Mon­sters Assem­ble? The Mar­veli­sa­tion of Uni­ver­sal Horror

In 1943 screen­writer and nov­el­ist Curt Siod­mak, broth­er of film noir trail­blaz­er Robert Siod­mak, vis­it­ed the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios lot to see a man about a dog. Or rather, a pro­duc­er about a wolf man. It was noth­ing more than an ele­va­tor pitch, real­ly, but it was enough to set George Waggner’s peep­ers ablaze with dol­lar signs: ​‘Franken­stein Meets the Wolf Man.’

After the Uni­ver­sal Hor­ror boom of 1931 – 36 came a chang­ing of the guard. The Laemm­les were eject­ed from the com­pa­ny they had found­ed in 1912, and the board had a tough deci­sion to make. Deem­ing the hor­ror genre déclassé, the Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters were dropped from the studio’s A‑pictures ros­ter, and a sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue stream dried up faster than a Cal­i­forn­ian riverbed dur­ing a drought. Hor­ror films were Universal’s stock in trade. They turned a healthy prof­it and got the stu­dio out of sev­er­al tight finan­cial binds.

After 1939’s Son of Franken­stein, a swathe of strict­ly B‑grade sequels star­ring the rean­i­mat­ed cadav­er were ordered. The mul­ti-mon­ster mash even­tu­al­ly led to Franken­stein Meets the Wolf Man and con­tin­ued with 1944’s House of Franken­stein and 1945’s House of Drac­u­la, before descend­ing into out­right farce when Count Drac­u­la and Frankenstein’s mon­ster (and oth­er UM fig­ures) teamed up with com­e­dy duo, Abbott and Costello.

Uni­ver­sal is immense­ly proud of its hor­ror her­itage. And right­ly so. Nov­el­ists Mary Shel­ley, Bram Stok­er, HG Wells and Gas­ton Ler­oux might have been the ones to dream up such night­mare crea­tures such as Drac­u­la, Frankenstein’s mon­ster, the Invis­i­ble Man and the Phan­tom of the Opera, but Uni­ver­sal turned them into bona fide icons. It a piece of cine his­to­ry that’s worth remem­ber­ing as Uni­ver­sal pre­pares to res­ur­rect its hor­ror canon (accord­ing to Vari­ety new films fea­tur­ing Drac­u­la, Van Hels­ing, the Mum­my, the Wolf­man and the Bride of Franken­stein are already in the works). The ques­tion is, can the Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters com­pete with the likes of Mar­vel and DC, not to men­tion a new­ly resur­gent Star Wars?

In order to build a sus­tain­able shared uni­verse, the cre­ative teams behind the great Uni­ver­sal Hor­ror revival will first have to find a way of teach­ing some old dogs new tricks with­out negat­ing what made them pop­u­lar in the first place. Eas­i­er said then done, of course – while vam­pires have been a per­ma­nent fix­ture in film cul­ture since 1931’s Drac­u­la, the oth­er crea­tures have drift­ed in and out of the pub­lic con­scious­ness. How to make Franken­stein and his Promethean tragedy rise again? Does the Wolf­man real­ly have the mass appeal, let alone the nards, to suc­ceed in a crowd­ed mar­ket­place? Will the Invis­i­ble Man sim­ply fade away?

Per­haps the most excit­ing prospect among the pro­posed slate is a solo out­ing for the ​‘Bride of Franken­stein’. The patch­work corpse’s bal­let­ic, grace­ful move­ments, her bizarre Nefer­ti­ti hair­do with the zig-zag light­ning bolts and swan-like hiss­ing, achieved icon­ic sta­tus, despite Elsa Lanchester’s lim­it­ed screen-time dur­ing the cli­max of James Whale’s 1935 clas­sic. But why not rework the sor­row­ful tale of 1936’s Dracula’s Daugh­ter, or give the Count’s trio of baes their own stage? Dracula’s lugubri­ous off­spring, with all her emo­tion­al bag­gage (girl’s got seri­ous dad­dy issues) and Sap­ph­ic incli­na­tions, is ripe for a redo.

Uni­ver­sal has, of course, attempt­ed to breathe new life into its Mon­sters before, but this time around they sim­ply can’t afford to have anoth­er Van Hels­ing on their hands. Note­wor­thy screen­writ­ers, includ­ing Alex Kurtz­man, Noah Haw­ley and Aaron Solomon, are pitch­ing exclu­sive­ly to the video game gen­er­a­tion and sum­mer crowds. For­get creepy goth­ic tales, peri­od set­tings and old-school chills – the new Uni­ver­sal Mon­ster films need to be grandiose adven­ture spec­ta­cles, merg­ing Marvel’s SHIELD crime fight­ers with gam­ing heroes like Lara Croft and ​‘Unchart­ed’ hero, Nathan Drake. Kurtz­man, fill­ing the director’s chair, is cur­rent­ly prep­ping The Mum­my as the inau­gur­al Uni­ver­sal Hor­ror 2.0 film for a March 2017 release. (Last year’s Drac­u­la Untold was ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be the first, but it remains unclear as to whether Uni­ver­sal has decid­ed to include it in the new canon.)

It makes per­fect sense for Uni­ver­sal to take a more pop­ulist route. It would at least show that they’ve learned their les­son from Beni­cio del Toro’s long-ges­tat­ing pas­sion project, The Wolf­man, which limped out on a cold week­end in Feb­ru­ary 2010, as if it had been plugged full of sil­ver bul­lets pri­or to despatch and turned up DOA. For all that The Wolf­man had its mer­its – name­ly gor­geous pro­duc­tion val­ues, glo­ri­ous make­up effects by Rick Bak­er and sump­tu­ous cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Shelly John­son – it was ulti­mate­ly deemed a van­i­ty project and became a com­mer­cial failure.

There is a cer­tain irony in the fact that Uni­ver­sal are essen­tial­ly the orig­i­na­tors of the shared cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse. But times have changed. Mak­ing the Prince of Dark­ness and his band of ghouls rel­e­vant again is a tall order. Can a Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters movie become a bil­lion-dol­lar box office jug­ger­naut? It’s pos­si­ble, but it’s hard to see how the stu­dio will make it work with­out fol­low­ing the Mar­vel for­mu­la for success.