Top Ten Classic Monster Movies -- Part 1
It's Halloween month so I hope you will permit me to set aside crime and mystery blogging to indulge my love of classic monster movies. Horror and mystery are certainly cousins -- I'd even go so far as to suggest that all horror stories are mysteries, at least insofar as there are hapless victims caught in the web, trying to believe or disbelieve what is happening, trapped in extremis in cemetaries and haunted castles.
I did lists like this all the time at my old pop culture blog -- Longbox Graveyard -- and here as there it's my blog, my rules. This is the first part of a top ten list, but it isn't definitive. It's idiosyncratic and all about my favorites. And since the golden age of everything is "twelve," this list is heavily weighted towards the movies I saw as a kid, eagerly scouring the TV listings each week and staying up late on weekends to enjoy some black & white treasure I knew only from the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland.
What is a classic? The National Film Registry considers films eligible after ten years, but that seems a little precipitous to me. Even a more generally-agreed-upon twenty-five years seems kind of recent. For this list, I've arbitrarily set my cutoff at fifty years, 1973 or earlier. That just allows The Exorcist (spoiler!) while excluding The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ...
... which I likely wouldn't have included in any case. While Leatherface qualifies as a movie monster, TCM is more of a dead teenager film than a classic monster movie for me, and I don't like slasher pictures -- I don't find them horrifying, just cruel. I also arbitrariy disqualify giant monsters like Godzilla and my beloved King Kong, and movies where nature runs amok. Again -- my blog, my rules.
To put it simply -- if it's in black & white and has some dude thrashing around in a monster suit, it pretty much qualifies for my list, which begins with ...
10 -- Dracula (1931)
This is a stone cold classic and that's why it makes the list. It was also slow and boring for twelve-year-old-me, which is why it only checks in at #10. Bela Lugosi is one of the all-time cool dudes of classic film and I've better appreciated this picture on adult viewing ... so give me another fifty years, and maybe Dracula will fight its way up my list. Bonus points for Dwight Frye's Renfield. His laugh, once heard, cannot be unheard.
9 -- The Mummy (1932)
To be fair, The Mummy is every bit as "dull" as Dracula, being too slow and moody for a little kid, but it benefits from that fantastic opening sequence, with Karloff in mummy makeup that still astonishes, and the creepy/funny/no-it's-really-creepy performance by Bramwell Fletcher of a stiff upper lip chap going mad in an instant. "He went for a little walk! You should have seen his face!" It is a face I'll never forget.
8 -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
While the various Frankenstien, Mummy, Dracula, and Wolf Man pictures were in heavy rotation when I was a kid, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the classic that never seemed to come around. Maybe this was because Paramount's pictures didn't have the same syndication muscle as Universal. Or maybe it was because this pre-code film had so much murder, mayhem, and psychosexual darkness that it wasn't suitable for the Saturday afternoon matinee slot where I saw my horror films. Didn't catch this one until I was an adult and it was worth the wait.
7 -- The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
The Hammer films were scarce during my late-night television horror movie hayday. For the most part I learned about them through books and magazines. Eventually I did track down several Hammer pictures, though they remain something of a blind spot for me (I'm still trying to see The Devil Rides Out). The Curse of Frankenstein is my favorite of the Hammers I have seen, in part because I love the Frankenstein myth, and in part because Peter Cushing's doctor is such a thorough son-of-a-bitch in this picture. Christopher Lee doesn't have much to do here, but at least this movie gets him on my list. And watch for Melvyn Hayes as "Young Victor" in the most uncanny bit of child casting I've ever seen -- I would have bet my life he was Peter Cushing's son.
6 -- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
For years this was my white whale of monster movies. The descriptions in Famous Monsters painted a picture of something truly transgressive. My eyes about popped from my head when I saw it in the TV listings ... and I cursed out loud when I showed up at 1:00 AM on the appointed night and they ran Scream And Scream Again for the hundreth time. (No offense to that groovy British picture). I was convinced its last-minute replacement owed to an imaginary brigade of Angry Moms pressuring the station into dropping the showing. But a couple weeks later it showed up at last, and did not disappoint, proving every bit as shocking as advertised. Repeat viewing reveals hidden layers -- like all the best monster movies (and zombie movies, in particular), the real monstrers are us. Ahead of its time.
Join me next week when I count down my Top Five!
See also Top Ten Film Noirs That Aren’t About Crime Part 1 and Part 2