![]() ![]() In each of these films, Chaney wore elaborate makeup and prosthetics he’d designed himself. When he played the disfigured villain of The Phantom of the Opera (1925), some audience members literally fainted. The actor strapped on an enormous plaster hump to play Quasimodo in their 1923 blockbuster, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. One of the first true horror stars, Chaney put his body on the line for Universal. Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). designed his own makeup for The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera. Critics have noted the expressionist undertones of both movies like their German predecessors, they use deep shadows to help set the mood. He then directed The Mummy (a Boris Karloff vehicle) for the studio. Its cinematographer, Karl Freund, later went stateside and lent his services to Universal’s Dracula (the Bela Lugosi version). These films were part of the broader German Expressionist art movement, whose disciples used visual “creative distortion” to invoke strong emotions or states of mind.Ī masterpiece of German Expressionism is the 1927 silent sci-fi film Metropolis. ![]() Caligari (1919) and other German horror flicks made during the Weimar Republic had ultra-stylized costumes, sets, and lighting schemes that didn’t resemble anything you’d see in real life-which was the point. German Expressionism had a big influence on Universal’s Monster Movies.Īfter World War I, Germany developed a taste for movies that looked unrealistic on purpose. Whether you’re a lifelong fan or a newcomer to the Universal Monsters universe, here are 11 things every cinephile should know about these classic monster movies. Those black-and-white chillers still resonate today, even with some of them pushing 100 years old. From the early 1920s through the late 1950s, the studio unleashed a series of monster megahits, like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Phantom of the Opera. For more than 30 years, Universal Pictures defined the American horror movie-how it looked, how it sounded, and how it felt.
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