Universal Monsters thread?

[Benjamin Haines]

[mr.negativity]

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

Hey, at least this seems to have pushed Uni into releasing all their classic monster flicks on Blu-Ray. Now we just have the Creature and Invisible Man sets to go, and I'm sure we'll get them around October.

The best thing about remakes and reboots is the rereleases for classic films they precipitate.

[Dai]

[mr.negativity]

John Landis says Universal Pictures’ new Dark Universe isn’t being respectful to the studio’s classic movie monsters of yesteryear.

[mr.negativity]

[Outkaster]

Interesting link

[Kaiju_Ultra_Fan]

I really didn't like the new Mummy movie. It felt like an action movie more than a horror film. And it tried so hard to *wink wink* at the camera that it was part of an upcoming MovieVerse.

The inclusion of Dr.Jekyll,..the props showed like the Vampire skull,..it was too much other stuff thrown in without focusing on a core story being told.

One thing Marvel really got right with their expanded MovieVerse was introducing each character as a stand-alone and then bringing them all together in the Avengers after (what like 5-6 films?).

Universals The Mummy just reeked of, "me too!" and desperation, trying so hard to be, "cool, hip and edgy",..instead of actually being Cool, Hip, or Edgy.

..though it was fun watching Russel Crowe beat the snot out of Tom Cruise and toss him around like a rag-doll,..that probably shouldn't be the highlight of the movie.

And with the Mummy being female and the next film being Bride of Frankenstein it definitely seems like they're pushing the 'girl power' thing really hard,..which turns off a lot of people too.

....then again it seems like a lot of movies these days are pushing that angle, there's a ton of 'female action hero' movies out now and the past few years from the Star Wars movies to (obviously) Wonder Woman to stuff like the new Charlize Theron movie or that Proud Mary movie. That's an angle Hollywood really seems to be pushing hard.

[lhb412]

^ It's almost as if there is some pent-up demand for female action heroes. Aliens and Terminator 2 could only keep them satiated for a few decades!

Also: no one's said 'girl power' since the heyday of The Spice Girls.

As for the 'Dark Universe': if they do proceed with Condon's Bride of Frankenstein I expect it to be something of a reboot, if not in continuity than in approach, after the utter failure of The Mummy. With Condon's familiarity with the material (he made a movie about the making of the original Bride of Frankenstein for gosh's sakes) I think it's their first good chance at actually tapping into what made the Universal Monsters great. And The Bride, like The Creature, is a character they own outright, making them what I think should be their priorities. They need to cool it on getting big name actors for the roles, and let the monsters be the stars.

[Kaiju_Ultra_Fan]

[lhb412]

[Kaiju_Ultra_Fan]

nope, it's still 'a thing',..

http://people.com/awards/oscar-nominate ... en-figures

http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/the-new-wave-of-feminism

that one is odd /\/\ because the URL says 'new wave of feminism' but the article title is 'new wave of girl power'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrIUYzg1re8

https://www.bustle.com/p/41-girl-power- ... onth-41703

All those links/articles/videos are recent and have 'Girl Power' in their titles.

I'm not pushing an agenda either/or,..I don't personally care and certainly am not picking a fight with my 8th post on a new board. Just saying,...it's an expression that still gets used a lot, especially lately.

[lhb412]

Heads up: Target has partnered with Universal for a line of Universal Monsters Halloween products this year. I saw a week ago they were putting up costumes and they had a variety of 'em for adults and kids. More affordable than the Universal Monsters costumes you see at Party City and more striking and movie-accurate, too! I imagine the Creature costume will be very popular. It's pretty cool.

They apparently are gonna have decorations, apparel - all sorts of stuff. I'll check it out tomorrow.

[lhb412]

Okay, Target has a nice selection of Universal Monsters decorations and costumes, but humorously, while there are Frankenstein, The Bride, and Creature costumes for kids and adults and a Wolf Man only for kids, The Mummy and Dracula have the indignity of only getting a small wad of bandages and two pointy teeth on a respective cardboard blister-pack!

Well, at least there's a neat, talking rubber bust of Karloff's Mummy to make up for his being left out. Nice likeness for Karloff, by the way. There are these Frankenstein snow globe type things. No snow, just little dioramas with clear plastic domes over them. There's one of Frankenstein and The Bride as well as Frankenstein in front of the burning windmill. That windmill thing was probably the coolest decoration they had.

[lhb412]

[eabaker]

Bah! Who needs this when we already have The Bride?!

[jellydonut25]

Those kinds of comments almost always are just set ups for a future let down.

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

* sigh *

Just release all your old films on Blu Universal. That's all I ask.

[jellydonut25]

Disappointing.

They’ve had two false starts now with Dracula Untold and The Mummy...neither was good but neither was so bad they couldn’t have forged the correct path forward and made a bunch of good, interconnected monster movies.

[Dr Kain]

Nah, it failed, end of story.

Hopefully It's success will get them to relook at the Dark Universe concept and just do the movies as actual horror movies.

[klen7]

i really wonder what the writers room sessions for this churned out.. it feels like studio meddling, but maybe it was just a bad approach from the beginning

[lhb412]

It's insane that writer Curt Siodmack preferred his original script for The Wolf Man where Lon's character Larry was just a mechanic come to fix Sir John Talbot's telescope over the final version where he's Sir John's son. Okay, so maybe our boy Creighton being Claude Rains' kid doesn't make sense visually because they look as different as two human beings can from each other, but they act the hell out of it and that's the emotional core of the whole dang movie! You take out the prodigal son stuff and The Wolf Man is only half as interesting.

[Outkaster]