Bela Lugosi's Not Dead
Bela Lugosi's Not Dead
Universal's Monsters, and the Birth of Horror Cinema
It can be hard to imagine now, as we sit in our cushy homes with small devices that hold secrets of the universe, that life 100 years ago was not only full of different challenges but a fully different world. Things like bank cards, electric fans, and lava lamps weren’t even a pipe dream—they were unfathomable.
The horrors of WWI, with around 40 million casualties, changed the way that people looked at the future, and at each other. The Great War brought new technology that, in turn, brought new ways of killing and torture that were never dreamed of by the public. In those that returned, they were either permanently scarred mentally, or, as was the case for millions of soldiers, physically, too. What was once a carnival showcase to see “the freaks” and “monsters” now stood at their doorsteps. Their fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands became “the freaks” and “monsters” as they were now forever maimed by war.
In response to the growing social and cultural shifts, artists began to process what they saw around them, just as the general public tried to. For more than a decade, movements like Surrealism and Dadaism swept across the globe as the consciousness tried to simultaneously ingrain the tragedy in living memory so that it never happened again, and forget the whole war altogether. When the Great Depression decimated American society from 1929-39, it caused the loss of 14,000 jobs a day at its peak (which left nearly 13 million unemployed), and the world was at a loss.
It wasn’t just the painters who responded to the newly changing world, though. Hollywood, with her grand shining lights and pouting starlets, had things to say, too.
Universal Studios—have you heard of them? They were founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle et al., making them one of the oldest film studios in the world (film has only been around since 1888, after all). Laemmle started out in Chicago by opening his first nickelodeon theater. As the name implies, it was a small theater that cost a nickel to enter. The odeion comes from the Greek, meaning “a roofed-over theater.” They were usually built into storefronts (after carrying over from Vaudevilles, at least) and were relatively tiny. However, despite their small space, nickelodeons were incredibly popular from 1905-1915 before they were replaced due to the necessity of larger spaces.1
There were three types of films produced and distributed by Universal in the 1910s: Red Feather Photoplays (low-budget feature films), Bluebird Photoplays (mainstream feature releases and sometimes more ambitious productions), and the Jewels (prestige motion pictures with big budgets and bigger stars).2 That all worked okay for a few decades, but the people needed something new! Something fresh! Something…scary?
Scary stories and horror aren’t new concepts. People have been telling and reading scary stories, whether fact or fiction, since the dinosaurs as both entertainment and moral warnings. The thing that did change throughout the ages was the medium. There was no longer a need for the fireside fright once publishing entered the scene. What was the point in hearing someone tell a scary story when you could read an entirely new one in, say, a Penny Dreadful? Plays of the real-life murder of the young mother Maria Marten in the Red Barn were all the rage in 1830’s London and gave birth to the Melodrama.3
Horror, despite what some may think, has never been what the collective culture turns its back on. In truth, horror is what the public turns towards in order to make sense of the changing world around them and find something to live and fight for when it feels like all hope is lost.
Carl Laemmle Jr., son of good ol’ Pops Laemmle, was made head of Universal as a 21st birthday present from his father (as one does) and decided to modernize things. New theaters! New quality! New sound (yay, talkies)! New pictures! The old had to go, and the new had to have the space to…well…come alive? After the success of the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and all-color King of Jazz (1930), Junior set his sights on something he knew would reanimate the public’s taste in movies: the Universal Monsters.
1913 had brought Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, co-directed by Laemmle Sr. through his original nickelodeon days’ production company IMP (Independent Moving Pictures), which was a success in its own right [I’ll do a whole piece on our beloved Jekyll/Hyde creature and his ties with Jack the Ripper in the near future, don’t you fret]. Because of his father’s horrific success, Junior knew that the people loved monsters, and figured that if they loved them then, they’d love them even more now.
The first film that Junior chose to create was Dracula (1931) with the captivating Hungarian-American actor, Bela Lugosi, cast as the titular star.4 Bram Stoker’s classic novel has never gone out of style, and for good reason. Life, death, love, loss, good, evil, power, subservience—it spoke to a public battered by the government and country they lived in where those in power stayed in power, and those beneath gave their lives, willingly or not, to save the system.
Dracula, with his slicked-back hair and piercing gaze, represented to the people what they most loathed and feared: complete control over an individual with the power and ability to get whatever they desired. The life was, metaphorically or not, being sucked out of the people every day. They constantly searched for jobs, tried to tend to their families, and did all they could to repair the damage left over by the First World War, but saw no reward for their efforts.
When Dracula (1931) appeared, people who had never felt seen before felt like they were watching their lives play out in front of them. Not only did they feel like they saw their life story, but now they knew that there could be another ending: beating the vampire. For the first time in years, people had a renewed hope and belief in themselves. If they saw Dracula, the immortal and undefeatable evil, be beaten on screen, surely, they could conquer their evil, right?
Dracula (1931) was a smash hit and led to the near-immediate release of Frankenstein (1931). These new-to-the-screen monsters showed something that hadn’t been seen in a long time: humanity. Frankenstein, despite the ending being changed to allow for future films, introduced a new generation to the mad scientist’s creation, a being that, through no fault of his own, was brought into a world that made no allowances for him and constantly fought him, only to be rejected by his creator.
Are you sensing a theme here? The people, again, felt seen and heard by a creature who’d only ever been feared because they saw and understood his plight. They, too, had been rejected by their protector (the government) and left to fend for themselves in a new, rapidly changing world. Horror was now not only something to make you jump in your seat and cuddle up with your frightened date, it was now a way to process your life and environment and see, through impossible odds, the successes of the underdog.
Next time, we’ll dig up The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and how she’s become a feminist figure and icon in the 90 years since her silver screen debut.
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Are you scared yet?
Jacobs, Lewis (1939). The Rise of the American Film. New York: Harcourt Brace.