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A Brief History Of Horror – Frankenstein And The 1930s

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Blasphemy aside, that’s a lot of ‘it’s alive’s. The reason it doesn’t sound idiotic is because of the delivery by the young English actor Colin Clive . The passion, inflexion and variation he gives to the somewhat repetitive line makes it positively musical. He is one of a group of incredibly talented individuals who arrived at Universal in the early 1930s and helped instigate one of the most important movements in American horror: the age of the Universal monster.

The early days of sound cinema include some timeless movies, but there was also a certain degree of trial-and-error needed before all the edges were smooth. Todd Browning , an old hand at silents, developed Dracula for Universal in 1931; after Lon Chaney’s death from lung cancer the previous year, and despite the studio’s stance against him the role eventually went to Bela Lugosi , who turned in one of the most famous performances in cinema. The movie was a big hit for the studio, and effectively kicked off the Universal Horror franchise that would pump out movies fairly steadily for the next couple of decades.

Source: WhatCulture!