Universal is a monster of its talent Release – The Times Hub

December 13, 2021

Dracula, Frankenstein, the invisible man Two sets celebrate the studios classics of fantastic cinema.

Forget the sluggish reboot of the Mummy with Tom Cruise, the grueling remakes of remakes, and the failure of the Dark Universe franchise which intended to exhume the icons of fantasy cinema (Dracula, Frankensteins monster, the invisible man, the werewolf, the mummy, the creature du lac noir), having made the rich hours of the Universal studio from the 30s to the 60s. Project dead and buried, it seems, unless the success ofInvisible Man (2020), a thrilling re-reading of the myth of HG Wells at the time of #MeToo, has not changed the situation

In the meantime, the best way to resuscitate princes of darkness, hairy lycanthropes, bastard offspring of science without conscience and other stars of the thrill is still to return to the source, thanks to two boxes bringing together the best of the Classic Monsters catalog. The first, published by Universal, shows in magnificent restored copies four of the film-matrixes which, under the leadership of producer Carl Laemmle Jr., will launch the horror genre in the United States, drawing inspiration from the charcoal aesthetic and tormented by German expressionism. In the theatrical Dracula (1931) by Tod Browning, the vampire, under the hieratic features of Bela Lugosi, appears less as a terrifying creature than as a worldly seducer, an actor concealing his true nature; from the Promethean figure of the mad scientist, the sublime and overwhelming Frankenstein (1931) and the invisible Man (1933) by the immense James Whale are peaks of melancholy, whose subtle stagings remind us that he is only a monster through the gaze that one poses on him; finally, the werewolf (1941) by George Waggner completes the idea that the monstrous resides less in absolute otherness than when it merges with the human.

Elephant Films huge anthology box set is an essential complement since it contains the many sequels of these flagship works (Draculas Daughter, the Return of the Invisible Man, The Creature is Among Us, the Monster of London ), but also a string of solitary jewels: among others, the sumptuous Black cat (1934) by Edgar Ulmer, breaking with the Gothic atmosphere to enter a chilling and dehumanized modernity in a decor marked by the Bauhaus. And Tarantula (1955) by Jack Arnold, where teratology takes on a more political dimension animal gigantism reflecting the paranoia of an America haunted by fear of communism and the atomic threat

Universal Monsters. 4 iconic films. Universal Pictures, box of eight Blu-rays, 59. Universal Classic Monsters. Lanthologie. Elephant Films, box set of 30 DVDs, 147.99.

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Universal is a monster of its talent Release - The Times Hub

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero