Tag: Universal Monsters

Before The Wolf Man: Man Made Monster (1941)

On By Ryan HarveyIn movies

A minor film taken on its own, Man Made Monster introduced movie audiences to two of the major stars of the 1940s Universal horror movie factory: actor Lon Chaney Jr. and director-writer-producer George Waggner. Chaney Jr. (born Creighton Chaney) became Universal’s primary monster performer for the rest of the decade thanks to his success in the title role of The Wolf Man. George Waggner also rode the success of The Wolf Man as its director and rose to be the studio’s go-to producer and director for the remainder of the classic horror cycle.

Before the two hit their heights, they had a low-budget trial run with this little electrical SF horror movie.

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This Is Not the Black Cat Movie You’re Looking For

On By Ryan HarveyIn movies
Black-Cat-1941-Crematorium

One of my favorite discoveries in my college library was the volume Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931–1946 by Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas, and John Brunas. The 1990 book was one of the first to look at the entire canon of Universal’s horror and mystery pictures from their Golden Age and treat them as something more than the “kiddie TV entertainment” they were once relegated to. I grew up watching these movies on weekend afternoons, but until Weaver et. al I knew little about the behind-the-scenes tales of their making.

I must’ve kept the book checked out of the college library for a straight year, constantly renewing it. It gave me a huge uptick in appreciation for classic horror and instilled in me a hunger to dig up the more obscure movies the authors covered. And they covered everything: The Sherlock Holmes movies; the Inner Sanctum mysteries; the supernatural comedy Ghost Catchers; films such as The Secret Key that only count as horror because a star like Boris Karloff appeared in them; historical epics with gruesome content, like Tower of London; plus obscurities The Mad Ghoul, House of Horrors, and the film I’m writing about today.

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