the United States in 1884. There, he worked his way through a variety of jobs, including advertising. But his career really got going in 1906, when he got into the fledgling movie business. Nickelodeon theaters converted from storefronts were just beginning to capture the public’s attention, and Laemmle was among the first to open such theaters in Chicago. His investment was enough of a success that he soon expanded his business by opening Laemmle Film Service, a film exchange. Film exchanges cropped up as a way for theater owners to rent new films without having to purchase them directly from the manufacturers, a more expensive and time-consuming option. As a theater owner himself, Laemmle knew how to appeal to his clients and earn their trust and business. By 1908, Laemmle Film Service had offices all across the US and was the largest film distributor in the country.
But trouble was brewing for Laemmle, for his success had earned him a very powerful enemy — the Wizard of Menlo Park himself. Having developed motion picture technology, Thomas Edison tried to keep a tight grip on anyone who wanted to use his invention. In 1909, he formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), or the Edison Trust, he imposed a monopoly on all cameras, projectors and film and demanded a tax of $2 per month — that’s almost $60 today — on all the film producers, theater owners and exchange owners. Laemmle, of course, saw this as a premeditated attack on his own business, and he sued Edison on the grounds that the MPPC was illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
To make a long and rather remarkable story short, Laemmle eventually got the Edison Trust dismantled and changed the film industry forever in the process. When he started the Independent Moving Picture Company (IMP) in 1909, he was essentially organizing the many small film producers and distributors of the time into a single group large enough to fight Edison. To win over public opinion and lure valuable actors away from the MPPC, he popularized the “star system”: advertising focused on actors, more lucrative contracts for actors and cast billing at the end of the film. Actors who were in greater demand by the public could demand more pay, something that Edison’s company had tried to undermine. Laemmle embraced it, giving him a key strategic advantage in his legal battles.
In April 1912, Laemmle and several other film producers pooled their resources to form the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. In 1915, the same year that the MPPC was finally dismantled, Laemmle became the sole owner of what was now the Universal Pictures Company. He moved his business to California, where he opened the largest and grandest film studio ever built at the time: the Universal City, which still exists today as Universal Studios Hollywood. And it truly was a city, with houses, a bank, a post office, a school and even a zoo in addition to the hundreds of film stages and sets. Laemmle was also the first filmmaker to allow public tours of his backlots, allowing the public to see how movies were really made.
At last we come to the movies themselves, and Universal’s first foray into horror pictures. In its early days, the studio made three types of films. These did not correspond to genre, but were instead grouped by budget size and the scope of the production. The type most relevant to our story was the “Jewel” pictures: prestige films with famous actors and million-dollar budgets. In 1923, one such film — the “Super Jewel” of the year, or the studio’s biggest project — was a lavish, epic adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with character actor/makeup artist Lon Chaney in the title role. The film was a huge success for the studio: a June 1932 issue of Variety claimed that it made $3.5 million against a budget of $1.25 million. In today’s money, that’s about $57 million against about $20 million. Chaney had been a known actor before this, but playing Quasimodo elevated him to proper stardom. Laemmle was on to something, and he knew it. That was why he soon began working on another prestige drama starring Chaney, based on another popular French novel. And it was this film, even more so than Hunchback, which would change everything for the studio…
UP NEXT: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
References Used
Stanca Musea, Cristina. “Carl Laemmle.” Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 4, edited by Jeffrey Fear. German Historical Institute. Read here.
“Biggest Money Pictures.” Variety Vol. 107, No. 2. June 21, 1932. pg. 62. Retrieved from archive.org, read here.