Of all the Universal monster movies, The Wolf Man “deserved” a real sequel most. With Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Lon Chaney Jr.‘s abilities to essay the Larry Talbot role really shine through. I’ve read (and maybe even repeated here) Chaney never gets credit for playing such a physical role while being a bigger man.
Here […]
Entries Tagged as 'Bela Lugosi'
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943, Roy William Neill)
February 26th, 2010 · No Comments
Tagged: Bela Lugosi· Curt Siodmak· Dwight Frye· Lon Chaney Jr.· Roy William Neill· Universal Pictures· ★★
The Saint’s Double Trouble (1940, Jack Hively)
March 12th, 2009 · No Comments
George Sanders can do no wrong in The Saint’s Double Trouble, so much so, he has the ability to smooth the film over. He’s such a joy to watch, the critical part of the brain shuts down. Eventually, as the film nears the conclusion, Sanders looses his control, letting judgments percolate to the surface. This […]
Tagged: Bela Lugosi· Ben Holmes· George Sanders· Jack Hively· Leslie Charteris· RKO Radio Pictures· ★★
The Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner)
August 28th, 2008 · 1 Comment
The Wolf Man’s most lasting influence–beyond the advantages of using Larry Talbot as a synonym (Pynchon did it in Vineland) and the endlessly suffering protagonist–has to be the music. I noticed parts both John Williams (for The Empire Strikes Back) and Danny Elfman (for Batman Returns) lifted. The music is an essential part of the […]
Tagged: Bela Lugosi· Claude Rains· Curt Siodmak· Evelyn Ankers· George Waggner· Lon Chaney Jr.· Universal Pictures· Warren William· ★★★
The Return of the Vampire (1944, Lew Landers)
February 14th, 2007 · No Comments
The Universal monster movies notably ignored modern events–when World War II came around, the clocks turned back on all their European-set monster movies to some indistinguishable point. The Return of the Vampire, a Columbia cheapie, on the other hand, sets the events directly in contemporary settings, both after the First World War and during the […]
Tagged: Bela Lugosi· Columbia Pictures· Griffin Jay· Lew Landers· Randall Faye· ⓏⒺⓇⓄ
Dracula (1931, Tod Browning)
January 23rd, 2007 · No Comments
I never got Dracula. Even as a kid, I never watched it over and over, like I did the other Universal monster movies. When I went back and saw it in the late 1990s–after Ed Wood–Bela Lugosi’s performance horrified me. He makes funny faces and does Charles Atlas exercises for scary body language and woodenly […]
Tagged: Bela Lugosi· Bram Stoker· Dwight Frye· Edward Van Sloan· Garrett Fort· Hamilton Dean· John L. Balderston· Tod Browning· Universal Pictures· ⓏⒺⓇⓄ



