Tribute to Universal’s Monstrous Legacy

“Gods and Monsters,” indeed.

This line from “Bride of Frankenstein” not only sums up the new film about horror director James Whale but the entire Universal Studios horror genre, which the Nuart commemorates with an indispensable 12-film series, “Universal Horror!,” Friday through Dec. 15.

Seeing these monster classics again reaffirms Universal’s stature as the house of horror. Even to this day--did anyone say “Psycho,” which as it happens also opens Friday? No other studio identified itself so closely and so successfully with one genre in the 1930s and ‘40s. And for that, Universal occupies a distinguished place in film history.

What better genre for documenting those turbulent times than horror? These films seemed perfectly suited to the age--from the memories of death and destruction of World War I to the nightmare of the Great Depression followed by the unimaginable terror and destruction of World War II. No wonder these evocative films embraced the macabre and the supernatural.

Back then, Universal had the most European look of any studio, which accounts for the Old World backdrop of these classics. But then quaint villages and ominous dark castles are ideal settings for superstitious folk tales. Credit Universal founder Carl Laemmle, who first introduced horror to the studio in 1912 with “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

However, it was his son, Carl Laemmle Jr., who shepherded the studio’s most famous horror cycle. The fact that the elder Laemmle objected to the gruesome “Dracula” (1931, screening Monday and Tuesday) reveals a fascinating tension between the past and the future that extends beyond these films.

Yet it is that same tension that makes these films so relevant as we approach the new millennium, even though their fright factor may be diminished. After all, they are in essence about the horrifying impact of modern technology on a civilization struggling with its humanity, a theme as true today as it was when the films were made.

It all begins with a curse, and no legend remains as popular or enduring as the curse of the vampire. “Dracula” brought Universal back from the dead and started the whole cycle, thanks to Bela Lugosi and director Tod Browning. Despite its drawing-room creakiness (the Spanish-language version of the same film is visually superior), there’s no denying Lugosi’s mesmerizing charisma. He revels in every gothic moment.

Browning emphasizes two very important traits adopted by subsequent Universal horror films: the freakish outsider trapped between life and death and the hysteria he causes. Here it takes hold of Renfield (Dwight Frye), Dracula’s tormented servant who’s uncertain where he belongs. It’s a sad predicament, recalling the director’s earlier silent films with Lon Chaney as well as Browning’s renowned “Freaks” (1932).

Strangest Film Ever Pairs Karloff and Lugosi

Sometimes the hysteria is focused on the gods and sometimes on the monsters. In “Frankenstein” (1931, screening Friday through Sunday), it happens to be both. Colin Clive’s Dr. Frankenstein, the first of many mad scientist / creators, pits the Dionysian forces of reckless exuberance against the Apollonian forces of rational order. Caught in the middle, naturally, is the monster, who remains the most compelling of all supernatural creatures, thanks to Boris Karloff’s primitive presence and Whale’s elegant vision. This monster is truly haunted by existential angst.

While “Frankenstein” flaunts electricity as well as a boogeyman, “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935, also screening Friday through Sunday) stresses compassion and redemption--a much deeper and richer experience, thanks to Whale’s genius for combining horror and humor.

That’s because he mocks those grotesques who mistreat and misunderstand the monster, such as Ernest Thesiger’s wily Dr. Praetorius and Una O’Connor’s shrieking maid. The noble savage allusion is good, but Whale lays it on a little too thick with all those Christ metaphors.

Still, Karloff almost looks beautiful in the end, when he’s rejected by the bird-like Elsa Lanchester and curses Praetorius: “We belong dead!” How fitting that the only love he’s ever known comes during the film’s famous sequence with a blind man.

Of course, all pre-existing notions of the mad scientist literally disappear with “The Invisible Man” (1933, screening Dec. 13 and 14). Director Whale is at his sardonic best here, and Claude Rains makes an impressive screen debut as the cackling megalomaniac who achieves notoriety through nothingness. The invisible special effect still looks creepy, even in this era spoiled by computer-generated imagery.

Rains occupies a more esteemed position in “The Wolf Man” (1941, screening Wednesday and Dec. 10). He plays a Welsh nobleman trying desperately to understand his tormented son, played by Lon Chaney Jr., who happens to be a werewolf. (Jack Pierce’s lycanthropic makeup, by the way, still dazzles.) Scripted by the inspired Curt Siodmak, “The Wolf Man” is violent, engrossing and melancholy. It works on so many levels. When Gypsy Lugosi uncontrollably passes on the curse to Chaney, it signifies more than a plot device.

But then the real curse is that Chaney can’t live up to Rains’ expectations; he just doesn’t belong in his ancestral world.

Certainly the strangest Universal horror film is Edgar Ulmer’s “The Black Cat” (1934, screening Dec. 11 and 12). It might even be the best, cramming more evil and Art Deco into one film than you can imagine--a precursor to the truly universal horror of Nazism if ever there was one.

Here Karloff and Lugosi meet for the very first time on screen, and their rivalry is sinister. (Why even their names are enough to make you run for cover: Hjalmar Poelzig and Dr. Vitas Werdegast!)

Someone has to be the hero, and it’s the neurotic and obsessive Lugosi, betrayed by Karloff during World War I and seeking his revenge in the architect Karloff’s futuristic home in Austria. The aesthete Karloff now oversees a satanic cult. He’s not only murdered Lugosi’s wife and married his daughter, but has preserved the beautiful corpse in the bowels of his demonic lair. So it’s only fair that Lugosi skin Karloff alive for his sins--and for surpassing him as Universal’s premier horror star.

“A good cast is worth repeating,” as the end credits used to say, and so is a great film, especially since the “Universal Horror!” series boasts all-new prints. Now’s your chance to experience visceral storytelling--and perhaps best of all, in under 80 minutes.

BE THERE

“Universal Horror!,” a 12-film retrospective of horror films from Universal Studios, Friday-Dec. 15 at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., (310) 478-6379.