Monster of the Day #89

Updated on August 16, 2010 By Ken Begg 29 Comments

One of the great lost monsters, with (typically painful; the sunken eyes were effected with wire rings that dug into Chaney’s face) make-up formulated and worn by cinema’s first great horror star, Lon Chaney.  The movie tragically doesn’t exist anymore, but it was remade as Mark of the Vampire with Bela Lugosi in the Chaney role.  Interesting, in that Chaney would have starred in Universal’s Dracula movie had not he died before production started.  Such is history.

I wonder if Coffin Joe wasn’t at least partly based on this character, at least visually.

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  • In a previous thread, someone whined that we haven’t had any iconic monsters since the 1970s, so here goes with some at least semi-iconic 80s, 90s, and 21st century monsters.

    1) Freddy Krueger (1984)

    2) The “Scream” killer (1996) Yes I know it’s a different killer in every movie.

    3) Belial from “Basket Case” (1982)

    4) Gremlins (1984)

    5) Leprechaun (1993)

    6) Sadako from “Ringu) (1998)

    7) the complete re-imagining of the Mummy starting in 1999. I love Kharis and have all his films, but there is no doubt that the new Mummy is vastly more powerful.

    8) Jigsaw from the “Saw” films

    9) the Tremors monsters

    10) The Cenobites from Hellraiser

    So there. (Sticks tongue out.)

  • Granted, but that’s overall a pretty lackluster list for an entire thirty years worth of movies, wouldn’t you say?

    I sometimes wonder if there were more memorable monsters just in the ’50s than in all the years since. Maybe not quite, but I’ll bet it’s close.

  • Marsden

    Just to add to Sandy’s post (not that it needs it)

    11) Candyman I thought he was cool.

  • Ericb

    Will CGI kill the iconic monster? While the advanced technology allows for more imaginative monter designs their very complexity might make them less iconic, icons needing a certain archetypal simplicity to be effective.

  • Gamera

    I guess he’s not really an iconic monster since he’s pretty much a regular mummy with a cowboy hat but I have to put in a word for Bubba Ho-Tep.
    Anyone that can talk trash in hieroglyphics is a pretty cool monster in my book.

  • BeckoningChasm

    That face is awesomely terrifying.

  • Not everything on the list is lackluster. I’d put the Cenobites, Freddy, Jurassic Park’s dinos, or Sadako up against the older monsters no problem. And ermember that not all of the oldies actually “originated” in Hollywood. Do the 1930s really deserve full credit for creating Frankenstein, Dracula, or Mr. Hyde? The wolfman legend, yes.

  • Sandy — The monsters you cite are not in themselves necessarily lackluster (I’d toss Pumpkinhead in there, by the way), but I do think it’s a tepid ‘best of’ list to cover three entire decades of movie monsters.

    The ’30s deserve credit for making the monsters cultural icons, to the extent that Karloff and Lugosi are still the archetypes of the Monster and Dracula that we work off today. So from that standpoint, yes. And I think even the conception the public holds in its mind of Hyde, from his dress to Jekyll imbibing a smoking concoction and grabbing his throat during the change, comes from the 1931 film and all those that copied it.

    Eric — I *completely* agree. For example check out the Toho monsters; the really iconic ones are largely (arguably exclusively) from the classic era and are pretty basic. That’s why I think Gyaos is the only classic Gamera monster that has kind of hung around, I think; the others were too zany and complicated.

  • P Stroud

    Like him or hate him it’s hard to argue against Jason being a true horror icon.

  • Gamera

    For late ’70s – ’80s movies would the following count?

    Big Bruce- ‘Jaws’

    The Alien – ‘Alien’ films.

    The Predator- ‘Predator’ films.

    The Teminator- ‘My Dinner with Andre’- ahhhhh you know!

    All are pretty well known and spawned a load of copy-cat movies. Is that enough to be considered iconic?

    And waiting for someone to please fill me in on the Chaney Sr. role in Ken’s photo. I’ve seen the picture a zillion times but I’m not sure what film it’s from.

  • alex

    I always wondered what Chaney’s Dracula would have looked like.

  • TCM made a recreation of this film using production stills a couple of years ago. Basically its like watching a slide projector with musical accompiament.

  • fish eye no miko

    Gamera said: “And waiting for someone to please fill me in on the Chaney Sr. role in Ken’s photo. I’ve seen the picture a zillion times but I’m not sure what film it’s from.”

    It’s from a film called London After Midnight. Unfortunately, no copies of the full film exist anymore.

    Sandy: Interesting that you picked Sadako and not her American counterpart, Samara. While I actually like both version of the film, I think the fact that Sadako’s face is never seen makes her a bit more “monstrous”… do we know if she’s even fully human?

  • Gamera

    Thanks John and Fish Eye. I’m going to have to look up the TCM recreation. Oddly I don’t think I’ve seen ‘Mark of the Vampire’ either.

    Sigh, I really need to brush up on my monster movies…

  • Rock Baker

    Interesting debate, but I get the feeling ‘iconic’ doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. There are a lot of popular franchises on the list that may be well-known, but I think miss the mark of being iconic. Icons survive long beyond their creation (or re-imagining as may be the case for the Universal monsters), becomming so trenched in the pop culture of a society that EVERYone knows who they are if they’ve seen the films or not. Of the modern ones brought up today -and I think I can gage this with reason since I live in a farming area where only the most iconic monsters are well-known to the locals- I’d say a case could be made for Jason Vorhees, Fred Kruger, the Alien, the Predator, and the Terminator. Everything else sort of falls by the wayside, except for certain groups of people (like everyone here). For the world at large, with the exception of the 5 modern ones I noted, the other iconic monsters are all from the 20s/30s/40s (the Universals and a few others, Chaney’s silent Phantom and Hunchback remain the standard by which all others are judged despite countless newer versions), 50s (the Creature and a few others), and the 60s (Godzilla, despite being created in the earlier decade, his adventures from the 60s are the ones everyone remembers). Icon monsters of the 70s tended to be of the ‘real’ variety, like Nessie and Bigfoot.

    Getting back to the topic at hand, London After Midnight may yet be recovered. It certainly isn’t a sure thing, and the odds against it grow with each passing year, but they’re uncovering lost movies all the time (I, for one, am happy they found a print of Sting of Death!). Lost, but maybe not forever. One still hopes they can find a decent print in somebody’s attic.

    In the meantime, check out the Something Weird Video DVD release of Monsters Crash the Pajama Party. One of the many, many features on the disk is a collection of ambitious home movies from back in the 30s/40s which show a nice handle on how movies are made and even incorporate some special effects -in the Jekyll/Hyde film they even copy the ‘remove-the-colored-filter-and have-the-transformation-occur-in-camera’ trick from the March version. One of these ametuer movies is a recreation of London After Midnight. Maybe not the original film, but it is something!

  • John Campbell

    Ken, how did the movie become “lost”?

    Was this a similar case of insanity like when the BBC felt compelled to erase all the doctor who tapes?

    Was it ever released?

    Truly sad…

  • Rock Baker

    The story I heard was that the negative was lost when the film vault caught fire in the mid 50s. Since most release prints back then were on nitrate film, they’d burned/dissolved by the time of the fire. There’s still a slim chance a clean print might turn up, but London After Midnight remains effectivley lost to this day.

  • zombiewhacker

    Iconic cinemonsters have become fewer and farther between for a very good reason: modern audiences are getting harder to frighten.

    In the 1930s and ’40s, an actor with his eyelids pulled down or plastic fangs jutting from his jaws or fake eyebrows pointed in a devilish arch was sufficient to scare Depression-era audiences silly. Hence the movie monsters of the period were often nothing more than human characterizations one step removed.

    Then WW2 showed us what real monsters are like, and suddenly the cape and rubber bat on a wire routine just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Hence horror movies necessarily had to either evolve, becoming more sophisticated in their approach (The Haunting, Village of the Damned), or else produce monsters that were larger than life (think Them). I don’t view this shift negatively, mind you. In fact, I would argue that the past three decades have heralded some of the greatest horror films ever made, among them:

    Alien
    28 Days Later
    The Others
    The Orphanage
    [REC]
    The Thing
    The Sixth Sense

    But aside from H.R. Giger’s classic creation, few of these other movies feature an “iconic” screen horror because today’s fright pics, at their best (note that qualifier), draw their horrors primarily from inchoate fears of the subconscious (paranoia, fear of the other, fear of being robbed of one’s humanity, fear of the collapse of societal norms, etc). In some cases, nothing is shown on the silver screen, leaving the threat entirely to the audience’s imagination, as in The Others.

    Certainly, there are a few “human” monsters still lurking about the movie screen today, but how many of these characters are taken seriously even by their own creators? Freddy? The latest knife wielder from whatever Scream movie you happen to be Tivo-ing at the time? Frankly, it wouldn’t be a stretch to declare Heath Ledger’s Joker as the best “human” movie monster of the past few decades. After all, how much real difference is there between him and the lowly ranks of psycho/slashers frolicking about the screen these days?

  • BeckoningChasm

    Since most release prints back then were on nitrate film, they’d burned/dissolved by the time of the fire.

    Rock, if nitrate catches fire, it burns no matter what, even if you plunge the negative underwater. (I used to work as a temp in the film dept of the Library of Congress.)

  • Rock Baker

    My understanding is that nitrate film also has a habbit of decomposing rapidly, assuming it doesn’t catch fire and go up like flash paper. Old nitrate negatives, for example, if not properly maintained can turn to powder or goo. Given your background, you undoubtedly know more on the subject than I do. I haven’t handled nitrate film, and if I have it was only one or two prints a long time ago, so the damage I’m more familiar with is “Vinigar Syndrome.” For all the problems with nitrate film, though, the negatives offer the sharpest picture one could hope for.

  • BeckoningChasm

    For “human” villains, how about Hannibal Lecter?

  • Petoht

    There’s a reasonably detailed Wikipedia article about London After Midnight:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_After_Midnight_%28film%29

    Apparently, the fire was in ’67. Truly sad that so much history could be wiped out like this. Of course, not as sad as master tapes from television shows of yore being deleted to make room newer shows.

  • And many of the best horror films don’t have anything iconic in them at all. The Haunting and Suspiria spring immediately to mind.

    Once more I thrice damn the BBC for throwing out their old tapes because of their idiotic lack of foresight. I pains me more than words can say that every singble episode of My Mother the Car is available, but apparenlty not a single Yeti episode with Patrick Troughton was deemed preserving, and only two of the 6 episodes of the Quatermass Experiment. My blood boils.

  • Reed

    I have to ask, what is it that you like about Suspiria? I finally watched the movie on Netflix after years of hearing about it, and to say that I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. Yes, it’s very colorful and the soundtrack is really oppressive, but the only scene that really held my interest at all was the very final one where the evil lady is all, “You know what’s behind that door, Susy? Death!”

    I know, different strokes for different folks, but I am really curious about why so many of our people (may I refer to us as such?) love that film. Care to opine?

  • zombiewhacker

    @Beckoning Chasm

    We have a winner!

    @Reed

    Agreed, Suspiria is a silly horror movie with a great, atmospheric soundtrack and one heck of a final sequence, like you said.

    Not a ringing endorsement, I grant you, but worth a Halloween rental.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Italian horror movies have never been my cup of tea, but they do seem to attract lots of very zealous fans. I’m not really sure I see the attraction but I’d hardly demand that they stick to my tastes instead.

  • Rock Baker

    I believe I saw Suspiria once. I know I saw one of those artsy Italian horror flicks that failed to impress me. The Italian stuff I’ve seen tends to be better the more straightforward the telling of it is (and even then its still something of a crapshoot). But then I’ll admit I’m looking for entertainment, not Art.

  • PB210

    “The ’30s deserve credit for making the monsters cultural icons, to the extent that Karloff and Lugosi are still the archetypes of the Monster and Dracula that we work off today. So from that standpoint, yes. And I think even the conception the public holds in its mind of Hyde, from his dress to Jekyll imbibing a smoking concoction and grabbing his throat during the change, comes from the 1931 film and all those that copied it”.

    Actually, stage plays had helped make at least some of these properties well-known by the 1930’s.

  • sandra

    Anyone curious about SUSPIRIA can see it free on Youtube.