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culture, film, musings

Brides and Daughters: Women of Universal Monster Movies

Considering my most popular post to date has concerned the women of Hammer Horror, I figured it was time to turn my attention to the classic Universal Studios monster movies of the thirties and forties, and the actresses that made them great. Brides. A daughter. An invisible woman. Even before the age of sound, with its successful Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925), Universal was known for creating memorable monsters. But with 1931’s DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN,  the studio truly mastered the art of monster-making. No one denies that Lugosi’s titular count, or Karloff’s monster are a part of pop culture like no other monsters of the twentieth-century. And, unsurprisingly, it is Lugosi and Karloff  that are the actors most often discussed in regard to horror movie history. But Universal Studios’s horror films contain some equally memorable, frightening (and, at least on one occasion, funny) female characters.

A BEVY OF BRIDES
Dracula's Brides in 1931's Dracula
Pictured from left to right: Geraldine Dvorak, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia Thaw. From DRACULA (1931)

The brides in DRACULA, for example, are truly threatening women. Ethereal creatures. And deadly. It is only through the intervention of the Count that they give up their pursuit of Dwight Frye’s poor Renfield. While Garret Fort’s script takes its cue from Balderston and Deane’s play, the scene gets close to the eeriness of the novel. The appearance of the brides is essential to the film (and the novel), as it establishes Dracula as both a vampire that can create other vampires (an infection), and women as more than mere victims of the Count (by no means the weaker sex). Though their screen time is short, the effect of the brides of Dracula is lasting — one of menace and death.

Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Franstein (1935)
Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Elsa Lanchester, however, as the titular BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) plays a more sympathetic character. Similarly on screen for mere minutes (at the very end of the film, unless you count her appearance as Mary Shelley in the opening), Lanchester plays more of a creature to be pitied than feared — shocked more than shocking as she rejects the advances of the monster for whom she is made. Yet is is her character that is among those best remembered by the audience, with a scream that shreds the silver screen. She is there as men’s (and monster’s) plans literally crumble to dust.

A DANGEROUS DAUGHTER
Gloria Holden as Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Gloria Holden as Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

It is with the character of Countess Marya Zaleska in 1936’s DAUGHTER OF DRACULA that Universal found its first true female monster, a fully fleshed out (and blood curdling) character that is both sympathetic and threatening. Played with sophistication and mystery by the talented Gloria Holden, Zaleska is perhaps the first truly conflicted vampire in cinema history (long before Hammer made it a theme, Anne Rice made a literary career of it, and Twilight a hallmark of its series of films). Though Zaleska feeds (most notably in a scene that many consider the first cinematic suggestion of a lesbian vampire), she yearns for a cure to her condition. Tragically, it is not meant to be.

Invisible Woman (1940)
Press kit promotional still from Invisible Woman (1940)
TWO DUDS AND A DOCTOR

To the opposite extreme is the comedic INVISIBLE WOMAN (1940). Here, the horrible is played purely for laughs with the title character, played by Virginia Bruce, first getting revenge on a sadistic boss then playing foil to a group of thieving thugs. If there’s any doubt as to the silliness of the picture, know that Shemp Howard’s in it. Still, it’s not a terrible movie, unlike…

SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946). An outright misfire. Forgettable, despite a decent enough performance by June Lockhart (long before she was lost in space), the movie is by no means horror, and certainly not (intentional) comedy. Instead, it’s a dull mystery film where a woman believes herself to be a werewolf, responsible for a series of murders where victims had their throats ripped out. Spoiler alert: she isn’t.

Curiously, one of the most monstrous women in all of Universal Studios horror movies is Dr. Sandra Mornay (played by Lenore Aubert). A scientist in cahoots with Dracula to give the Frankenstein Monster a more obedient brain,  Dr. Mornay is a serious threat to the bumbling Wilbur (Lou Costello) in 1948’s ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. With its many monsters and truly memorable performances, the film is actually among the best examples of horror comedy movies. And it was definitely a highlight for Lugosi (only his second, and last time playing Dracula for Universal), whose career was well on the decline.

Lenora Aubert and Bela Lugosi in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
Lenora Aubert and Bela Lugosi in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
BEYOND THE MONSTERS

While some Pre-Code actresses got to play more complex characters, female characters of the late thirties, forties and fifties were too often relegated to roles of the good daughter, the imperiled girlfriend, or the dutiful wife. Women’s liberation was decades away, and Universal Studios, for the most part, played it safe.

Evelyn Ankers gives Lon Chaney Jr. a long overdue trim
Evelyn Ankers gives Lon Chaney Jr. a long overdue trim

Actresses like Evelyn Ankers served as beauties to Universal’s beasts. Ankers, most notable for THE WOLF-MAN (1941) was a Universal Studios staple, appearing also in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943), Son of Dracula (1943), The Mad Ghoul (1943), Jungle Woman (1944), Weird Woman (1944), The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), and The Frozen Ghost (1945).

Other talented women like Valerie Hobson and Gloria Stuart (both of whom also starred in multiple Universal Horror films) had long and varied careers. Just two among the many actresses that made those movies work as well as they did. Louise Allbritton, Helen Chandler, Mae Clarke. Julie Adams. Susanna Foster. Martha O-Driscoll. Jane Randolph. The list goes on and on.

Though their cult of followers is not as prominent as those for the women of Hammer Horror, the women of Universal’s monster movies are undeniably essential to the success and legacy of those films.

 

(for more on Universal monster movies, click here)

film

Universally Monstrous: Filmland’s Famous Fiends and The Humanity of Horror

Although lauded for their archetypal images, gloriously gothic sets and stark cinematography, the Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 40s are often criticized for deviations from — and oversimplifications of — their literary, folkloric and mythological source material.

Where Karloff’s creature could only grunt, Mary Shelley’s man-made man read Milton. Stoker’s wild man of a vampire, a pointy-eared, bushy-browed mustached aristocrat, is a far cry from Lugosi’s thin-lipped, slickly coiffed and quaintly caped count. And what self-respecting werewolf — save Lon Chaney Jr.’s — would run amok in dress pants and a button-down shirt?

Yet, over seventy-five years since the release of Universal’s Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), [the superior] Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941), Universal’s monsters are still the definitive versions of these pop culture icons, and for good reason.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And while it is undeniable that twenty first century audiences have the advantage of 24 hour access to a constant stream of content, cinema goers of the thirties and forties had something  that very few living have today:  a singularity of shared cultural experience.

Born of the shadows of German Expressionism with sights and sounds the silent age couldn’t offer, horror films of the thirties and early forties were one of the few forms of escape for audiences under the tremendous weight of the real horrors of the Great Depression. That shared experience was like an atom bomb dropped on the cultural landscape. Yet unlike the fears of the bomb (and all manner of death from the skies) that defined horror films of the fifties, the monsters of Universal’s heyday had a odd innocence and air of dread that made them all the more… human.

The penultimate, heartbreaking scene from James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein is reason alone why Universal’s monsters leave an indelible mark on most viewers. As Karloff’s creature reaches out for his newly made bride, beckoning with shaking hands, her rejection is palpable. Filled with tension, all at once the scene is comic, hopeful, repulsive and devastating.

Horror works best when it plays on a range of emotions. The sustained beat of much of modern horror with its often relentless assault of gore certainly has its place. But one need only watch something like the recent, brilliant episode of THE WALKING DEAD entitled “The Grove” to see the difference between monsters and the truly monstrous.

Beneath the superficiality of often short-sighted scripting, Universal’s monster movies were effective because of their humanity. Commenting on Jack Pierce’s (and later Hammer Horror’s version of) the Frankenstein monster makeup alone, Stephen King, in Danse Macabre, states that effectiveness simply:

“there is… something so sad, so miserable there that our hearts actually go out to the creature even as they are shrinking away from it in fear and disgust.”

Long after any blood hits the screen, the lasting impressions of the horrible and grotesque in cinema lie in their ability to engage our sense of dread. Whether we cringe or jump, laugh uneasily or sit frozen, pulse pounding, watching horror films provides us with release. It is the release from knowing what lies at the heart of nature. That there is something within the human condition that sublimates yet secretly knows that we all must inevitably confront the horror that comes with simply being. It is a horror that ends in death.

“We belong dead,” says Karloff’s creature at the end of Bride of Frankenstein, devastated emotionally as he literally brings down the house. And while that action may seem quaint and comical to modern, more sophisticated (and possible jaded) audiences, Universal’s monsters share with currently popular, quality shows like THE WALKING DEAD an understanding of the human condition and therefore an undeniably powerful undercurrent of what true horror can be.