October 1, 2026 • 43 mins
Basically everything you think of when you think of vampires, mummies, werewolves, and Frankenstein all come from a spate of films made in the 1930s, and every one of them by Universal Pictures. Amazingly, they are still among the best films ever made.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and Jerry Gould-Roland is here with us, too. And this
is Stuff You Should Know, kicking off the great month
of October.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right. One of our favorite months. I just watched
Backrooms last night. Didn't you tell me to see that?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You know, I thought it was kind of cool while
I was watching it.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But it's one of those movies where after when I
thought about it, I really didn't like it very much.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What didn't you like about it?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It ended up like I liked it. I thought it
was cool looking and like had a lot of cool stuff.
But afterward, I was like, it felt like just some
kid had a bunch of cool ideas that didn't end
up making a movie. And then when I read the
background of the movie, I was like, oh, that's kind
of exactly what it was.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, I guess I didn't take it like that at all.
I just enjoyed it on its face. I wasn't aware
of like the mythology behind it and everything like that,
which apparently it built on pretty well.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But yeah, I just liked it as it was, I think.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I think it felt like he was like, it'd be
cool if I did this and this would be cool
and this would be cool.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And if I introduced this agency, that'd be cool. And
then like none of that went anywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And so I was kind of like, wait a minute,
you can't just throw a bunch of cool things in
a movie and have it be a movie kid.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I don't, I disagree that that's what he did.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I mean, a lot of people liked it. So I'm, I'm, well,
I don't know about the minority because a lot of
people felt like I did too. So I think it's
devices what they say.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's crazy. It's such a neat movie. Everybody just needs
to relax and enjoy a neat movie.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Just like everything you like.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Exactly. It drives me bananas. Yeah. So we are talking
about movies in particular, which I guess is why you
brought up Back Rooms.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I got a couple of movies to shout out now
that I think about it. Have you seen Undertone? It's
a horror movie about a podcaster. So it's really like
right up your alley. I finally saw Martyrs, which is
an amazing movie that, yeah, that's a really amazing movie.
And then I also saw The Devil's Bath. Okay. I
(02:21):
would not necessarily recommend that to everybody. It's a very
dark movie and it's in German and it's subtitled and
it's set in the middle of the 18th century in
rural Germany.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Tough watch?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Not in the way that you would think. It's more
just like some of the gut punches that come through
are really hard gut punches. But if you're into like
really disturbing, dark, psychological horror, I would recommend it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
All right.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay. That sounds great. You want to talk about the uni-monsters?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, we're talking about the universal monsters, and we should
probably talk about horror films in general, because a lot
of people point to the universal monster movies starting in
the 1930s as essentially kicking off at least monster movies,
if not the horror genre itself. And there were other
horror movies that came first, but it wasn't until the 20s,
(03:15):
pre-universal admittedly, that people started like, trying to scare audiences,
hence the beginning of horror movies.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah. Specifically, the cabinet of Dr.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Caligari and Nosferatu in the early 1920s kind of got
that going. But like you said, it was really the
1930s when we got Draculas and Frankensteins and mummies and
wolf men and stuff like that, that things really kicked off.
And we have a family to thank for that. If
you I don't know if these theaters are still there.
I really hope they are. I'm sure they're still there.
(03:48):
I don't know if they have been taken over by
a different name. But the Lamley theaters in Los Angeles
were always these great sort of usually independently minded or,
you know, showing maybe not the first run big hits
of the day. And there were a few Lamley theaters
and they come from the Lamley family, which is where
(04:08):
Universal Studios comes from. A German immigrant in 1906 named
Carl Lamley. opened a Nickelodeon in Chicago, and a few
years later opened up the Independent Motion Picture Company, and
then merged with a few other companies to create Universal
Pictures in 1912.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, and then 1915, they opened a 230-acre studio in
Los Angeles. So in nine years, that guy went from
opening a Nickelodeon to starting a major motion picture company.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, well, not major yet because the majors were the
big five at the time. Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, RKO
and Lowe's. It's crazy to think about Universal and Columbia
being and United Artists being the upstarts. But that's what
they were in the early 1900s film business.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So, yeah, it was it was actually Lemley's son who
really put Universal on the map, as we'll see. But
Lemley Sr. had a part to play in that. He
ended up. basically starting the star system in the movie
industry by taking one actress, Florence Lawrence. Good Lord, the
(05:17):
Lemley family and Florence Lawrence together at last. And he
started a publicity campaign that focused on her. And this
was new because up to that point, it was like actor, actor,
I don't care who you are. I'm here for the story.
He made Florence Lawrence like the point to go see
a movie. And he did it in fairly dastardly, amusing fashion.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, he created a fake story about her dying in
a car crash and then blamed her former employer, Biograph,
for creating that fake story to begin with because they
were mad that they lost her to Universal. So this
created a lot of publicity buzz and, you know, kind
of helped create that star system.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Sure. And it's just such a great indicator of like
how kind of rogue do yourself underground the early days
of film were yeah especially when you compare it to
how the whole industry is today it's neat to just
think of it as created by initially by artists who
were dedicated to their art and were coming up with
(06:23):
neat innovative things to do is really well portrayed in
the shadow of the vampire with john malkovich where they're
making nosferatu Yeah, there are.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Quite a few movies about this era because I think
it's just so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah. But moving on, getting back to the monster stuff,
Universal had already done a couple of monster pictures that are,
depending on who you ask, part of the Universal monster canon.
The first one is pretty highly debatable. Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde came out in 1913. It was the first universal
(06:57):
monster movie of any kind. But it was 26 minutes long.
So a lot of people are like, that's not feature length.
I don't know if we can count that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
1920s, you got The Hunchback of Notre Dame and then
The Phantom of the Opera two years later in 1925.
These are noteworthy because Lon Chaney Sr., the man of
a thousand faces starred in these and the Chaney family
would figure heavily in his son's life for the Universal
Monster series.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, Lon Chaney Sr. is a really interesting guy in
and of himself. He was in 157 or 150 films
from the 20s to the 30s. And he did his
own makeup, right? He was known as the man of
a thousand faces. And he was such an expert on
makeup that he wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for makeup.
And there was a joke from the 20s. It was,
(07:49):
don't step on that spider. It might be Lon Chaney.
That's how good he was considered in getting into weird
different characters.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
That's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I thought so too.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
All right, so the studio is putting out spooky movies
at this point. They're in haunted mansions sometimes. They're in
strange places. This is between like 25 and 30 when
the talkies are happening. And then in 1931 when Carl
Lamley Jr., I think he's taken over a couple of
years by this point. He started as head of production
(08:20):
in 1928 at just 21 years old and then won
an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front. Um,
even though they were like, this is a Nepo baby kid, uh, he,
he really was putting out some pretty good movies. And
as far as the monsters cannon goes, hit it out
of the park, out of the gate with Dracula.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah. From 1931, which turned out to be a really
big year for monster movies. Um, it kicked off with
Dracula and Valentine's day, 1931, and it was marketed as
a romance, which it is. It's a tragic romance in
a lot of ways. And Nosferatu, the actual 1920s film
starring Max Schreck, was not authorized by Bram Stoker's estate.
(09:04):
So it wasn't based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was
Nosferatu instead. This was based on Bram Stoker's version, but
they adapted it from a stage play. And they hired
a director named Todd Browning, who made what I think
is one of the great revenge movies of all time, Freaks,
in 1932. But this was the year before he was
(09:26):
directing Dracula.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We didn't do a whole episode on Freaks, but we
mentioned it, I guess, in our– we did an episode
about that.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
About Freak Shows.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, Freak Shows. I didn't know how to say it
in 2026.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I think that's still how they say it.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So Todd 1D Browning is a big shot director at
this point. He's making spooky movies. He's working with Lon
Chaney Sr., It probably would have been Lon Chaney Sr.
as Dracula, but he died in 1930 of bronchial cancer.
So he looked around and he said, who can I
pick to be Dracula?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Who, who, who?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And this scary looking Hungarian said, why don't you pick me?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah. So Bela Lugosi, every single Dracula idea or impression
like you just did That all comes from Bela Lugosi's
1931 performance. And the reason they picked him is, remember,
this was adapted from the stage adaptation. And Bela Lugosi
had already made a name for himself starring in the
stage adaptation on Broadway. They were like, we think you
(10:33):
got the chops for this. And it was a very
good casting decision because I watched it last night for
the first time. And he does an astounding job.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It's great. And by chops, you mean literal fangs.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So what did you think of it, watching it today?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Do you ever watch old, old movies like that?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Sometimes. So last night, for work, which is pretty awesome,
I watched Dracula. I watched The Bride of Frankenstein. And
I watched The Invisible Man. All three for the first time.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The Invisible Man is good.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yes. So was The Bride of Frankenstein. I think it
was the best of the bunch.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It made me more open to watching movies. old films
as well. Yeah. They were amazingly done, like the lighting,
the direction, the shots, like all this stuff, but also
the storytelling. It was really, it sucks you in. And
if you look at the runtimes of these things, they're
just barely over an hour.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And they're still getting everything across in beautiful fashion. So, yeah,
there's a couple of movies that came up in this
research that I want to go watch now. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I mean, if you watch movies from the 30s, that
black and white, if you have like a good TV,
it still looks incredible. It's not like this old grainy,
like weird looking thing. Like it is sharp and it
looks amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
But you want to put your motion smoothing on your
TV to make sure you can enjoy it to its
maximum potential. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
All right, so Lugosi is doing his thing.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
In the 1930s when the talkies were starting to become
really popular and they didn't have other film industries yet,
it was kind of like Hollywood was the thing. They
would oftentimes shoot the same movie in a different language,
sometimes multiple languages.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And that was the case with Dracula.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Like when they were shooting Dracula on the uni lot
during the day, they were– by the way, I keep
saying that.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's obnoxious.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
That's what– when I worked out there, that's what everyone
called it. who worked in the film business, so I'm
not trying to be like, that was an insider, but
it's just ingrained in me.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It hasn't come across as obnoxious at all.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, good. So the uni lot, everybody.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
They were shooting Dracula during the day, and then at
night they had a completely separate crew and cast and
director and everything shooting a Spanish version of Dracula. Its director,
George Melford, was American, so didn't speak Spanish, had a translator,
and a lot of people are like, This version's better, actually,
because they saw what was going on during the day
and improved on it at night.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Exactly. Yeah, I think it has a longer runtime, too,
because when they re-released Dracula a few years after its premiere,
the Hays Code existed now, which was censorship, so they
had to cut it down even further. And the Spanish
version didn't have to undergo that same thing. So I've
not seen that one, but I can imagine it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, I'd like to check it out. All right, so
Dracula was a big hit. I promised we were going
to introduce you to a little guy named Frank.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I lied. It's actually a big guy named Frank. Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
This was released Thanksgiving 1931, directed by the great James Whale.
He was a Brit. I mentioned other movies made about
this era. There's a great, great film called Gods and
Monsters about the final days of James Whale that I
highly recommend.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Oh, I didn't know that was about him.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I noticed there's a huge difference, you can tell, between
Todd Browning's Dracula, the way that's directed, and the way
that The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, which
James Whale did both of those, are directed. And I'm much— like,
I love freaks, but I'm now a big James Whale fan.
He was amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Oh, nice. You should check out Gods and Monsters.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I will.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Good money.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I will.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So Frankenstein adapted also from a stage play. And, you know,
like you said, he had a lot of flair as
a director, right? I think he was influenced by like
German cinema at the time, which, you know, the time
was probably a little more interesting than what was going
on in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So lots of like really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And especially in The Invisible Man, which we'll talk about,
like that invisible, like for the 1930s, the little trick
he did to make him seem invisible, like still holds
up pretty well, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I agree. I was very impressed by it. There's only
a couple of times where you're like, the thing he's
holding looks a little invisible too. But for the most part,
it was, I imagine it just knocked everybody's socks off
back then if it still holds up today. Yeah. But
that was a, it was a really cool, interesting movie.
And it did kind of go to show just what
(15:13):
this studio was capable of now and the kind of
things they were doing. And this is all pretty quick, right?
I think The Invisible Man just came out two years
after their first movie, Dracula. So they were gaining by
leaps and bounds very quickly.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah, and establishing sort of the tropes or the standby
stuff that these movies would be known for forevermore, like
a mad scientist lab, a hunchback assistant.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Mm-hmm. It was Fritz in the first one.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Igor came along a little bit later, I think in
1939 with Son of Frankenstein. But this Frankenstein played by
Boris Karloff was only grunted.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
It wasn't like the book version, Mary Shelley's version.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yes. Until they made The Bride of Frankenstein. Have you
seen that one? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Okay. Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
In this one, the monster learns to talk. And Boris Karloff,
who played Frankenstein and made his career, started his career
by playing Frankenstein, he was like, I don't think we
should have let the monster learn to talk. Because he's
like friend good to start and ends up like telling Dr. Frankenstein,
(16:24):
like you can sleep after you're done working by the
end of the movie. They also teach him to smoke
and drink.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Which is kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Funny to see. And I saw that it's basically described
by a lot of people as campy, like James Whale
intentionally made The Bride of Frankenstein a little sillier than
the original Frankenstein was, and that it kind of comes across.
And that also Dr. Pretorius, who's the He's even more
(16:54):
mad than Dr. Frankenstein. He's the real bad guy of
this movie, Bride of Frankenstein, that he's a clearly gay
or queer character, I guess, is how film buffs put
it today. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Well, James Whale was gay. So the gay community in
camp maybe have always gone hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You know?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Have you seen The Bride, the latest Maggie Gyllenhaal's film?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I have, but without sound. I watched it over someone's
shoulder on an airplane. And it looks pretty good.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So you really saw it, huh?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
It looks good. You know what's funny, though? I noticed
there's a conversation between Dr. Pretorius and Frankenstein's monster in
a crypt. And they're talking basically about how You know,
the dead are good. The living are bad. And I
think that's kind of like the premise of The Bride,
(17:53):
isn't it?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah. I mean, I didn't think it was that great.
I like it was a big swing.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
And I like I love that she made this movie
and that the studio put money behind her to make
this kind of weird movie. Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But a lot of this stuff didn't work for me, unfortunately,
is my review.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Hey, we've always got Secretary.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Man, that's a good movie. All right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well, speaking of movies, let's talk about a few more
of these monster movies because they start churning these things
out in the 1930s because they realized they had an
audience that was rabid for this spooky stuff. And so
the first mummy movie came about in 1932. Keep in mind,
this is just about 10 years later after King Tutankhamen's
tomb had been opened. So, you know, we've talked before
(18:39):
about Egypt fever striking the United States, and that was
why they released the mummy. But this was not yet
The bandage-wrapped mummy monster at this point.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That would come later.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
No, he was a very smart, very evil Egyptian high
priest that was reborn, reanimated, I guess, into modern times,
wearing a fez.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's right. Boris Karloff again in this case.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yes. And it's hard to understate how big a star
Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and some of the supporting actors
became from these movies, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they
were also, they were knocking them out. And some of
them you can definitely tell this thing was shot in
two weeks. Others, it's amazing what they were able to
(19:24):
do over very short periods of time and at first
fairly limited budgets. But these movies like were really coming
on strong. I think Frankenstein ended up being the top
grossing movie of 1931, not only beating out Dracula, but
beating out Charlie Chaplin's City Lights too. So people had
an appetite for this like right out of the gate.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
There was one in 1932, a Poe, and we'll see,
Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Murders of the Rue Morgue with
Bela Lugosi.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Again, in 1932, there was White Zombie, which is where
obviously where the Rob Zombie got his band name from.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Not an official Universal movie, but it was an independent
shot on the Universal Stages. And it did have Bela Lugosi,
so it's worth mentioning.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yes, and it also gave us a lot of the
tropes about essentially like a person who has been resurrected
from the dead and is now under the spell of
a magician of some sort who uses them to carry
out evil deeds. Not brain-eating, not walking, shambling around collectively,
or even more terrifying, running at top speed at you.
(20:33):
But the funny thing is it was based on a
book called The Magic Island. By W.B. Seabrook, which is
a nonfiction travel log. So I guess I don't know
if those were presented as fact or what, but that's
what the movie was based on. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
So you're Invisible Man that you saw and loved and
that I loved, 1933, based on the H.G.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Wells novel.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
You had another Poe adaptation in The Black Cat in 1934.
And this one is notable because it was the first
time they were like, hey, we got these stars. Why
don't we put them together in the same movie? Yeah.
And see what happens. See if we get some Chris Tucker,
Jackie Chan magic. And they put Bela Lugosi and Boris
Karloff together in this film for the very first time.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. I have not seen it. I was reading about it.
And it sounds pretty amazing. I saw somebody describe it
as one of the progenitors of psychological horror.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Okay. Have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I have not.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Okay. We'll watch it together then.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That Bride of Frankenstein you mentioned, the first one was
in 1935. And then along with that Mummy movie, The
Werewolf in London came about in 1935, even though the
werewolf thing didn't really get its legs until Lon Chaney Jr.
starred as the Wolfman in 1941. That's where it really
(21:52):
took off.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Its legs covered only in ripped short pants.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
And hair.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And yeah, Lon Chaney Jr., again, another Nepo baby, but
really made a name for himself, portraying the Wolfman and
some other scary people. And just like, you know, Boris
Karloff and Bela Lugosi, as they would kind of go
on and become part of pop culture, they would just
be tapped for like guest appearances or to play like
a spooky, scary character or something like that. I would
(22:21):
direct you no further than the Riff Treks, Hillbillies in
a Haunted House series. Episode where Lon Chaney Jr. plays
a big, scary guy along with John Carradine and I
think Basil Rathbone. Oh, man.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Oh, Basil Rathbone's great.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Yeah. So Lamley Jr. is running the studio, but not
for too long. He was pretty loose with the pocketbook. He,
you know, not in a huge way, but enough to
put them in financial peril, at least. But they say
that he might have raised the typical mid-level film budget
a From $ 200, 000 to $ 260, 000, which is like $ 4. 7 million
(22:59):
to $ 6. 1 million today, but it's sort of apples to
oranges as far as movie budgets are concerned.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
It's not like exactly one-to-one.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
But his big mistake was he made a really good
movie from Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Show Boat. also directed
by James Whale. It costs about 1.3 mil. And it
did well. It was a critical hit and a financial hit,
but they just spent too much money and they were
in arrears and in trouble.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And on top of that, Lamley Sr. had put the
studio up as collateral for a loan, almost like remind
you like of a, of some tycoon putting his studio
up in a poker game or something like that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
This is a little more legit than that. There was
a company called Standard Capital. Under the terms of the loan,
if the loan was not repaid in a timely manner,
they were able to buy Universal Studios for $ 5. 5 million,
Universal Pictures.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Lamley missed some payments. The loan was called in. And
Standard Capital bought the studio out from under the Lamley family.
And I guess Lamley Jr. took the blame because he
had potentially put the studio in these dire straits by
raising production costs. And he said, OK, it's me. I'll resign.
(24:19):
But Universal kept putting monster movies out, even without the
family that really kickstarted them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's right. I want to look up. I don't know
when they started the theater, their theater stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Look that up. Should we take a break and go look?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
All right. We'll take a break regardless. But I was
just teasing. I'm not going to go look right now.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Okay, so we're back. And Chuck still will not tell
me when the Lemleys opened their theater. He claims to
not know, but I think he knows as a matter
of fact. But speaking of theaters, this wasn't a Lemley theater.
This was the Regina Wiltshire Theater. Is that how you
say it, L.A. boy?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, Wiltshire maybe.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's right. Like in the British way.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
In 1938, so this is still in the midst of
monster movie fever. The Regina Wiltshire Theater was like, hey,
let's just start showing some of these smash hit monster
movies again. And they did. And they were smash hits
all over again. So the studios were like, we should
just keep making monster pictures.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And they were successful because people loved them, but also
because they were like, hey, Bella, how'd you like to
come to some of these screenings and appear?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And he said, what is the pay?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
And I guess they paid him enough to support his
very sad drug habit.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And he came out and they were smash hits.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
The Hollywood executives saw the writing on the wall and
they were like, hey, these things like they have legs. Maybe,
you know, it's not over for this franchise, these multiple franchises.
So they started cranking these things out again, like new movies.
And Bela Lugosi got more work again, thankfully. And he
was in five movies in 1939 again. including Son of
Frankenstein opposite Karloff. And then this kind of fed the.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
1940s, right?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah. One of the things that really characterized the 1940s
is what Universal called monster rallies. Not monster truck rallies,
just monster rallies, right?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, that was not lost on me.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And that was when there were crossovers between some of
their Universal monsters. So I think the first one was
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. That was 1943. 1944 was House
of Frankenstein, and that had not only Frankenstein and the Wolfman,
but also Dracula, the Hunchback, and the Mad Scientist all together.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
So Abbott and Costello say, hold my beer, because in 1948,
they did a comedy mashup, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
And what it should have been called was Abbott and
Costello meet Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Invisible Man,
because that all happened in that movie. And I think
they sort of had a little string of those sort
(27:32):
of comedy horror crossovers with those two guys.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Exactly. The plot of that movie, I looked it up.
The Wolfman warns Abbott that Dracula wants to use his
brain to make a new monster.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah. I mean, it writes itself.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
It's hard to keep something like this up, especially when
your monsters start appearing with comedy legends in their comedy movies. Like,
that's a pretty clear sign that, like, the thing is
going off the tracks. Jump the shark, as Fonzie would
later do, right?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And Bela Lugosi, again, started to hit on hard times.
He very, very famously, his last movie was Plan 9
from Outer Space, and he died during filming, which was
directed by Edward Jr. And I can't imagine him at
that age as anything but Martin Landau now because that
movie ruined me. Pull the string. Exactly. But a cool
(28:31):
little fact about Bela Lugosi was buried in his black
cape that he wore in Dracula.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And by the way, folks, if you haven't seen Ed
Wood from Tim Burton, it's well worth watching. Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And if you haven't heard the great Bauhaus song, Bela
Lugosi's Dead, go listen to that, too.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well worth listening. Do it all in one night. You
can do it, everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
You really could.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Pretty easy. Beautiful black and white, too, from Tim Burton,
by the way.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
It is, I think, his last great movie.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I would have to look, but I may agree with you.
I have a mixed relationship with Tim Burton, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I can tell you it ain't Dark Shadows.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
No, I wasn't even a big fish guy, and a
lot of people love that movie.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, I could see that having a cult following, for sure.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I did think the Beetlejuice sequel was, like, good. It
wasn't great, but it was good.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I thought it was eye-bleedingly bad.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, I thought it was good enough.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
But that's okay. I don't like it, and you do.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Hey, I feel that way.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I do, too.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh all right so you got my text that said
you know yeah okay.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Good i didn't think you're gonna bring it up but
yes i did and i'm trying to behave.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
All right 1950s roll around we get the creature from
the black lagoon which is it gets included in the
canon of monster movies for sure but it's a little
more science fiction than the rest Because it's, of course,
about a prehistoric humanoid that they discover in the Amazon.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
It was a 3D movie.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And I could have sworn we did a short stuff
on Millicent Patrick.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
We did not. But we did mention her before, though.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Did we, like, sing her praises as a very undersung
woman of Hollywood at a time when men were taking
credit for her great work?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, exactly. And I think it was in special effects, colon,
a short history episode.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
All right. That makes sense because I was wondering if
it was movie crush. But, yeah, the great Millicent Patrick
basically created the Gilman suit, which still looks amazing from
Creature of the Black Lagoon or from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Excuse me.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
But it was like I said, men took credit for
her great work. And in this case, it was Bud Westmore.
So thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
That produced two sequels. Revenge of the Creature is worth
mentioning because this is the first time Clint Eastwood is
on film. Yeah. Although he was just a bit part.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And then this was also the only actual classic Universal
Monster movie that Mystery Science Theater 3000 did. It was
also very noteworthy for being the first episode with Bill
Corbett as Crow.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Lots of MST3K stuff and Rift Trek stuff coming up
in this episode, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Why haven't we done a full episode on that?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
That's weird.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
All right.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
That's an oversight.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
All right, let's do it, Chuck, okay?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, we'll definitely do a Mystery Science Theory 3000 ep.
That'd be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, it would.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
All right, so 1960s are coming along. Things are changing
in the world. Things are changing culturally. Things are changing
in the media and creatively at Universal. So they're like,
you know what? Let's park it. Let's start doing some
more fun movies. Let's do some rom-coms. We love Doris Day.
We love Rock Hudson. The movies find new life on TV,
(31:57):
on reruns, with people like Elvira hosting these late night
horror movie watches. And they still remain even through the 60s,
even though they're not cranking these out, like very firmly
in the cultural zeitgeist.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I saw Vampyra was the first horror TV host
in 1954. Elvira came along in 1981. Sven Gulli's been
around for a really long time, too. And then you
mentioned it being all the way into the 60s as
part of the cultural zeitgeist. I think, Chuck, you're probably
referencing the Monster Mash, that song.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, I mean, that's one of the things for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Okay. That was Bobby Boris Pickett and the Crip Kickers
who originally recorded that. And he was doing an impression
of Boris Karloff, right? Right. I turned up evidence of
a ABC teen music show called Shindig from the 60s
that Boris Karloff appeared on. And not only did he
(32:57):
sing Monster Mash, he sang the Peppermint Twist.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This is what I was talking about, where these people
were so known to be like just creepy in pop culture.
They just appeared everywhere, especially starting in the 60s when
it really became campy and silly everywhere. That's when it
stopped being serious in any way, shape, or form. At
least people like Boris Karloff and, well, not Bela the
Ghost anymore, but they had just expanded, transcended beyond just
(33:27):
their status as universal movie horror stars. They were something
bigger now.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, totally, which is super cool.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Obviously, we have to mention How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
in which Boris Karloff lent his voice in 1966, but
three years before he passed away. Other film companies came
along to do different kind of wacky versions of these
universal monsters later. The Hammer Film Productions in the UK,
they did a mummy movie. They did The Curse of Frankenstein.
(33:57):
These were in color, and a lot of them starred
the greats. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, which, man, talk
about great, creepy acting.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Usually Christopher Lee was Dracula and Peter Cushing was Van
Helsing in any of the vampire movies. I also turned
up some other notable Hammer entries using Dracula. One was
the Satanic Rites of Dracula, where Dracula is doing his
thing in modern London in 1970s, early 70s. All right.
(34:28):
And then get this, The Legend of the Seven Vampires
in 1974 was a Dracula slash martial arts movie. It
was a co-production with the Shaw brothers, Run Run Shaw
and his brothers, the Hong Kong Kung Fu producers. They
made a crossover movie between martial artists and Dracula fighting.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
They should do that today. I want to see that one.
They should do it today. It'd be pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
You got some Western mashups with Circle Productions with Billy
the Kid versus Dracula and Jesse James meets Frankenstein's daughter,
not Frankenstein.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
This is in the mid-60s.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
And then when Blaxploitation comes along, we did a great episode,
I think, on Blaxploitation films. And I know we mentioned
Blackula from 1972 in that movie.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Sorry, in that podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I think it was Exploitation films in general, if I'm
not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh, I thought we did one on Blaxploitation. Was it
just a part of that one?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Uh-huh. Yeah, definitely. But that was a great, fun episode.
But I didn't remember that the backstory to Blackula is
that he's a centuries-old African prince who originally met Dracula
because he went to go ask him for his help
in ending the slave trade. And Dracula's like, how about
I turn you into a vampire instead? And he wakes
up in the 20th century, Blackula does.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Have you seen it? I don't think I've seen it.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, I've seen Blackula.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
How do you rate it?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I mean, it's good.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It's like I think any of those blaxploitation movies, you
just got to go into it within the right headspace
to enjoy it. It's like you can't compare it to like,
you know, some like modern film, like, you know, a
lot of that sort of. I mean, I think it
holds up in the way that blaxploitation movies hold. Sure.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Do you remember this? They came up before you, but
I'm sure they were still around. Do you remember the
Groovy Ghoulies?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Why does that sound familiar? It sounds familiar.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I think it was only on for a season in 1970,
but it was the Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula in like
a groovy band together in their adventures with all these
other like monsters that were in their orbit.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, I mean, there has to be some weird memory
seed in my brain because that does sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, for sure. And then also, I don't remember the
company that made it, but there was a company that
made models that you put together that were of universal
monster like scenes and settings like you you could do
frankenstein's laboratory or whatever but that was around the same
time too.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Wow i used to be a model kid i'm surprised
i didn't get into that.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I never had one of those either i usually was
putting airplanes together.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah i still i do a model every spring break now.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Do you do you sniff the glue sometimes.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That's for me to know and you to find out.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
We have to mention Young Frankenstein from the great Mel
Brooks in 1974.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And don't sleep on.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Frank Langella's Dracula from 1979 either. It's a little slow,
but like kind of a cool movie still.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It is.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It looks good, especially for it just it looks like
a good dark 1979 Dracula movie for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And Frank Langella is great. I was I waited on
his table one time in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
That's awesome. And how was he in real life?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
He's a nice guy. He ate steak for lunch and
left a good tip.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I loved him in The Ninth Gate, which is one
of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, he's great. I love Frank Langella.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Okay, so that's basically up to the 80s. As a
matter of fact, we just came right up to the
80s and kissed him on the shoulder because we stopped
at 1979. And the 80s were a huge time. turning
point really for all horror because the emphasis became really
heavy on slashers, right? They may or may not have
(38:23):
a supernatural bend to them, but they are definitely not
a Wolfman or Dracula or something like that. That became
kind of passe. And then in 1999, everything kind of
came roaring back for the universal monsters because the mummy
was put out with Billy Zane and Brendan Fraser and
Rachel Weisz and And it was a huge out of
(38:45):
nowhere smash hit.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, it was a big hit. And everyone's kind of like,
are these things back? There was a Van Helsing movie
that was not good in 2004. I don't remember it
being not good.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
It was just so-so. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
I think it was pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Well, I saw it in theater. So that was 20
years ago. I don't remember, I guess. Or maybe I
liked it and you didn't like it and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Look at us.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
There was a Wolfman movie in 2010. Again, not a
big thing hit wise. I think Jack Nicholson was in
the movie Wolf, but that was less universal monster than
just like a guy who turns into a wolf.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Like sexy wolf, right? He likes to. sleep with the ladies.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, well, you know, it was Jack.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
The wolf man, though, was Benicio Del Toro, and he
was really trying, and apparently it didn't do well.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of... Things weren't looking good.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They had, once the Marvel Cinematic Universe came out, they
had big plans in the 2010s to do the Dark Universe, which...
I mean, it would have been super cool, I think.
They were going to have Johnny Depp. I remember reading
about this. Johnny Depp was going to be the Invisible Man.
Angelina Jolie was going to be the Bride. Javier Bardem
was going to be the Monster from Frankenstein. And I
(40:02):
was super stoked at reviving the monsters. But Tom Cruise
put out the 2017 Mummy, which was going to be
sort of the kickoff.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And it was a big flop. And they just scrapped
the whole idea.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, just immediately. And all the ones that they already
had in production and lying to be part of this,
they're like, these are standalones from now on.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
And they have. I mean, there's been some. Probably the
highlight of the last 10 or 15 years was The
Invisible Man. that Jason Blum, I think, directed with Elizabeth Moss.
And it's become, I haven't seen it, but I know
that it's very well regarded, especially for being almost an
indie movie as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, it was really good.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And they sort of look at it through the lens
of domestic violence starring Elizabeth Moss. And, you know, she
stands her ground. So it's a bit of a like
a rallying cry, I guess.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And then probably I said the high point was Invisible Man.
I know, like I said, it's very well regarded. I
should take that back. I think The Shape of Water
is probably the high point of the last like 10
or so years as far as Universal Monsters go. I
didn't see that one either, but I know that it
was everybody was crazy for that movie.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, I did not care for it, but it was
a big, big hit and a big critical hit. Guillermo
del Toro is trying to revive all these monsters because
he did the Frankenstein movie this past year, too, that
I also didn't love that one.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
But it was it was OK.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah. And just for those not in the know, Shape
of Water was a tale of the creature from the
Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah. A take on that.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
That's what I was going for. Thanks, man.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
You got anything else on Universal Monsters?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Go out and see some of these old movies, though.
If you think you can't sit through a movie from
the 1930s, I bet you'd be surprised. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
I strongly suggest you start with The Invisible Man.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Okay. Well, since we just agreed on that and we
just kicked off the spookiest month in style with this episode,
I think we can treat ourselves to Listener Mail.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
This is about reggae. It's kind of a cool little email.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Hey, guys, I really enjoyed the August 6th episode on
reggae music. Early in the episode, you mentioned the mobile
discos known as sound systems. Now they help lead to
the development of toasting. That brought back a special connection
for me because my paternal grandfather started a sound system
called Maritone Music in the 1950s, and it recently celebrated
its 75th anniversary. Maritone Music has the distinction of being
(42:40):
the longest continuous sound system in Jamaica. And while Maritone
music has passed its peak of the years of the
70s and 80s, it still draws crowds and remains an
important part of Jamaica's musical history.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Thanks for all you do and keep me company over
the years, guys. I've truly enjoyed listening. And that is
from Roger Blake.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Roger, that was a great email. I was not expecting
that one.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I mean, I got to look up Maritone music and
find out a little bit more about this.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Maybe we'll even take a trip down to check it out.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Well, if you want to be like Roger and let
us know something awesome that your ancestor did, we love
to hear about that kind of thing. They're seriously interesting
basically every time. You can send it in an email
to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts
are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and Jerry Gould-Roland is here with us, too. And this
is Stuff You Should Know, kicking off the great month
of October.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right. One of our favorite months. I just watched
Backrooms last night. Didn't you tell me to see that?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You know, I thought it was kind of cool while
I was watching it.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But it's one of those movies where after when I
thought about it, I really didn't like it very much.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What didn't you like about it?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It ended up like I liked it. I thought it
was cool looking and like had a lot of cool stuff.
But afterward, I was like, it felt like just some
kid had a bunch of cool ideas that didn't end
up making a movie. And then when I read the
background of the movie, I was like, oh, that's kind
of exactly what it was.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, I guess I didn't take it like that at all.
I just enjoyed it on its face. I wasn't aware
of like the mythology behind it and everything like that,
which apparently it built on pretty well.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But yeah, I just liked it as it was, I think.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I think it felt like he was like, it'd be
cool if I did this and this would be cool
and this would be cool.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And if I introduced this agency, that'd be cool. And
then like none of that went anywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And so I was kind of like, wait a minute,
you can't just throw a bunch of cool things in
a movie and have it be a movie kid.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I don't, I disagree that that's what he did.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I mean, a lot of people liked it. So I'm, I'm, well,
I don't know about the minority because a lot of
people felt like I did too. So I think it's
devices what they say.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's crazy. It's such a neat movie. Everybody just needs
to relax and enjoy a neat movie.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Just like everything you like.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Exactly. It drives me bananas. Yeah. So we are talking
about movies in particular, which I guess is why you
brought up Back Rooms.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I got a couple of movies to shout out now
that I think about it. Have you seen Undertone? It's
a horror movie about a podcaster. So it's really like
right up your alley. I finally saw Martyrs, which is
an amazing movie that, yeah, that's a really amazing movie.
And then I also saw The Devil's Bath. Okay. I
(02:21):
would not necessarily recommend that to everybody. It's a very
dark movie and it's in German and it's subtitled and
it's set in the middle of the 18th century in
rural Germany.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Tough watch?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Not in the way that you would think. It's more
just like some of the gut punches that come through
are really hard gut punches. But if you're into like
really disturbing, dark, psychological horror, I would recommend it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
All right.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay. That sounds great. You want to talk about the uni-monsters?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, we're talking about the universal monsters, and we should
probably talk about horror films in general, because a lot
of people point to the universal monster movies starting in
the 1930s as essentially kicking off at least monster movies,
if not the horror genre itself. And there were other
horror movies that came first, but it wasn't until the 20s,
(03:15):
pre-universal admittedly, that people started like, trying to scare audiences,
hence the beginning of horror movies.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah. Specifically, the cabinet of Dr.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Caligari and Nosferatu in the early 1920s kind of got
that going. But like you said, it was really the
1930s when we got Draculas and Frankensteins and mummies and
wolf men and stuff like that, that things really kicked off.
And we have a family to thank for that. If
you I don't know if these theaters are still there.
I really hope they are. I'm sure they're still there.
(03:48):
I don't know if they have been taken over by
a different name. But the Lamley theaters in Los Angeles
were always these great sort of usually independently minded or,
you know, showing maybe not the first run big hits
of the day. And there were a few Lamley theaters
and they come from the Lamley family, which is where
(04:08):
Universal Studios comes from. A German immigrant in 1906 named
Carl Lamley. opened a Nickelodeon in Chicago, and a few
years later opened up the Independent Motion Picture Company, and
then merged with a few other companies to create Universal
Pictures in 1912.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, and then 1915, they opened a 230-acre studio in
Los Angeles. So in nine years, that guy went from
opening a Nickelodeon to starting a major motion picture company.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, well, not major yet because the majors were the
big five at the time. Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, RKO
and Lowe's. It's crazy to think about Universal and Columbia
being and United Artists being the upstarts. But that's what
they were in the early 1900s film business.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So, yeah, it was it was actually Lemley's son who
really put Universal on the map, as we'll see. But
Lemley Sr. had a part to play in that. He
ended up. basically starting the star system in the movie
industry by taking one actress, Florence Lawrence. Good Lord, the
(05:17):
Lemley family and Florence Lawrence together at last. And he
started a publicity campaign that focused on her. And this
was new because up to that point, it was like actor, actor,
I don't care who you are. I'm here for the story.
He made Florence Lawrence like the point to go see
a movie. And he did it in fairly dastardly, amusing fashion.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, he created a fake story about her dying in
a car crash and then blamed her former employer, Biograph,
for creating that fake story to begin with because they
were mad that they lost her to Universal. So this
created a lot of publicity buzz and, you know, kind
of helped create that star system.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Sure. And it's just such a great indicator of like
how kind of rogue do yourself underground the early days
of film were yeah especially when you compare it to
how the whole industry is today it's neat to just
think of it as created by initially by artists who
were dedicated to their art and were coming up with
(06:23):
neat innovative things to do is really well portrayed in
the shadow of the vampire with john malkovich where they're
making nosferatu Yeah, there are.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Quite a few movies about this era because I think
it's just so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah. But moving on, getting back to the monster stuff,
Universal had already done a couple of monster pictures that are,
depending on who you ask, part of the Universal monster canon.
The first one is pretty highly debatable. Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde came out in 1913. It was the first universal
(06:57):
monster movie of any kind. But it was 26 minutes long.
So a lot of people are like, that's not feature length.
I don't know if we can count that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
1920s, you got The Hunchback of Notre Dame and then
The Phantom of the Opera two years later in 1925.
These are noteworthy because Lon Chaney Sr., the man of
a thousand faces starred in these and the Chaney family
would figure heavily in his son's life for the Universal
Monster series.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, Lon Chaney Sr. is a really interesting guy in
and of himself. He was in 157 or 150 films
from the 20s to the 30s. And he did his
own makeup, right? He was known as the man of
a thousand faces. And he was such an expert on
makeup that he wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for makeup.
And there was a joke from the 20s. It was,
(07:49):
don't step on that spider. It might be Lon Chaney.
That's how good he was considered in getting into weird
different characters.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
That's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I thought so too.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
All right, so the studio is putting out spooky movies
at this point. They're in haunted mansions sometimes. They're in
strange places. This is between like 25 and 30 when
the talkies are happening. And then in 1931 when Carl
Lamley Jr., I think he's taken over a couple of
years by this point. He started as head of production
(08:20):
in 1928 at just 21 years old and then won
an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front. Um,
even though they were like, this is a Nepo baby kid, uh, he,
he really was putting out some pretty good movies. And
as far as the monsters cannon goes, hit it out
of the park, out of the gate with Dracula.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah. From 1931, which turned out to be a really
big year for monster movies. Um, it kicked off with
Dracula and Valentine's day, 1931, and it was marketed as
a romance, which it is. It's a tragic romance in
a lot of ways. And Nosferatu, the actual 1920s film
starring Max Schreck, was not authorized by Bram Stoker's estate.
(09:04):
So it wasn't based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was
Nosferatu instead. This was based on Bram Stoker's version, but
they adapted it from a stage play. And they hired
a director named Todd Browning, who made what I think
is one of the great revenge movies of all time, Freaks,
in 1932. But this was the year before he was
(09:26):
directing Dracula.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We didn't do a whole episode on Freaks, but we
mentioned it, I guess, in our– we did an episode
about that.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
About Freak Shows.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, Freak Shows. I didn't know how to say it
in 2026.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I think that's still how they say it.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So Todd 1D Browning is a big shot director at
this point. He's making spooky movies. He's working with Lon
Chaney Sr., It probably would have been Lon Chaney Sr.
as Dracula, but he died in 1930 of bronchial cancer.
So he looked around and he said, who can I
pick to be Dracula?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Who, who, who?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And this scary looking Hungarian said, why don't you pick me?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah. So Bela Lugosi, every single Dracula idea or impression
like you just did That all comes from Bela Lugosi's
1931 performance. And the reason they picked him is, remember,
this was adapted from the stage adaptation. And Bela Lugosi
had already made a name for himself starring in the
stage adaptation on Broadway. They were like, we think you
(10:33):
got the chops for this. And it was a very
good casting decision because I watched it last night for
the first time. And he does an astounding job.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It's great. And by chops, you mean literal fangs.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So what did you think of it, watching it today?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Do you ever watch old, old movies like that?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Sometimes. So last night, for work, which is pretty awesome,
I watched Dracula. I watched The Bride of Frankenstein. And
I watched The Invisible Man. All three for the first time.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The Invisible Man is good.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yes. So was The Bride of Frankenstein. I think it
was the best of the bunch.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It made me more open to watching movies. old films
as well. Yeah. They were amazingly done, like the lighting,
the direction, the shots, like all this stuff, but also
the storytelling. It was really, it sucks you in. And
if you look at the runtimes of these things, they're
just barely over an hour.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And they're still getting everything across in beautiful fashion. So, yeah,
there's a couple of movies that came up in this
research that I want to go watch now. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I mean, if you watch movies from the 30s, that
black and white, if you have like a good TV,
it still looks incredible. It's not like this old grainy,
like weird looking thing. Like it is sharp and it
looks amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
But you want to put your motion smoothing on your
TV to make sure you can enjoy it to its
maximum potential. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
All right, so Lugosi is doing his thing.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
In the 1930s when the talkies were starting to become
really popular and they didn't have other film industries yet,
it was kind of like Hollywood was the thing. They
would oftentimes shoot the same movie in a different language,
sometimes multiple languages.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And that was the case with Dracula.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Like when they were shooting Dracula on the uni lot
during the day, they were– by the way, I keep
saying that.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's obnoxious.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
That's what– when I worked out there, that's what everyone
called it. who worked in the film business, so I'm
not trying to be like, that was an insider, but
it's just ingrained in me.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It hasn't come across as obnoxious at all.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, good. So the uni lot, everybody.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
They were shooting Dracula during the day, and then at
night they had a completely separate crew and cast and
director and everything shooting a Spanish version of Dracula. Its director,
George Melford, was American, so didn't speak Spanish, had a translator,
and a lot of people are like, This version's better, actually,
because they saw what was going on during the day
and improved on it at night.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Exactly. Yeah, I think it has a longer runtime, too,
because when they re-released Dracula a few years after its premiere,
the Hays Code existed now, which was censorship, so they
had to cut it down even further. And the Spanish
version didn't have to undergo that same thing. So I've
not seen that one, but I can imagine it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, I'd like to check it out. All right, so
Dracula was a big hit. I promised we were going
to introduce you to a little guy named Frank.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I lied. It's actually a big guy named Frank. Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
This was released Thanksgiving 1931, directed by the great James Whale.
He was a Brit. I mentioned other movies made about
this era. There's a great, great film called Gods and
Monsters about the final days of James Whale that I
highly recommend.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Oh, I didn't know that was about him.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I noticed there's a huge difference, you can tell, between
Todd Browning's Dracula, the way that's directed, and the way
that The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, which
James Whale did both of those, are directed. And I'm much— like,
I love freaks, but I'm now a big James Whale fan.
He was amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Oh, nice. You should check out Gods and Monsters.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I will.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Good money.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I will.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So Frankenstein adapted also from a stage play. And, you know,
like you said, he had a lot of flair as
a director, right? I think he was influenced by like
German cinema at the time, which, you know, the time
was probably a little more interesting than what was going
on in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So lots of like really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And especially in The Invisible Man, which we'll talk about,
like that invisible, like for the 1930s, the little trick
he did to make him seem invisible, like still holds
up pretty well, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I agree. I was very impressed by it. There's only
a couple of times where you're like, the thing he's
holding looks a little invisible too. But for the most part,
it was, I imagine it just knocked everybody's socks off
back then if it still holds up today. Yeah. But
that was a, it was a really cool, interesting movie.
And it did kind of go to show just what
(15:13):
this studio was capable of now and the kind of
things they were doing. And this is all pretty quick, right?
I think The Invisible Man just came out two years
after their first movie, Dracula. So they were gaining by
leaps and bounds very quickly.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah, and establishing sort of the tropes or the standby
stuff that these movies would be known for forevermore, like
a mad scientist lab, a hunchback assistant.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Mm-hmm. It was Fritz in the first one.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Igor came along a little bit later, I think in
1939 with Son of Frankenstein. But this Frankenstein played by
Boris Karloff was only grunted.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
It wasn't like the book version, Mary Shelley's version.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yes. Until they made The Bride of Frankenstein. Have you
seen that one? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Okay. Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
In this one, the monster learns to talk. And Boris Karloff,
who played Frankenstein and made his career, started his career
by playing Frankenstein, he was like, I don't think we
should have let the monster learn to talk. Because he's
like friend good to start and ends up like telling Dr. Frankenstein,
(16:24):
like you can sleep after you're done working by the
end of the movie. They also teach him to smoke
and drink.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Which is kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Funny to see. And I saw that it's basically described
by a lot of people as campy, like James Whale
intentionally made The Bride of Frankenstein a little sillier than
the original Frankenstein was, and that it kind of comes across.
And that also Dr. Pretorius, who's the He's even more
(16:54):
mad than Dr. Frankenstein. He's the real bad guy of
this movie, Bride of Frankenstein, that he's a clearly gay
or queer character, I guess, is how film buffs put
it today. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Well, James Whale was gay. So the gay community in
camp maybe have always gone hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You know?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Have you seen The Bride, the latest Maggie Gyllenhaal's film?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I have, but without sound. I watched it over someone's
shoulder on an airplane. And it looks pretty good.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So you really saw it, huh?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
It looks good. You know what's funny, though? I noticed
there's a conversation between Dr. Pretorius and Frankenstein's monster in
a crypt. And they're talking basically about how You know,
the dead are good. The living are bad. And I
think that's kind of like the premise of The Bride,
(17:53):
isn't it?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah. I mean, I didn't think it was that great.
I like it was a big swing.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
And I like I love that she made this movie
and that the studio put money behind her to make
this kind of weird movie. Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But a lot of this stuff didn't work for me, unfortunately,
is my review.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Hey, we've always got Secretary.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Man, that's a good movie. All right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well, speaking of movies, let's talk about a few more
of these monster movies because they start churning these things
out in the 1930s because they realized they had an
audience that was rabid for this spooky stuff. And so
the first mummy movie came about in 1932. Keep in mind,
this is just about 10 years later after King Tutankhamen's
tomb had been opened. So, you know, we've talked before
(18:39):
about Egypt fever striking the United States, and that was
why they released the mummy. But this was not yet
The bandage-wrapped mummy monster at this point.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That would come later.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
No, he was a very smart, very evil Egyptian high
priest that was reborn, reanimated, I guess, into modern times,
wearing a fez.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's right. Boris Karloff again in this case.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yes. And it's hard to understate how big a star
Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and some of the supporting actors
became from these movies, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they
were also, they were knocking them out. And some of
them you can definitely tell this thing was shot in
two weeks. Others, it's amazing what they were able to
(19:24):
do over very short periods of time and at first
fairly limited budgets. But these movies like were really coming
on strong. I think Frankenstein ended up being the top
grossing movie of 1931, not only beating out Dracula, but
beating out Charlie Chaplin's City Lights too. So people had
an appetite for this like right out of the gate.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
There was one in 1932, a Poe, and we'll see,
Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Murders of the Rue Morgue with
Bela Lugosi.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Again, in 1932, there was White Zombie, which is where
obviously where the Rob Zombie got his band name from.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Not an official Universal movie, but it was an independent
shot on the Universal Stages. And it did have Bela Lugosi,
so it's worth mentioning.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yes, and it also gave us a lot of the
tropes about essentially like a person who has been resurrected
from the dead and is now under the spell of
a magician of some sort who uses them to carry
out evil deeds. Not brain-eating, not walking, shambling around collectively,
or even more terrifying, running at top speed at you.
(20:33):
But the funny thing is it was based on a
book called The Magic Island. By W.B. Seabrook, which is
a nonfiction travel log. So I guess I don't know
if those were presented as fact or what, but that's
what the movie was based on. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
So you're Invisible Man that you saw and loved and
that I loved, 1933, based on the H.G.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Wells novel.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
You had another Poe adaptation in The Black Cat in 1934.
And this one is notable because it was the first
time they were like, hey, we got these stars. Why
don't we put them together in the same movie? Yeah.
And see what happens. See if we get some Chris Tucker,
Jackie Chan magic. And they put Bela Lugosi and Boris
Karloff together in this film for the very first time.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. I have not seen it. I was reading about it.
And it sounds pretty amazing. I saw somebody describe it
as one of the progenitors of psychological horror.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Okay. Have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I have not.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Okay. We'll watch it together then.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That Bride of Frankenstein you mentioned, the first one was
in 1935. And then along with that Mummy movie, The
Werewolf in London came about in 1935, even though the
werewolf thing didn't really get its legs until Lon Chaney Jr.
starred as the Wolfman in 1941. That's where it really
(21:52):
took off.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Its legs covered only in ripped short pants.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
And hair.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And yeah, Lon Chaney Jr., again, another Nepo baby, but
really made a name for himself, portraying the Wolfman and
some other scary people. And just like, you know, Boris
Karloff and Bela Lugosi, as they would kind of go
on and become part of pop culture, they would just
be tapped for like guest appearances or to play like
a spooky, scary character or something like that. I would
(22:21):
direct you no further than the Riff Treks, Hillbillies in
a Haunted House series. Episode where Lon Chaney Jr. plays
a big, scary guy along with John Carradine and I
think Basil Rathbone. Oh, man.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Oh, Basil Rathbone's great.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Yeah. So Lamley Jr. is running the studio, but not
for too long. He was pretty loose with the pocketbook. He,
you know, not in a huge way, but enough to
put them in financial peril, at least. But they say
that he might have raised the typical mid-level film budget
a From $ 200, 000 to $ 260, 000, which is like $ 4. 7 million
(22:59):
to $ 6. 1 million today, but it's sort of apples to
oranges as far as movie budgets are concerned.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
It's not like exactly one-to-one.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
But his big mistake was he made a really good
movie from Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Show Boat. also directed
by James Whale. It costs about 1.3 mil. And it
did well. It was a critical hit and a financial hit,
but they just spent too much money and they were
in arrears and in trouble.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And on top of that, Lamley Sr. had put the
studio up as collateral for a loan, almost like remind
you like of a, of some tycoon putting his studio
up in a poker game or something like that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
This is a little more legit than that. There was
a company called Standard Capital. Under the terms of the loan,
if the loan was not repaid in a timely manner,
they were able to buy Universal Studios for $ 5. 5 million,
Universal Pictures.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Lamley missed some payments. The loan was called in. And
Standard Capital bought the studio out from under the Lamley family.
And I guess Lamley Jr. took the blame because he
had potentially put the studio in these dire straits by
raising production costs. And he said, OK, it's me. I'll resign.
(24:19):
But Universal kept putting monster movies out, even without the
family that really kickstarted them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's right. I want to look up. I don't know
when they started the theater, their theater stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Look that up. Should we take a break and go look?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
All right. We'll take a break regardless. But I was
just teasing. I'm not going to go look right now.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Okay, so we're back. And Chuck still will not tell
me when the Lemleys opened their theater. He claims to
not know, but I think he knows as a matter
of fact. But speaking of theaters, this wasn't a Lemley theater.
This was the Regina Wiltshire Theater. Is that how you
say it, L.A. boy?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, Wiltshire maybe.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's right. Like in the British way.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
In 1938, so this is still in the midst of
monster movie fever. The Regina Wiltshire Theater was like, hey,
let's just start showing some of these smash hit monster
movies again. And they did. And they were smash hits
all over again. So the studios were like, we should
just keep making monster pictures.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And they were successful because people loved them, but also
because they were like, hey, Bella, how'd you like to
come to some of these screenings and appear?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And he said, what is the pay?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
And I guess they paid him enough to support his
very sad drug habit.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And he came out and they were smash hits.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
The Hollywood executives saw the writing on the wall and
they were like, hey, these things like they have legs. Maybe,
you know, it's not over for this franchise, these multiple franchises.
So they started cranking these things out again, like new movies.
And Bela Lugosi got more work again, thankfully. And he
was in five movies in 1939 again. including Son of
Frankenstein opposite Karloff. And then this kind of fed the.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
1940s, right?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah. One of the things that really characterized the 1940s
is what Universal called monster rallies. Not monster truck rallies,
just monster rallies, right?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, that was not lost on me.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And that was when there were crossovers between some of
their Universal monsters. So I think the first one was
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. That was 1943. 1944 was House
of Frankenstein, and that had not only Frankenstein and the Wolfman,
but also Dracula, the Hunchback, and the Mad Scientist all together.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
So Abbott and Costello say, hold my beer, because in 1948,
they did a comedy mashup, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
And what it should have been called was Abbott and
Costello meet Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Invisible Man,
because that all happened in that movie. And I think
they sort of had a little string of those sort
(27:32):
of comedy horror crossovers with those two guys.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Exactly. The plot of that movie, I looked it up.
The Wolfman warns Abbott that Dracula wants to use his
brain to make a new monster.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah. I mean, it writes itself.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
It's hard to keep something like this up, especially when
your monsters start appearing with comedy legends in their comedy movies. Like,
that's a pretty clear sign that, like, the thing is
going off the tracks. Jump the shark, as Fonzie would
later do, right?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And Bela Lugosi, again, started to hit on hard times.
He very, very famously, his last movie was Plan 9
from Outer Space, and he died during filming, which was
directed by Edward Jr. And I can't imagine him at
that age as anything but Martin Landau now because that
movie ruined me. Pull the string. Exactly. But a cool
(28:31):
little fact about Bela Lugosi was buried in his black
cape that he wore in Dracula.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And by the way, folks, if you haven't seen Ed
Wood from Tim Burton, it's well worth watching. Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And if you haven't heard the great Bauhaus song, Bela
Lugosi's Dead, go listen to that, too.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well worth listening. Do it all in one night. You
can do it, everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
You really could.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Pretty easy. Beautiful black and white, too, from Tim Burton,
by the way.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
It is, I think, his last great movie.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I would have to look, but I may agree with you.
I have a mixed relationship with Tim Burton, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I can tell you it ain't Dark Shadows.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
No, I wasn't even a big fish guy, and a
lot of people love that movie.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, I could see that having a cult following, for sure.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I did think the Beetlejuice sequel was, like, good. It
wasn't great, but it was good.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I thought it was eye-bleedingly bad.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, I thought it was good enough.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
But that's okay. I don't like it, and you do.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Hey, I feel that way.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I do, too.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh all right so you got my text that said
you know yeah okay.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Good i didn't think you're gonna bring it up but
yes i did and i'm trying to behave.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
All right 1950s roll around we get the creature from
the black lagoon which is it gets included in the
canon of monster movies for sure but it's a little
more science fiction than the rest Because it's, of course,
about a prehistoric humanoid that they discover in the Amazon.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
It was a 3D movie.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And I could have sworn we did a short stuff
on Millicent Patrick.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
We did not. But we did mention her before, though.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Did we, like, sing her praises as a very undersung
woman of Hollywood at a time when men were taking
credit for her great work?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, exactly. And I think it was in special effects, colon,
a short history episode.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
All right. That makes sense because I was wondering if
it was movie crush. But, yeah, the great Millicent Patrick
basically created the Gilman suit, which still looks amazing from
Creature of the Black Lagoon or from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Excuse me.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
But it was like I said, men took credit for
her great work. And in this case, it was Bud Westmore.
So thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
That produced two sequels. Revenge of the Creature is worth
mentioning because this is the first time Clint Eastwood is
on film. Yeah. Although he was just a bit part.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And then this was also the only actual classic Universal
Monster movie that Mystery Science Theater 3000 did. It was
also very noteworthy for being the first episode with Bill
Corbett as Crow.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Lots of MST3K stuff and Rift Trek stuff coming up
in this episode, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Why haven't we done a full episode on that?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
That's weird.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
All right.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
That's an oversight.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
All right, let's do it, Chuck, okay?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, we'll definitely do a Mystery Science Theory 3000 ep.
That'd be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, it would.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
All right, so 1960s are coming along. Things are changing
in the world. Things are changing culturally. Things are changing
in the media and creatively at Universal. So they're like,
you know what? Let's park it. Let's start doing some
more fun movies. Let's do some rom-coms. We love Doris Day.
We love Rock Hudson. The movies find new life on TV,
(31:57):
on reruns, with people like Elvira hosting these late night
horror movie watches. And they still remain even through the 60s,
even though they're not cranking these out, like very firmly
in the cultural zeitgeist.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I saw Vampyra was the first horror TV host
in 1954. Elvira came along in 1981. Sven Gulli's been
around for a really long time, too. And then you
mentioned it being all the way into the 60s as
part of the cultural zeitgeist. I think, Chuck, you're probably
referencing the Monster Mash, that song.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, I mean, that's one of the things for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Okay. That was Bobby Boris Pickett and the Crip Kickers
who originally recorded that. And he was doing an impression
of Boris Karloff, right? Right. I turned up evidence of
a ABC teen music show called Shindig from the 60s
that Boris Karloff appeared on. And not only did he
(32:57):
sing Monster Mash, he sang the Peppermint Twist.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This is what I was talking about, where these people
were so known to be like just creepy in pop culture.
They just appeared everywhere, especially starting in the 60s when
it really became campy and silly everywhere. That's when it
stopped being serious in any way, shape, or form. At
least people like Boris Karloff and, well, not Bela the
Ghost anymore, but they had just expanded, transcended beyond just
(33:27):
their status as universal movie horror stars. They were something
bigger now.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, totally, which is super cool.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Obviously, we have to mention How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
in which Boris Karloff lent his voice in 1966, but
three years before he passed away. Other film companies came
along to do different kind of wacky versions of these
universal monsters later. The Hammer Film Productions in the UK,
they did a mummy movie. They did The Curse of Frankenstein.
(33:57):
These were in color, and a lot of them starred
the greats. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, which, man, talk
about great, creepy acting.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Usually Christopher Lee was Dracula and Peter Cushing was Van
Helsing in any of the vampire movies. I also turned
up some other notable Hammer entries using Dracula. One was
the Satanic Rites of Dracula, where Dracula is doing his
thing in modern London in 1970s, early 70s. All right.
(34:28):
And then get this, The Legend of the Seven Vampires
in 1974 was a Dracula slash martial arts movie. It
was a co-production with the Shaw brothers, Run Run Shaw
and his brothers, the Hong Kong Kung Fu producers. They
made a crossover movie between martial artists and Dracula fighting.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
They should do that today. I want to see that one.
They should do it today. It'd be pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
You got some Western mashups with Circle Productions with Billy
the Kid versus Dracula and Jesse James meets Frankenstein's daughter,
not Frankenstein.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
This is in the mid-60s.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
And then when Blaxploitation comes along, we did a great episode,
I think, on Blaxploitation films. And I know we mentioned
Blackula from 1972 in that movie.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Sorry, in that podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I think it was Exploitation films in general, if I'm
not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh, I thought we did one on Blaxploitation. Was it
just a part of that one?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Uh-huh. Yeah, definitely. But that was a great, fun episode.
But I didn't remember that the backstory to Blackula is
that he's a centuries-old African prince who originally met Dracula
because he went to go ask him for his help
in ending the slave trade. And Dracula's like, how about
I turn you into a vampire instead? And he wakes
up in the 20th century, Blackula does.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Have you seen it? I don't think I've seen it.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, I've seen Blackula.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
How do you rate it?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I mean, it's good.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It's like I think any of those blaxploitation movies, you
just got to go into it within the right headspace
to enjoy it. It's like you can't compare it to like,
you know, some like modern film, like, you know, a
lot of that sort of. I mean, I think it
holds up in the way that blaxploitation movies hold. Sure.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Do you remember this? They came up before you, but
I'm sure they were still around. Do you remember the
Groovy Ghoulies?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Why does that sound familiar? It sounds familiar.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I think it was only on for a season in 1970,
but it was the Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula in like
a groovy band together in their adventures with all these
other like monsters that were in their orbit.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, I mean, there has to be some weird memory
seed in my brain because that does sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, for sure. And then also, I don't remember the
company that made it, but there was a company that
made models that you put together that were of universal
monster like scenes and settings like you you could do
frankenstein's laboratory or whatever but that was around the same
time too.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Wow i used to be a model kid i'm surprised
i didn't get into that.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I never had one of those either i usually was
putting airplanes together.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah i still i do a model every spring break now.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Do you do you sniff the glue sometimes.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That's for me to know and you to find out.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
We have to mention Young Frankenstein from the great Mel
Brooks in 1974.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And don't sleep on.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Frank Langella's Dracula from 1979 either. It's a little slow,
but like kind of a cool movie still.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It is.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It looks good, especially for it just it looks like
a good dark 1979 Dracula movie for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And Frank Langella is great. I was I waited on
his table one time in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
That's awesome. And how was he in real life?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
He's a nice guy. He ate steak for lunch and
left a good tip.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I loved him in The Ninth Gate, which is one
of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, he's great. I love Frank Langella.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Okay, so that's basically up to the 80s. As a
matter of fact, we just came right up to the
80s and kissed him on the shoulder because we stopped
at 1979. And the 80s were a huge time. turning
point really for all horror because the emphasis became really
heavy on slashers, right? They may or may not have
(38:23):
a supernatural bend to them, but they are definitely not
a Wolfman or Dracula or something like that. That became
kind of passe. And then in 1999, everything kind of
came roaring back for the universal monsters because the mummy
was put out with Billy Zane and Brendan Fraser and
Rachel Weisz and And it was a huge out of
(38:45):
nowhere smash hit.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, it was a big hit. And everyone's kind of like,
are these things back? There was a Van Helsing movie
that was not good in 2004. I don't remember it
being not good.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
It was just so-so. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
I think it was pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Well, I saw it in theater. So that was 20
years ago. I don't remember, I guess. Or maybe I
liked it and you didn't like it and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Look at us.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
There was a Wolfman movie in 2010. Again, not a
big thing hit wise. I think Jack Nicholson was in
the movie Wolf, but that was less universal monster than
just like a guy who turns into a wolf.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Like sexy wolf, right? He likes to. sleep with the ladies.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, well, you know, it was Jack.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
The wolf man, though, was Benicio Del Toro, and he
was really trying, and apparently it didn't do well.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of... Things weren't looking good.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They had, once the Marvel Cinematic Universe came out, they
had big plans in the 2010s to do the Dark Universe, which...
I mean, it would have been super cool, I think.
They were going to have Johnny Depp. I remember reading
about this. Johnny Depp was going to be the Invisible Man.
Angelina Jolie was going to be the Bride. Javier Bardem
was going to be the Monster from Frankenstein. And I
(40:02):
was super stoked at reviving the monsters. But Tom Cruise
put out the 2017 Mummy, which was going to be
sort of the kickoff.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And it was a big flop. And they just scrapped
the whole idea.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, just immediately. And all the ones that they already
had in production and lying to be part of this,
they're like, these are standalones from now on.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
And they have. I mean, there's been some. Probably the
highlight of the last 10 or 15 years was The
Invisible Man. that Jason Blum, I think, directed with Elizabeth Moss.
And it's become, I haven't seen it, but I know
that it's very well regarded, especially for being almost an
indie movie as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, it was really good.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And they sort of look at it through the lens
of domestic violence starring Elizabeth Moss. And, you know, she
stands her ground. So it's a bit of a like
a rallying cry, I guess.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And then probably I said the high point was Invisible Man.
I know, like I said, it's very well regarded. I
should take that back. I think The Shape of Water
is probably the high point of the last like 10
or so years as far as Universal Monsters go. I
didn't see that one either, but I know that it
was everybody was crazy for that movie.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, I did not care for it, but it was
a big, big hit and a big critical hit. Guillermo
del Toro is trying to revive all these monsters because
he did the Frankenstein movie this past year, too, that
I also didn't love that one.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
But it was it was OK.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah. And just for those not in the know, Shape
of Water was a tale of the creature from the
Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah. A take on that.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
That's what I was going for. Thanks, man.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
You got anything else on Universal Monsters?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Go out and see some of these old movies, though.
If you think you can't sit through a movie from
the 1930s, I bet you'd be surprised. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
I strongly suggest you start with The Invisible Man.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Okay. Well, since we just agreed on that and we
just kicked off the spookiest month in style with this episode,
I think we can treat ourselves to Listener Mail.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
This is about reggae. It's kind of a cool little email.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Hey, guys, I really enjoyed the August 6th episode on
reggae music. Early in the episode, you mentioned the mobile
discos known as sound systems. Now they help lead to
the development of toasting. That brought back a special connection
for me because my paternal grandfather started a sound system
called Maritone Music in the 1950s, and it recently celebrated
its 75th anniversary. Maritone Music has the distinction of being
(42:40):
the longest continuous sound system in Jamaica. And while Maritone
music has passed its peak of the years of the
70s and 80s, it still draws crowds and remains an
important part of Jamaica's musical history.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Thanks for all you do and keep me company over
the years, guys. I've truly enjoyed listening. And that is
from Roger Blake.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Roger, that was a great email. I was not expecting
that one.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I mean, I got to look up Maritone music and
find out a little bit more about this.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Maybe we'll even take a trip down to check it out.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Well, if you want to be like Roger and let
us know something awesome that your ancestor did, we love
to hear about that kind of thing. They're seriously interesting
basically every time. You can send it in an email
to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts
are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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