12.
Frankenstein (1931)
13. Bride
of Frankenstein (1935)
14. House
of the Damned (1963)
Over the
weekend, we watched two classics and one stinker.
The best
of the classic Universal monster movies are the three directed by James Whale:
"Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein," and "The
Invisible Man." "Dracula"
is a bore, and Lon Chaney Jr. is too whiney for me to take "The Wolf Man"
seriously. I don't have any complaints
about "Creature from the Black Lagoon," but it lacks the wit that
makes Whale's monster movies so entertaining.
The other Universal monster movies also lack Colin Clive and Boris
Karloff. I always have trouble deciding
who makes the better Dr. Frankenstein, Colin Clive or Peter Cushing (lately,
I've been leaning toward Peter Cushing), but I'm always enthralled with Clive's
performances, especially when his creatures awaken for the first time. He delivers the most memorable line of any
Frankenstein movie, "He's alive! He's alive! In the name of God, now I
know what it feels like to be God!" Of course, when the film was first
released the words "to be God" were cut, rendering the line almost
incomprehensible. Karloff's
Frankenstein's monster is one of the most famous movie icons of all time,
immediately recognizable even to people who have never seen the original
movies.
I thought
we couldn't go wrong with a movie titled "House of the Damned,"
especially when I learned it involved couples on vacation being terrorized by
circus freaks. But I was again reminded
that it's not uncommon for the contents of a horror movie to have little or
nothing to do with its title. There's a
house, but no one's damned. Instead,
it's inhabited by circus freaks who have no where else to go when the owner of
the house and the proprietor of their show dies. They attempt to frighten the couples away, so
they won't be discovered. About halfway
in, there's an eerie scene in which a man with no legs walks on his hands into
the dark bedroom where one couple is sleeping and steals their keys, but then
nothing else interesting happens.
Thankfully, this one runs for only just over an hour because for about
fifty-five minutes nothing of interest happens.
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