The Fog (1980)

THE FOG (1980) **1/2
Fog has been a critical element in many horror movies and the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and The Return of the Vampire immediately leap to mind as films made definitely better from their use of fog effects to create a foreboding atmosphere.

Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of 40 in 1849 but his writing and his influence live on forever. Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?

Ghost stories around the campfire have been around longer than The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and I believe that’s how Washington Irving first heard about Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones, and the Headless Horseman.

John Carpenter directed, co-wrote, and scored the original Halloween in 1978, one of the great transcendent low-budget shockers with a boogeyman killer.

Carpenter’s The Fog, his first horror film after Halloween, combines the title character, a Poe quote before the opening credits, a ghost story around the campfire told by distinguished actor John Houseman, and some grisly murder set pieces that far surpass the relatively tame and nearly entirely bloodless Halloween, but I remain steadily down the middle of the road in my reaction to it.

I want to like it a lot more than I do, believe me, and maybe I will get there next time.

I liked it more during the most recent viewing of the film and I definitely understand why it’s developed a cult following and a much better reputation in recent years.

It does create quite the foreboding atmosphere at times, it bears all the trademarks of a Carpenter film with his penchant for great composition both in the sense of framing and the music present throughout, and I do like the story of this small California town celebrating their centenary with a dark secret about the founding discovered, discussed, and confronted during the film as the dead men return 100 years to the day for their revenge.

Still, all the same, it’s underwhelming.

I believe it’s mainly because I don’t particularly connect to any of the characters and thus, I don’t really care about their fates particularly all that much.

I come the closest to connecting with radio station owner and host Stevie (played by Carpenter’s former wife Adrienne Barbeau) and Father Patrick Malone (Hal Holbrook), but they’re not on the same level as Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode in Halloween, Kurt Russell’s characters in Escape from New York and The Thing, Keith Gordon’s Arnie Cunningham in Christine, Karen Allen’s and Jeff Bridges’ characters in Starman, and Roddy Piper’s George Nada in They Live, some of Carpenter’s best characters and best films.

While it is comforting to see Carpenter regulars like Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Kyes, and good old ‘Buck’ Flower, they’ll still all be remembered first for other characters in other Carpenter films.

We simply don’t get enough of any of the main characters.

The Fog lacks a certain something, energy perhaps first and foremost, to really take it over the top and into the stratosphere like Halloween.

All that said, The Fog still has some very good even almost great moments.

I especially like the scene when Father Malone reads four entries from his grandfather’s journal and then delivers the best line of the film, The celebration tonight is a travesty. We’re honoring murderers.

Speaking of a travesty, I watched the 2005 remake in a theater and I have to believe that it’s one of the 10 worst movies I’ve ever watched in a multiplex near you.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) ****
Over a period of a couple years, I watched all 36 Abbott and Costello feature-length comedies from their scene-stealing minor roles in One Night in the Tropics (1940) to their last disappointing picture in Dance with Me, Henry (1956).

Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) are not on the same elite level as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy, for starters, but they fit on a tier below neatly alongside the Three Stooges and Wheeler and Woolsey.

I recommend 28 out of their 36 films, and I do like the duo and their films a good bit. That said, I do not recommend binge-watching their films because they are often saddled with cornball musical numbers, cornball romantic subplots, and comedic routines that could quickly become very repetitive and tiresome after repeat exposure to their work. I spread their 36 films out very effectively, rarely ever watching any of them consecutively in a single sitting.

Until I recently watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein again, easily their most famous picture, I would have even argued they never made a truly great motion picture.

I’ve seen it several times over the years, and I’ve always liked it a lot ever since that first viewing many years ago on AMC. I always considered it nothing less than a very good film and the ultimate Abbott and Costello motion picture experience.

Anyway, this last time watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a meeting of Universal’s main staples, I thought Who the hell am I kidding, this is a great movie and I’m bumping it up to four stars exactly right where it belongs!

Of course, Abbott and Costello don’t actually meet Frankenstein, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and he plays a subservient role to Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), and it’s also not Abbott and Costello but Chick Young and Wilbur Gray who do the meeting within the movie. I guess Chick and Wilbur Meet Frankenstein’s Monster or Abbott and Costello Meet Glenn Strange or Abbott and Costello Meet Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man just wouldn’t have worked as titles.

If you stop and think too much about the inconsistencies and continuity gaps and logical flaws in any Universal horror movie, especially the ones made during the ’40s, you just might drive yourself stark raving mad and start foaming at the mouth.

I recommend just going with the flow. You’ll likely live a little if not a lot longer.

I’m not even going to regurgitate a plot synopsis for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein because life is short, life is precious, and I honestly believe that one knows more or less what to expect from something titled Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello developed a routine in their horror comedies, as early as 1941’s Hold That Ghost and starting again with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and continuing through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, where something frightens Costello’s character and he will try (often in vain) to get Abbott’s character to believe him.

I am not exactly the biggest fan of this routine, I must admit, and it’s the first exhibit for what I wrote earlier about their comedic routines becoming repetitive and tiresome.

They never got that routine down any better than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, however, and it definitely has something to do with the presence of Lugosi (1882-1956), Chaney (1906-73), and, to a much lesser degree, Strange (1899-1973).

Lugosi, Chaney, and Strange play it straight and they help sell the laughs just by acting no differently than if they were in House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula.

Costello never played more convincingly frightened than he does throughout Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello were never more consistently funny than they are during Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Dracula (1931)

DRACULA (1931) ****
I remember being first disappointed by the 1931 Dracula and that disappointment carried over for more than two decades.

Around the turn of the 21st Century, I bought the 1999 VHS release and that’s what I first watched, the one with Classic Monster Collection across the top and then New Music by Philip Glass and Performed by Kronos Quartet immediately below. Of course, I thought Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield were absolutely incredible, David Manners as Jonathan Harker and Edward Van Sloan as Professor Van Helsing and Helen Chandler as Mina Harker less so, and I loved director Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks at first sight contemporaneous with Dracula. Freaks remains one of my absolute favorite movies, so obviously some movies hit people right from the start and others just simply take more time or sometimes they never make that deep, personal connection others do.

For the longest time, at least a decade if not longer, I thought Dracula was overrated and paled in comparison against Freaks, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, all of which I first saw around the same time as Dracula and I loved, absolutely loved, and still do love all of them. At the time, I also loved Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein more than Dracula.

It was that darn Philip Glass / Kronos Quartet score that stank up Dracula and I still get a big kick out of the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog couplet, Philip Glass, atonal ass, you’re not immune / Write a song with a fucking tune. I remember my wife complained about Glass’ score for the experimental non-narrative film Koyaanisqatsi and I bristled at his score for Candyman upon revisiting that 1992 film for the first time in several years.

Revisiting the 1931 Dracula in recent years, without the Glass / Kronos score and back closer to how it first appeared in theaters on Feb. 14, 1931, it’s risen in stock from three to three-and-a-half and finally four stars. I cannot deny that it still has a fair share of faults, like those performances I mentioned earlier and the stage-bound production quality since it’s based off the 1924 stage play adapted from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, but I’ve grown appreciation for everything that works from the opening scenes in Transylvania to Lugosi (1882-1956) and Frye (1899-1943), who inspired later songs from Bauhaus (Bela Lugosi’s Dead) and Alice Cooper (The Ballad of Dwight Fry).

It also helps one to catch up with the Spanish language Dracula from the same year and the same sets but a different cast, a different language, and a different director. This Spanish version, rediscovered first in 1978 and then later on video in 1992, lasts 30 minutes longer and it’s better in almost every respect than its famous counterpart. Better shot and better looking, vastly superior cleavage and far sexier women (Lupita Tovar over Helen Chandler any day of the millennium), and less wimpy men in the Spanish version, but Lugosi still prevails against Carlos Villarias.

Several lines had already entered the lexicon decades before I first watched Dracula: I never drink … wine. For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you’re a wise man, Van Helsing. Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make. Even I am Dracula belongs somewhere in the pantheon near Bond, James Bond. Lugosi’s ability or lack thereof speaking the English language actually benefits the otherworldly nature of his Dracula and I hold his performance in high regard alongside Max Schreck in Nosferatu, Christopher Lee in Dracula, and Gary Oldman in Dracula.

I have a long relationship with vampires.

I remember the 1985 Fright Night being the highlight of a boy slumber party circa 1988 and third or fourth grade.

I must have been 11 or 12 years old and in the fifth or sixth grade when reading the Stoker novel. Right around that point in time, I also read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved all three of them and they each fired up my imagination and creative spirit.

A few years later, I caught up with the Francis Ford Coppola version and talk about a movie that wowed a 14-year-old boy. I remember staying up late and sneaking around (somewhat) to watch this Dracula on my bedroom TV, captivated by all the nudity and sexuality and violence and Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost and it recalled some of what I liked about the novel all while becoming a cinematic extravaganza. I know critics of the 1992 Dracula blasted the film for being all style, no substance and for being overblown, but I think it’s overflowing with creativity and sheer cinematic beauty. I rate it right up there with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu as one of the best vampire films ever.

Some things simply transcend Keanu Reeves’ horrible accent and Dracula’s at one point beehive hairdo.

The vampire genre itself transcends such duds as Dracula 2000 and New Moon.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) ***1/2
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man starts with an absolute big bang and we have possibly the greatest five minutes in any classic Universal monster movie.

That includes such immortal movies as Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, all stone cold classics essential to every horror movie lover.

The opening gets everything absolutely right: two grave robbers, a cemetery in the middle of the night, Larry The Wolf Man Talbot’s crypt, a full moon, a whole bunch of wolfbane, the revived Wolf Man’s hand, and enough overall spooky atmosphere for approximately 50 scary movie scenes. Yeah, it’s such a phenomenal sequence that director Tom McLoughlin revived it for his opening in Jason Lives, the one film during that long-running series most influenced by classic monster movies.

The rest of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man does not quite measure up, especially once Frankenstein’s Monster enters the picture, but it’s still a great deal of fun.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-73) returns as Larry Talbot, one of the greatest horror movie characters. Chaney Jr. played Talbot five times from 1941 through 1948 — the original Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Talbot’s a tortured soul — in fact, mondoshop.com hypes its Wolf Man poster, The most tortured soul in the Universal Monsters universe is unquestionably that suffering bastard Larry Talbot, a.k.a. The Wolf Man — and we feel great empathy for this character because he essentially doesn’t want any damn part of being the Wolf Man. Your own son Bela was a werewolf. He attacked me. He changed me into a werewolf. He’s the one that put this curse on me. You watched over him until he was permitted to die. Well, now I want to die to. Won’t you show me the way?

In that way, he’s different from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. Lon Chaney’s Phantom in the 1925 classic The Phantom of the Opera inspires similar feelings as Talbot and the Wolf Man. To his enduring credit, Boris Karloff (1887-1969) worked some pathos into Frankenstein’s Monster, especially in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Still, Talbot stands apart from most cinematic monsters and maybe it’s because he’s the most explicitly human.

Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) passed on Frankenstein’s Monster in Frankenstein, much to his eternal regret, and so he signed on for the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man after playing Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. During the latter film, one might remember that Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein accidentally put Ygor’s brain into the Monster’s head — he speaks poetically at one point in the film, I am Ygor. In a series that paid minuscule attention to continuity from one film to the next, the Monster originally spoke and explained his plight in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but Universal studio heads apparently laughed their heads off at Lugosi’s dialogue and demanded it be excised from the final cut, rendering the monster absolutely ridiculous and his scenes basically a washout. I am not sure why Lugosi’s voice suddenly became laughable. Lugosi’s stunt double stands in for the 61-year-old man in many scenes. Ironically, though, whenever people imitate Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s the Lugosi version from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (Lugosi played Bela in The Wolf Man and Chaney Jr. was Frankenstein’s Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein after Karloff bowed out.)

We’re not sure exactly why the Monster’s encased in ice or why there’s a production number that must have moseyed on over from MGM. The second half of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man often leaves us feeling awful perplexed.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man finishes strong, thankfully, and we do see our titular monsters slug it out, though it presents an internal struggle because while we’d love more battle royale between the monsters we do love the 90 seconds they give us. This movie paved the highway for King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason.

In most every way possible, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man proves to be a red hot mess, but a lovable and thoroughly entertaining one nonetheless.

She-Wolf of London (1946)

SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946) *
I have an alternate title for the 1946 Universal Studios anti-horror classic She-Wolf of London: She-Wolf of Tedium.

Since there’s no actual she-wolf, our new alternate title downsizes to Tedium.

Over a 31-year period, Universal made 31 films that are grouped together as the Classic Monsters series, featuring Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom, the Mummy, and/or the Werewolf of London, not to mention Abbott and Costello.

She-Wolf of London falls outside the Classic Monsters jurisdiction and it’s worse than any of them. Yes, it’s even worse than The Invisible Woman, the nadir of the Classic Monsters series.

Since I watched The Wolf Man and Werewolf of London, I expected a she-wolf in London, transformation scenes, and scenes of mayhem.

No, director Jean Yarbrough (The Devil Bat), screenwriter George Bricker, and producer Ben Pivar give us a standard issue murder mystery.

June Lockhart, then a 21-year-old ingenue years before her mother roles on Lassie and Lost in Space, stars as poor, poor Phyllis Allenby, whose deep, deep belief in the so-called ‘Curse of the Allenbys’ leads her to believe that she’s the werewolf responsible for all the deaths in the local park. Good old Aunt Martha (Sara Haden), that good old Aunt Martha, anyway, she owns dogs that bark all night and they take a real shining to poor, poor Phyllis. Between all the murders that point toward her and dogs barking and curse talk, Phyllis gets worse over the course of She-Wolf of London. That’s all part of Aunt Martha’s master plan, since she wants to drive Phyllis insane and inside an asylum so Aunt Martha and her daughter remain living inside the mansion rather than Phyllis and her doting barrister, boyfriend, and potential husband Barry Lanfield (Don Porter). Barry sees through it all, believes in Phyllis, and it’s all so touching when he proves her innocence. Instead, Aunt Martha becomes one of those less than convincing movie murderers, you know, in a revelation that renders the rest of the movie, what’s the word, ridiculous … and not the good ridiculous either.

Yeah, that’s a whole lot of plot synopsis and She-Wolf of London surrenders itself to many exposition scenes during a 61-minute motion picture spread. All that exposition becomes the source of all that pesky tedium, which is not exactly what I was expecting from a movie titled (incorrectly) She-Wolf of London. There I go again, my own worst enemy.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956) **1/2
I should have already learned my lesson.

I bitch about the yucky suck face between scientists John Agar and the lovely Lori Nelson through most of the second half of Revenge of the Creature, so it only serves me right that I got immediately served with the miserably married couple played by Jeff Morrow and Leigh Snowden in The Creature Walks Among Us, the third and final entry in the Creature series released by Universal Studios. Morrow and Snowden are truly a downer and their scenes drag The Creature Walks Among Us down a notch or two from being a perfectly enjoyable creature feature.

All three Creature features benefit heavily from their underwater photography and Walks Among Us works best when the action takes place underwater. Above water, especially when Morrow and Snowden provide us another unpleasant scene together, it’s not so hot. Watching Revenge and Walks Among Us in close proximity, it’s obvious just how much influence these earlier films had upon the later Jaws series also produced by Universal. Jaws 3 borrowed major plot developments from Revenge, for crying out loud.

In a fundamental way, though, Walks Among Us cheats us. It doesn’t really live up to any part of that title until the very end of the picture, when the title character escapes from captivity. I certainly don’t remember a city screaming in terror and the poster incorporates the Golden Gate Bridge into its promotional campaign. Good job, marketing department. Sure, we see the Golden Gate, kinda sorta obligatory for any film shot for any length in San Francisco, but I don’t recall any character being held up above the Golden Gate by our title character, sure to be thrown to his death. Now, that would be an impressive scene.

I feel like I must make amends in this review for cheating Ricou Browning (born 1930) in the Revenge review. He’s the man in the creature suit in the underwater scenes. In Walks Among Us, Don Megowan plays the Gill Man on land. In Revenge, it was Tom Hennesy. In Creature, it was Ben Chapman. I believe it’s a testament to the quality of Browning’s work in the underwater scenes that he filled the creature suit in all three movies.

Strangely enough, I felt a certain sadness during Walks Among Us, alternating with a sense of overall wonderment toward the Universal Classic Monsters series. Walks Among Us ended a stretch where I watched 16 classic horror films, from 1935’s Werewolf of London to 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us, for the first time, having already watched Universal’s true classics like The Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man several times before. Because I even sometimes enjoy watching a bad movie, like The Invisible Woman, this stretch greatly satisfied both the historian and the horror movie fan living inside me.

Top 12 Universal Classic Monster Movies
1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
2. Frankenstein (1931)
3. The Wolf Man (1941)
4. Son of Frankenstein (1939)
5. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
6. The Invisible Man (1933)
7. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
8. The Mummy (1932)
9. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
10. Dracula (Spanish version) (1931)
11. Dracula (English version) (1931)
12. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) Two stars
Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) enjoyed a phenomenal run for Universal Studios from 1941’s Buck Privates through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

They made lots of pictures that made lots and lots of money and they met lots and lots of interesting people (and monsters) in their pictures.

Their career meeting people for Universal took off with the 1948 hit Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a title which sells Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and even for one gag the Invisible Man (Vincent Price) short. After that, let’s see, Abbott and Costello meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (not the killer), the Invisible Man (not Vincent Price), Captain Kidd, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Keystone Kops, and the Mummy. We should pause right here and mention Abbott and Costello visited Jack and his beanstalk, Africa, Mexico, and Mars.

I wanted to like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I wanted to laugh at Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I had a mixed reaction instead.

I liked it without laughing at it once.

Since it’s a comedy and I didn’t laugh even once, I guess I don’t really like it.

I call it a forced smile picture more than anything else, where I see the joke, understand the joke, and finally smile with a sense of resignation.

Maybe I have seen too many Abbott and Costello films in close proximity during quarantine, not to mention imitation Abbott and Costello Don Knotts and Tim Conway in The Private Eyes, but I failed to laugh at humor frequently predicated on Costello fumbling bumbling stumbling into or through someone or something, being terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought or a coherent sentence, and then most often failing to make the skeptical Abbott believe him. I swear, Abbott and Costello must play their favorite routine about 100 times during Meet the Mummy.

Abbott and Costello only call each other by name throughout Meet the Mummy. During the final credits, they’re listed playing Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, respectively. That’s about the high point of the humor in Meet the Mummy.

Of all the Universal classic monsters, I must admit that I like the Mummy series the least, namely the four pictures Universal rattled off like machine gun fire in the 1940s — The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse. I like Hand alright, find Tomb elevated by Lon Chaney Jr.’s debut as Kharis, and Ghost and Curse have already blended into monotonous goo in my brain after seeing them back-to-back recently. Don’t even get me started on the Indiana Jones wannabe Brendan Fraser CGI monstrosities and I blissfully missed Tom Cruise’s so-called abomination completely.

Chaney Jr. proved to be the most menacing Mummy on screen, and he’s not in Meet the Mummy. It could be any other guy wrapped in gauze and affecting a lumbering pace. Yeah, it’s a guy named Eddie Parker. Oh, sure, probably a nice guy, but still no Chaney Jr. They call the Mummy ‘Claris’ — not Kharis — anyway in Meet the Mummy.

Meet Frankenstein and Meet the Invisible Man worked because the actors portraying the monsters played it straight rather than knowing they were in a comedy. It’s similar to the acting in Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun, in that it never received the credit it deserved.

As for Abbott and Costello, there’s always Hold That Ghost, Meet Frankenstein, Meet the Invisible Man, and “Who’s on First.”

Werewolf of London (1935)

WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935) ***
Werewolf of London — Hollywood’s first werewolf picture — must be one of the most overlooked horror films in the history of overlooked horror films, for obvious reasons.

During the 1930s, Universal Studios released Werewolf of London among the following group of horror films: Dracula, Dracula (Spanish version), Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, and Son of Frankenstein, over half of them landmark productions that spawned multiple imitations and sequels. Werewolf of London came out nearly a month after The Bride of Frankenstein in the spring of 1935 and The Bride of Frankenstein became a big hit and developed a reputation for being a sequel that arguably betters the original.

Late in 1941, Universal’s second werewolf film appeared, The Wolf Man, and it quickly became the quintessential werewolf film, leaving Werewolf of London behind in the dustbins of cinematic history. Lon Chaney Jr. joined his late father Lon Chaney (Phantom of the Opera), Boris Karloff (Frankenstein), and Bela Lugosi (Dracula) in becoming a horror movie icon just from a single performance. Chaney Jr. revisited Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein, and he displayed his versatility by portraying Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Mummy.

In addition to Chaney Jr., The Wolf Man cast includes Claude Rains and Ralph Bellamy and many horror films love it for its mood and first-rate atmosphere.

By contrast, Werewolf of London stars veteran character actor Henry Hull and that’s unfortunately not a name that rolls off the tongue like, say, Lon Chaney Jr. Warren Zevon name checked both Chaneys in “Werewolves of London” — Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen / Doing the Werewolves of London / I saw Lon Chaney Jr. walking with the Queen / Doing the Werewolves of London / I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s / And his hair was perfect — but, alas, no direct mention of Hull.

Werewolf of London definitely holds its most value as curiosity (and conversational) piece and not only for its place as the most overlooked film within the Universal canon and for its overall historical standing. After all, when’s the last time any protagonist in a film counted botany for their career or a horror film started with a prologue in Tibet. It also holds considerable fascination comparing and contrasting Jack Pierce’s makeup work between Werewolf of London and The Wolf Man, as well as how this earlier film handled the essential transformation scenes. The werewolf seems to have inspired Eddie Munster, so Werewolf of London does have that going for it.