So it's Mission: Impossible meets The (female) Mummy in modern times really… What is it with Tom Cruise and plane, bike and heights stunts?
…and Jack Ryan!
Universal Studios Classic Monsters Extended Universe - wuh?
- Thread starter eyeresist
- Start date
Well, we know his approach to doing movies.
True. But Karloff did return to the Frankenstein series as a mad scientist three movies later, while supporting actors like Lionel Atwell and Dwight Frye played multiple roles over the course of the Frankenstein films, sometimes one after another. (Atwell went from being the police inspector in SON to a sinister scientist in GHOST, one movie later. And, of course, Chaney went from being the Monster in GHOST to fighting the Monster as the Wolf Man in the very next moviel.)
And I guess Larry Talbot never noticed that Ygor (Bela Lugosi) looked a lot like the gypsy werewolf who bit him in the first place (also played by Bela).
Can you imagine how fans would react today if, say, Jeff Bridges played the villain in the first IRON MAN movie, then popped up again as the Danish scientist as the THOR movies, and then as Howard Stark in IRON MAN IV?
Indeed, Lionel Atwill was in five consecutive Frankenstein movies in five different roles -- heroic Inspector Krogh in Son, evil Dr. Bohmer in Ghost, Mayor in Meets the Wolf Man, and two other police inspectors in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula.
Toho's Godzilla and other kaiju films did much the same thing -- casting the same actors over and over again in different roles, sometimes just the same essential character with a name change. It's pretty strange -- sometimes you have to wonder why they don't just keep the character name. A particularly bizarre example is in Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira, aka The War of the Gargantuas. In its plot, it's unambiguously a direct sequel to the events of Frankenstein vs. Baragon, aka Frankenstein Conquers the World (though the connection was glossed over in the English dub), with what are recognizably meant to be the same three lead characters, but all three are renamed, two are recast, and their home base is retconned from Hiroshima to Kyoto.
And I guess Larry Talbot never noticed that Ygor (Bela Lugosi) looked a lot like the gypsy werewolf who bit him in the first place (also played by Bela).
Actually Ygor was in the previous two films, Son and Ghost. At the end of Ghost, Lugosi's Ygor had his brain transplanted into Chaney's Monster -- and then in Meets, Chaney's Talbot/Wolf Man met Lugosi as the Monster. (He was still supposed to have Ygor's mind and voice, and be blind from the previous film, hence the famous hands-forward posture. But that all got cut out by executive fiat.) Then came House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula with Chaney as Talbot, Glenn Strange as the Monster, and John Carradine as Dracula. Lugosi would finally return to the role of Dracula opposite Chaney and Strange in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
They had enough trouble with Alfre Woodard playing different roles in Civil War and Luke Cage. Though there have been others -- Tony Curran had different roles in Thor: The Dark World and Daredevil, I think it was, and Enver Gjokaj was a cop in The Avengers and a '40s SSR agent in Agent Carter. Plus there's Stan Lee, of course, and dozens of bit players.
Oops! You're right. Bit of a brain glitch there, no doubt caused by a sloppy transplant . . .
And of course Claude Rains went from being the Invisible Man to being Larry Talbot's father, although the fact that his face was barely seen in the former film made that less clear. There's also Una O'Connor, whose shrill comic-relief character in The Invisible Man led to her playing an almost identical character in The Bride of Frankenstein two years later.
Oh, and of course Evelyn Ankers was Talbot's love interest in The Wolf Man and Elsa Frankenstein in The Ghost of Frankenstein a year later -- and I imagine the Talbot connection is why Elsa was recast as Ilona Massey in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (thereby suddenly gaining a Hungarian accent in the process). Ankers was also in Son of Dracula opposite Chaney as Dracula. Throw in the various Mummy sequels starring Chaney, and he played all four of the top Universal Monsters.
Oh, and of course Evelyn Ankers was Talbot's love interest in The Wolf Man and Elsa Frankenstein in The Ghost of Frankenstein a year later -- and I imagine the Talbot connection is why Elsa was recast as Ilona Massey in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (thereby suddenly gaining a Hungarian accent in the process). Ankers was also in Son of Dracula opposite Chaney as Dracula. Throw in the various Mummy sequels starring Chaney, and he played all four of the top Universal Monsters.
And Sir Cedric Hardwicke was the third Doctor Frankenstein in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and the Invisible Man's nemesis in THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS. And Illona Massey was a sultry German spy in INVISIBLE AGENT . . .. .
Heck, besides playing Dracula, John Carradine was also an Egyptian high priest (!) in one of the Mummy movies and (briefly) one of the villagers in BRIDE (although, to be fair, that was just a bit part).
And then there's David Manners and George Zucco and Edward Van Sloan, etc. The old Universal movies practically had their own repertory company.
Sloan's an interesting case in that he played a different character, but essentially the same role, in Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy: the wise, wary old savant who sees the danger coming before anyone else . ...
Heck, besides playing Dracula, John Carradine was also an Egyptian high priest (!) in one of the Mummy movies and (briefly) one of the villagers in BRIDE (although, to be fair, that was just a bit part).
And then there's David Manners and George Zucco and Edward Van Sloan, etc. The old Universal movies practically had their own repertory company.
Sloan's an interesting case in that he played a different character, but essentially the same role, in Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy: the wise, wary old savant who sees the danger coming before anyone else . ...
More from Alex Kurtzman:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-mummy-will-kick-off-the-new-universal-monsters-1789624335
It sounds like they're approaching this the right way, much as Marvel did, rather than just trying to force a shared universe and subordinating the individual films to that agenda, as Warner Bros. seems to have been doing with the DCEU. It's promising. It also sounds like Universal takes a lot of pride in the legacy of their original monster franchise and want to do it justice, which is also promising.
Oh, and it's confirmed that the Dracula Untold movie from a couple years ago -- which belatedly had a modern-day teaser tacked on to set it up as a potential debut of the Universal Monsters universe -- is not actually part of the universe after all. Which isn't at all surprising to me, given what an afterthought it was to try to tie it into a universe that hadn't been built yet.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-mummy-will-kick-off-the-new-universal-monsters-1789624335
It sounds like they're approaching this the right way, much as Marvel did, rather than just trying to force a shared universe and subordinating the individual films to that agenda, as Warner Bros. seems to have been doing with the DCEU. It's promising. It also sounds like Universal takes a lot of pride in the legacy of their original monster franchise and want to do it justice, which is also promising.
Oh, and it's confirmed that the Dracula Untold movie from a couple years ago -- which belatedly had a modern-day teaser tacked on to set it up as a potential debut of the Universal Monsters universe -- is not actually part of the universe after all. Which isn't at all surprising to me, given what an afterthought it was to try to tie it into a universe that hadn't been built yet.
Seems a waste not to have Tom Cruise shout "Show me the mummy!!!"
Okay, you win.
The Barrymore and March Jekyll & Hyde films were from Paramount, the Spencer Tracy one from MGM. A lot of other studios have made use of the concept too. However, Universal did make Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1953.
Technically, the first Universal "monster" film was The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923. They did a bunch of one-shot horror and monster movies too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Monsters
I tend to think of the Hunchback and the Phantom as members of the group
Yep, Dr. Jekyll was never one of the Universal Monsters (aside from that one Abbott & Costello movie). The Aurora plastic model sets nothwithstanding.
The Phantom and the Hunchback of Notre Dame are odd cases in that, yes, they're the original Universal Monsters, dating back to the silent era, but they never interacted with the other Monsters in the later films. Although the murderous Hunchback in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was obviously intended as a stand-in for Quasimodo, even to the extent of him being obsessed with a gypsy girl!
(The problem with Quasimodo is that his story is set back in medieval France, centuries before the other tales.)
More obscure Universal Monsters would include The Werewolf of London, The Mad Ghoul, and Paula the Ape Woman.
The Phantom and the Hunchback of Notre Dame are odd cases in that, yes, they're the original Universal Monsters, dating back to the silent era, but they never interacted with the other Monsters in the later films. Although the murderous Hunchback in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was obviously intended as a stand-in for Quasimodo, even to the extent of him being obsessed with a gypsy girl!
(The problem with Quasimodo is that his story is set back in medieval France, centuries before the other tales.)
More obscure Universal Monsters would include The Werewolf of London, The Mad Ghoul, and Paula the Ape Woman.
It's only a problem if you let it be one. Aren't the literary Dracula and Frankenstein set about a Century apart?
So Russell Crowe's character is Dr. Jekyll? Interesting.
Invisible Man.