The Romantic Horror Legacy of UNIVERSAL MONSTERS 

Who's your favorite Universal Monster?

I don’t know why, but there’s something about the universal monsters that always makes me return to them year after year.

I love the Invisible Man, my only issue with it is that in the film the serum directly makes him go mad while in the book he goes mad over the power he feels being anonymous

It's a shame Universal doesn't know how to use these characters anymore.

Universal recognized that the best monsters have an air of tragedy to them. Have we lost that post-Jaws? Now audiences are supposed to cheer at the monster’s death, not feel sad.

6:15 The Gill Man was only fighting back against the people who disturbed his home.

No October is complete without a Universal Monster marathon, and this video got me in just the right mood for them

I think Frankenstein and its sequel have probably aged the best. Those movies are still oddly powerful. "We belong dead." Unexpectedly moving. I think they were the best.

I've always loved these films. It's really actually makes me disappointed and angry that you don't see these movies broadcast on television much anymore,esp. now around Halloween.

I found DVD’s of all the Universal Monster movies at an Arizona gas station recently. It felt poetically tragic.

I used to love these as a kid growing up in the 80s, they used to be shown late at night once a week and I was allowed stay up to watch them. The atmosphere was so special and it gave me a love for monsters.

Here's what I got from "The Wolfman" -- No good deed goes unpunished. Larry Talbot becomes cursed for attempting to save a woman from a monster. Sir John's (Claude Rains") expression of shock (and crushing sorrow) after discovering his son's monstrous alter ego left me with a few tears. It was like something straight out of Greek tragedy. Poor Larry. Poor Sir John.

The Gillman is especially a Victim considering People went into HIS homeland , attacked him and etc.

These films are classic in their own way. Thank you, Universal monsters live on forever.

Probably my favorite film franchise of all time. Personally, Bride of Frankenstein and the wolfman have always been my favorite films of the franchise, but I love them all regardless.

Being a hairy man myself, I’ve always been partial to the Wolfman. Loved this deep dive into all the Universal Monsters, Matt!

The Universal Monster films are truly magical. Even after 8 decades, they're still as powerful as they were when they were released.

"E's awl eaten a'why!" -- The constable in "The Invisible Man."

The Wolfman for sure, mainly because a childhood encounter while shutting the barn up with a creature that jumped on our fence before leaping into the neighbours field have always sustained my fascination with the idea of a Wolfman.

I feared them and loved them when I was a little girl. They hold an endless fascination for me. I watch all the movies at least once a year. I've had a crush on Karloff ever since I can remember. These monsters are my friends and these are my comfort movies. I just want to point out that, although Dracula the novel certainly shows fear of the immigrant from the East, Dracula the character (and I don't mean Vlad Tepes) is explained by Van Helsing as a former medieval warlord, presumably Catholic, who fought the Turks and attended a witchcraft school presided by the Devil himself. The reason Dracula fears Catholic symbols like the Cross and the Host is because he is ashamed as he betrayed his God and lost his soul. If anything, he is an antichrist figure who even quotes the Gospels to Renfield and Mina.

This video reminds me of the anecdote where the English teacher talks about how blue curtains are emblematic of the sadness of the author, but then a student points out that maybe the curtains are just blue

The Wolf Man/Lon Chaney Jr. (the only man at the time to play all of the Universal monsters) 😎👍👏 Creighton Chaney's tragic lifestyle really gave life and realism to his performance as a Lawrence Talbot. And as a Christian, I really love the mythology of the Wolf Man (a metaphor for the evil within every man's heart/soul). His curse of lycanthropy is like the curse of sin that affects and plagues all of mankind. Sometimes we can't stand the fact that we all inevitably hurt ourselves and those around us in our lives (like the Wolf Man and even Creighton himself). I'll end my comment with a quote from Dr. Samuel Loomis in Halloween 2 (the original). "Samhain isn't goblins or evil spirits. It isn't witches or ghosts. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves." Well said Donald Pleasence, well said 😔👍👏

Dracula has ALWAYS been my favorite monster from the classic series. Bela Lugosi MASTERED that role and made those movies an absolute joy to watch.

Always been partial to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Love the creature design, the story and the action. And of course, I’ve always had a huge crush on Julia Adams. Had an Aurora model of every one of these classic monsters as a kid growing up in the 1960’s, was an avid collector of Famous Monsters of Filmland and watched all of these films whenever they were on TV. Truly enjoyed this video, thanks.

60 now and I still own all of the monster plastic models that were produced by Aurora. All painted to perfection. They're mine always. Thanx for such a cool video. 🎃

The gill man makes me happy when i see him

The codes of the times - These were set rules that forced the film makers to focus more on the stories and use more innovative methods to convey horror to the audience. This is what helped to make enduring classics of these films - unlike the unfettered blood and gore of modern times...whose themes lose sight of the fact that the human mind naturally wants forget sick images. So the eerie beauty and mood of the Iconic Universal Monster films still endure.🧟‍♂🧛‍♂🐺🐸

I love the classics. Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of my favorites from that time. I love the classic look and just like watching back now and see what they did to make them iconic.

Nothing makes me more happy to see you talk about universal monsters.

I loved your video on Bride of Frankenstein, very happy to see you expand on it here.

I'm so pleased to see this exploration of Universal Monsters. Thanks for keeping the undead alive.

The Universal Monsters were my favorites growing up as well as now that I've grown up. One can never "outgrow" the Universal Monsters. They were/are "Universally" loved! Excellent monster movies. Best of all time.

Easily Bella Lugosi's Dracula. So iconic.

So my wife loves Werewolves and we named our son Benjamin. I just asked her if she knew the biblical Benjamin was perceived as a Werewolf. She said no. That's a mighty big coincidence 🤔

My favorite is The Wolfman, mostly because of the poignant performance of Lon Chaney, Jr.

Black and White Horror is my kind of Horror. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and The Wolfman are my favorites

Frankenstein is my favorite, however I absolutely love the Bride, and The Son of Frankenstein was a great film. One of my favorite lines though comes from Dracula: "Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make."

The props and sets of the classic 30's Frankenstein movie would later be used for Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.

I grew up watching the Universal Monster movies when they were on TV in the 90s. My parents got me the huge dvd box set in the early 2000s that I still have displayed on my cabinet. It has three statue busts of Dracula, the Monster and the Wolf Man. I use to watch all the bonus documentaries and have gone on to research everything I could about these films. Basically, these films are extremely dear to me. You did a great job with your views as usual. Thanks, dude :)

This is so meticulous, informative and brilliant! Great memories from my childhood. Bravo!

I LOVE the Universal Monsters...but the truth is, some of the sequels that came after the very first movies in the lineup just felt silly rather than scary. Some examples I can give are House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, the Mummy series of sequels and even Ghost of Frankenstein. As much as I love the series, I feel like the original novels and folk legends did the monsters much better justice

Didn’t expect a Universal Horror Monsters video to bring me to tears! More than once! Fantastic work about other fantastic work. Great intro &/or overview for a fascinating thread in a large genre. There’s always been something particularly special about the Bride’s addition to the canon. Elsa Lanchester gave such a prismatic, layered, responsive, revelatory performance...yet like all Universal Monsters (& some real outcasts + misfits), bc the characters made such strong haunting impressions, they became iconic in pop culture, & subsequently over decades they’ve been referenced, imitated, parodied, amplified, etc in various contexts, retrospectively flattening some genuinely sensitive, fine-grained, thoughtful acting into a set of static images + distillation of mannerisms. This side effect of entering cultural mythology can make it challenging to be open to the actual performances as they are in the films, even if we get lucky enough to see them in an environment that treats them respectfully, with a professionally restored cinematic version, not over-edited for TV or a cheap distro dub that makes everything look shabby or sound incoherent. The sincerity in Matt D’s exploration plus excellent editing/mixing allowed a sense of the compelling nuance + power of the acting to shine thru, even in clips-it really caught me off guard emotionally🖤. Lanchester is so much more interesting than her most famous film role. There’s some odd synchronicity here, since she was married to/creatively partnered with Charles Laughton-whose portrayal of the “monstrous*” Hunchback of Notre Dame became as iconic as Bride, with that version of HoND commenting on snowballing horrors coming with WWII. Then in ‘55 Laughton made his only film as a director, Night of the Hunter, a gothy noir featuring a menacing Robert Mitchum as an entirely different kind of monster. Matt D’s video made me think of that “chain of monster” roles - Bride->Hunchback->Mitchum’s murderous false preacher - & how they may have informed each other, & what they say about “monsters”. *...arguably Laughton’s monster portrait was his titular role in The Private Life of Henry the VIII

I like the Wolfman so much that I wrote a dry parody short screenplay about an average man being bit by a hipster in New Orleans. Universal Monsters have always been cool.

The Wolfman, probably because I found him the most sympathetic and identifiable of all the monsters. I remember as a little kid hoping that there would be a cure or some way to break the curse so that Larry Talbot would be freed/saved from it.

Those posters are amazing.

When they tried to remake these monsters, I thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately, they ruined it big time. Van Helsing was a good example.

HELL YES!!! I never thought you'd give the classics their proper due in a video essay!

Too bad the recent update to The Invisible Man lost the tragedy and somewhat sympathetic characterization of the titular character. I understand what the filmmakers were going for, but still.

10:38 Funny story...Universal Frankenstein is taken from a play based on the book. In this play, the names of Victor Frankenstein and his best friend Henry Clavel are reversed, which is how it wound up being that was in the film version.

So the Hayes code is the film version of Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the innocent and subsequent creation of the comics code authority. Man, censorship sucks.

The Invisible Man is, without question, my favorite monster of all time. He’s not a tragedy, he’s not an outcast, he’s a madman who did this to himself and truly earned himself the title of evil. He’s not forced to do it against his will like The Wolfman, he’s not a tragic being who doesn’t understand why people are running scared like Frankenstein’s Monster, he’s not an animal that was just protecting his home like Gillman. He is a man, he turned himself invisible by choice, and he consciously decided to kill _124_ people.

I’ve always loved the Universal Monsters films, discovering them via Crestwood books at the library, then tracking them down through tv and tape. Capcom’s fighting franchise Darkstalkers embodies the desire to be monsters perfectly. The creature designs obviously draw inspiration from the Universal Monsters (rumor is the game originally started as a licensed fighter before they went with original designs), and even most of the endings are similarly tragic in nature, a far cry from most fighting game endings of the time. It’s why I wish Capcom would bring the games back, not just for the sake of the games themselves, but because they are a link to the classic monsters.

You calling The Mummy "boring" hurt my soul, sir. It is my favorite.

I just found your channel the other day and I just wanted to let you know how awesome your videos are. I've been watching a bunch of them and they are all super fascinating!

Calling Dracula antisemitic is really boring and tenuous. Have you even read the book? Many of the foreigners are depicted very sympathetically, Dracula starts the novel by going on a spending spree - the only example of hording wealth is the gold objects but what is notable was how old they were denoting that Dracula is hundreds of years old, and how is things like turning into a dog associated with stereotypes towards Jewish people?

i just realised part of the reason why Luca worked so well is because it's like a universal monster movie but with happy ending.

The Wolfman, The Invisible Man & The Creature from the Black Lagoon are my favorite Universal monster films 👍🏾. And it cracks me up how the same music is used throughout the movies 🤫

Ah, the Universal Monsters. Nice to see you finally showcase the classics in such a classic way.

Wow that's one of the best video essays on universal horror I've ever had the pleasure to stumble across.... great job!

Excellent video I LOVE THE UNIVERSAL MONSTERS

A good example of a well done gothic series that no many know or talk about is Pennydreadfull. If anyone is interested in a good example of a "dark universe" I recommend giving it a watch since this is, in my opinion, the definitive example of a good gothic series. It's set in victorian London with almost all the classic monsters; fair warning: is a slow burner. Also I'm referring to the first version of the series, the one with Eva Green, avoid the "city of angels" version like the fracking plague.

I love watching universal monsters all Them especially all The Brides from Frankenstein Dracula mummy bride as well as the other movies and tv shows

The Universal Monsters Are the Best Horror Films Ever Made.

I loved this so much. Thank you

Personally I wouldve swapped out the 43 phantom with the 25 phantom. Lon chaneys was just so much more iconic than the 43 one

Thank you for this video. I have been a great fan of the classic dark universe and the monsters there in. I have always related to the outsider character and its general struggle to be "normal." From Adam, the Frankenstein monster to Mr Spock. Thank you for showing me yet another point of view about these classics. Keep up the good work.

Matt is at his full power during October

It's always a pleasure to see you talk about horror movies Matt. Great work!

Back for another listen, been on a bit of a Karloff jag as of late❤️

Universal Classic Monsters are for ever cool.

9:02 With respect, that also has its roots in distrust in Eastern Europeans and ethnic groups like the Slavs and Rom.

Love the old Universal monster movies.

11:44 Can we also just point out that Bride of Frankenstein created the horror cliche of the apparently dead monster coming back long before Michael Myers pulled the same trick in Halloween?

Funny that you posted the video today Matt, as the Universal Classic Monsters 30 film Blu-ray boxset is just $70 on Amazon! At less than $2.50 a film, how could you not pick it up??!!

I think it speaks volumes that the generation that were kids when these were out reinterpreted them as Everyman characters in the munsters

Uhmm, dude. Dracula used to be human. Wrong category for him.

Me as a Filmmaker-The way you narrated/explain in details on (not only the history of these films) but the subconscious mind why we enjoy these Monster films, everything you explained of the negative stereotypes/racismn/negative criticism and so fourth from the “Social Norms of Some Societal People” make us feel the empathy and relationship with the Monsters (how they are attacked similar to what negativity society sad to say offers etc) however the Monster fights back and we as an audience roots for them in doing it,like you stated “We Are The Monstersss!” Enjoyed this RU-vid Documentary of the UNIVERSAL MONSTERSSSS HEHEHEHEH Well Done 🎊 👍 🎥⭐️✔️🥂👹

6:49 And by that definition, the original Mummy as portrayed by Boris Karloff is a rotten monster through and through. He's a controlling ex-boyfriend who can't let go until finally his ex MAKES him do just that (with a little assistance from Isis). I will always say that Ankhsunamen/Helen Groevner was the true hero of The Mummy.

I grew up with all of these, used to rent them from blockbuster every weekend on VHS. First one I ever saw was house of dracula and that got me hooked, watched literally all the universal classic movies after that. The Frankenstein series is still my favorite, with Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frakenstein being probably two of my favorite movies of all time! I make it a goal every halloween to watch at least a couple of them!

These films were wild for the eras they were in . Dracula was fantastic as well as the Karloff sequels . One of the best makeups created was the Creature from the black lagoon. The Wolfman scared the crap out me as well as Frankenstein's monster as a young lad . A friend and I collected all the magazines in the late 60s as the films played on TV . Too bad they dont play these films on TNT etc only TCM occasionally does .

I love the original monsters 😍🙌🏾🎥. These stay in high rotation for my movie nights; they take me back to my childhood & just make me feel good 😊

I'd LOVE to see faithful remakes of these classic movies. Not new spins on the stories, not modern settings and characters, just new films that are actually faithful to the original movies. Seeing a classic Frankenstein or Dracula movie on the big screen would be so cool. Many know vague stereotypes about a lot of these monsters, but I'd say most folks these days don't really know the plots of the movies they're in, so it really would be cool to see that and further preserve these stories using modern production techniques. Like I said, no spins on the stories or heavy use of modern cgi or modern characters (like they did with the recent remake of Invisible Man), just good old fashioned monster movies that just happen to be made today. Call me crazy, but I think that that idea would be popular for sure. At least, I know that I'd certainly go to the movies to see something like the original Dracula story!

I was always kind of wary of that Wolf Man interpretation, because in that case, his family absolutely are the most powerful in town textually rather than merely because they're different. Dracula, I get it, because it goes to lengths to show that he is an "other" by virtue of reasons out of his control. But in Wolf Man, it didn't seem like they thought the family (just the returning Larry) was Other besides being employers. I guess that's where the muddiness of the narrative details comes in, because if the father had simply acccepted the suspicions of the townfolk, instead of throwing his weight around to deny it, he could've probably addressed it (albeit with difficulty). So, it felt like a tragedy of unchecked power meeting something it can't just walk over.

For its time the invisible man was good effects and loved the first one. The Wolfman had great makeup and the Creature from the black lagoon too was a very lethal looking monster though smelted fishing.

Thanks for the review Mattt. Much ❤ as always 😊

I've always been deeply troubled by the supposed anti-Semitic origins of the vampire. I believe that this interpretation is purely post-facto. After all, Stoker based Dracula, at least partly, on Vlad Tepes, who was a Christian warlord trying to protect his part of Romania from incursions by the Ottoman Turks (i.e., Muslims.)

excellent work matt

I've seen Dracula and only that film, im hoping to watch the other films someday. I like the Wolfman as I had to hide my true self for a good amount of time.

The Universal Monsters are my favorite of all monster movies. I remember as a child every Saturday night on WNEW channel five here in NYC watching them with my cousin Rosie who use to "babysit" me on the weekends. Later on they were aired on WOR channel nine. I was always watching them.

I think as much as the xenophobic reading of Dracula is valid, I think that writer is stretching a point. It could also be a metaphor for the horrors and fears that industrialised capitalism had on people, a rich wealthy man quite literally feasting on the living, a blood sucking parasite who only enters the world of us in order to drain it off life. There's a reason why Marx, in the Communist Manifesto, uses vampires as this exact metaphor, sucking the life dry of labour in order to extract their surplus value. I think there's also a deep, deep underlying terror/fascination with the breakdown of gender norms, in that Dracula is unique amongst victorian gothic in being so overtly sensual and romantic, the vampiric bite being almost a kiss, the borderline homoerotic way Dracula salivates after Jonathan Harker (telling the three vampire "he's mine!"). There's all kind of surface level terrors about the changing nature of late victorian sexuality lurking under the surface, with vampirism being a pretty obvious parallel with syphilis. In that sense, from our perspective Dracula is actually a liberating, transgressive figure, comfortable with his sexuality and open it it, peeling back layers of repressed victorian values in Mina. On the other hand, it could also be a commentary on the way rich men pray on poorer women, using their charm and their money as a form of grooming, using them only for carnal desires, then dump them when they're done, leading to untold problems afterwards (pregnancy, something you did not want growing inside, rather like a vampire mutation, or syphilis, something that infects the bloodstream and starts to change you irreparably). The Gothic genre is interesting, it's at once extremely reactionary, often depicting esotersied outsiders, usually from somewhere east, as a disruptive force intruding upon civillisation, needing to be fought back. But on the other hand, by perping open the box of such sexual, sensual, lustful, passionate 'others', showing in lurid detail all of its iconoclasm, it also showcases how appealing it is, how dynamic, how alluring. By positioning the outsider as something faintly amazing, against the drab, staid repressiveness of Victorian Britain, it accidentally showcases it. There's a reason why James Wale could see Frankenstein as a metaphor for repressed homosexuality, of the taboo of a man making children without a woman, or why Guiellmo del Toro was able to use it as a vehicle for racial understanding in The Shape of Water. Its there, if only at least in subtext.

i cried in the end? during worktime?? sitting in the office??? dammit janet this is a good video, thank you for this!

When I read Dracula and watched the 1931 film, I detected ZERO references to anti-Semitism. I was understood Dracula’s fight with the British protagonists as a fight between the superstition of the “less civilized” Eastern Europe and the West, thought to be more advanced through science and reason, with the westerners having to lean back towards older beliefs in the supernatural to take down an evil foe. Dracula was also a representation of everything Victorian England tried to stand against with regards to sexuality, with him taking on multiple promiscuous wives and some sort of symbolism with blood or something

You missed some of Universals monsters Beast men and Panther woman from Island of Lost souls 1932, Monster and the girl 1941, Invisible Woman 1941, Invisible agent 1942, Son of Dracula 1943, She Wolf of London 1946, The Creature of the Black Lagoon 1954 and possibly some others. Metro Goldwyn Mayer also had similar movie Dracula Daughter in 1936. There were also some other movies I'm not sure who made them Billy the Kid vs Dracula, Jesse James meets Frankenstein's daughter, Aztec Mummy vs Robot, and Wrestling Woman vs Aztec Mummy.

These movies are so classic. Love them all still. The Wolfman is my favorite

I enjoy the Universal Monster universe. Thank you for doing this video. Do you think you'll do a video on the silent films?

I'm not a horror fan, but I've always had a special place in my heart for the Universal Horror monsters. I love the gothic aesthetics and the outsider perspective. The two Frankenstein (Bride being the superior), Wolf Man and Black Lagoon being my favourites. Disappointed in Dracula, though. Because I love the book, and like Orson Welles once said; "It would make a terrific film. To bad no-one ever adapted it" (Because the 1931 one is more based on the stage version, and Francis Ford Coppolas version is, well, fan-fiction with Draco (or Dracula) in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater for every other character except Mina, who turns from a competent woman into a sexy lamp. It looks cool, though. I'll give it that.) In many ways, the book is a mystery story were the main characters have to stop a supernatural serial killer/sexual predator. And, since Dracula is more powerful than they are, they have to outsmart him instead. Using both research and modern (at the time) science and I love that.

The classic Universal Phantom of the Opera is the 1920's silent movie version, which is the first Universal Horror film.

I absolutely love the Classic Universal Monster movies. Like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and James Bond, there's a comfort for me whenever I think of and watch any of the Universal Monster films. Like I can just put any of them on and curl up in a blanket in the dark and be immersed in the creepy atmospheres these films depict. My favourites have to be The Mummy, Dracula and the first two Frankensteins. And I got into them because of the Brendan Fraser starring Mummy movies that I grew up with, which helped make the Mummy my favourite of all the Universal Monsters. And because of these films and others that surrounded them, I've been obsessed with this era of Hollywood.

This was incredible, Matt. Just, utterly incredible.

41 movies. I didn't realize there were that many. I like it.