My earliest recollection of watching a Universal Horror film is encountering FRANKENSTEIN sometime in the mid-‘60s while my parents were channel surfing one night. While the adults dismissed the film as being “over thirty years old” and changed the channel, my siblings and I were fascinated by this strange artifact from the past and rushed downstairs to watch it on the small black-and-white television. Something about the age lent a strange patina to the film; the fact, that it was so old, rather than making it seem dated, somehow made it seem like...well, I guess that’s when I learned the word “classic.”

That strange sense of otherworldliness is still apparent in Universal’s films from that era, and it was amply on display at Universal Horror. The film may not be frightening to modern filmgoers, but they are not mere dated, campy relics from an age long gone. At times, the artistry was stunning and vivid; certainly, no contemporary film I saw that week – particularly a contemporary horror film –could stand comparison to the best work seen there. The prints were in excellent, though not perfect condition (it is sad to think that, even with Universal’s best efforts, these classics still show signs of age), and the audiences were enthusiastic and responsive, reminding one of the important impact that a group dynamic can have on one’s experience of a film. There were even a few surprises: films that stand the test of time better than expected.

The James Whale-directed efforts (FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and THE INVISIBLE MAN) hold up as entertaining cinema thanks to the director’s quirky eccentricity, which continues to amuse, even if the films have lost the power to shock (although the death of Dr. Waldman in the first film is still effective). DRACULA is better than its somewhat degraded reputation, especially when compared to its overrated sequel. Admittedly, DRACULA’S DAUGHTER is more entertaining than I remembered, but a Dracula film without Dracula will never rank high in my book, and the film’s much-vaunted lesbian undertones are restricted to one brief suggestive scene. Then you have to sit through the rest of the movie, which has a bit of trouble linking vampire Countess Maria Zaleski to her alleged father: she claims to be Dracula’s daughter at one point, but she also has fond childhood memories of her mother playing soothing harpsichord music. So she was Dracula’s daughter by a human mother? She had a normal, happy childhood before her father...what? Bit her? Also, her Renfield character, Zandor, is a bit mouthy for a mere human serving a vampire. Why does she put up with him?

The highlights of the show were MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and THE BLACK CAT, perhaps because they never held a particular childhood fascination for me; in fact, I found both to be boring, and it’s easy to see why, in retrospect: no monster scenes. But both films turn out to have a mature approach to horror that is still effective today. For MURDERS, director Robert Florey took a few elements from Edgar Allan Poe’s story and grafted them onto a tale of evolutionary science gone mad. Curiously, the film paints Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi) as evil because he supports the theory, but the plot seems built around suggesting that he is right. His failed experiment on Arlene Francis (trying to mix her blood with that of an ape, to prove that man and ape are related) is genuinely unnerving, with her character tied up as if in some weird sadomasochistic bondage movie, her continuous screaming at full volume a forerunner of a similar sequence in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, decades later. It’s a pity that Florey was not given more opportunity at Universal.

THE BLACK CAT, the first and best teaming of Lugosi and Boris Karloff, is more revenge drama than horror film, and it has even less to do with Poe than MURDERS, but it justifies its genre label with the Satanic overtones of the Karloff character and with a genuine sense of underlying perversity, of people whose souls have been “killed slowly” by the real-life atrocities of World War One. The film has a very contemporary air, thanks to the (for the time) futuristic set design of Karloff’s House of Doom (the title in England); the art deco decor, however, cannot hide the shroud of death permeating the premises: when the young lead is unable to phone for help, Karloff cackles, “Did you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead! Even the phone is dead!” Casting Lugosi as the nominal hero has wonderful results, mostly because his character is almost as unhinged as the villain. Locked in mortal combat, the only thing that separates him from his adversary is some concern for the innocent victims caught in the crossfire. Other than that, we are asked to identify with him, even as he finally loses all restraint and flays his tormentor alive!

Universal’s efforts in the 1940s never lived up to this early work: THE WOLFMAN is a bit overrated (too many repetitions of famous lines like “even a man who is pure in heart” and “the way you walked was thorny...”), although I do find FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN to be entertaining if preposterous fun.

The studio eventually squandered its legacy with countless sequels and rehashes in the ‘40s (represented here by HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), but that first half-decade, from 1931 to 1936, resulted in a handful of great films that stand the test of time. They may lack the robust energy of the Technicolor Hammer horrors many of us remember from a later era, but the Universal films, in the days before the production code toned down movies, touch on dark and troubling ideas with an occasional flash of perversity that are still fascinating to behold.

MAN-BEHIND-THE-MONSTERS

The Universal Horror program was the brainchild of Dick Costello. “We wanted to make use of our library and at the same time make a brand name of studio,” he explained. “I suggested putting together a consortium of exhibitors interested in doing it, which would give us enough critical mass, if you will, to make new prints of the films and then do a rock-band-on-the-road. We began July 1997 with ‘Universal Noir.’ We followed that with Universal ‘Comedy.’ We play only repertory art houses: the Castro in San Francisco, the Nuart in Los Angeles, the Film Forum in New York.”

“We generally have the films already out on video,” he added. “What we're doing here is allowing the Universal brand to come forward. One of the things we insist on with exhibitors is that they put Universal on the marquee and in the publicity that they do. So we get great press, and many film critics would rather write about an old film than a new one anyway, so that works to our advantage.”

Horror, the genre for which Universal is most famous, was the third in the Universal repertory series. According to Costello, the selection process was easy, despite Universal’s vast library. “You sort of have a given for the major six for us, which are DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLF MAN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.”

Additional titles were added based on the viability of striking prints at a reasonable cost. “Part of our concept is new prints,” said Costello. “Unless it's a major title that you must have, if we can make a new print affordably – which we define as $4000, we'll do it; if it's too expensive, we'll say ‘find another title.’ It depends on the condition. I was pleasantly surprised, because we've done so much with horror in our history, that the horror prints were actually quite reasonable.”

One eccentric inclusion was the comedy spoof ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Costello explained that San Francisco’s Castro Theatre in “was very keen on [it] because it was apparently Jerry Garcia's favorite film of all time, so we said, ‘Sure.’ It happens to be the 50th anniversary of that film, a 1948 title, so we said, ‘That makes sense.’”