RetroClassics Film Series presents
Universal Monsters Collection
UNIVERSAL MONSTERS COLLECTION
THE BLACK CAT(US, NR, 66 min, 1934)Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff square off as decades-old nemeses who meet for a fateful showdown on the very battlefield where Karloff's dark priest sacrificed his own army and framed Lugosi's good doctor for the crime. Karloff plays a demonic architect who stole Lugosi's wife and built his home on the graves of his victims. One of the finest horror films to emerge from Universal's golden age of horror.
THE RAVEN(US, NR, 62 min, 1935)Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi) comes out of retirement to save the life of a wealthy judge’s daughter. After restoring her, he cooks up a scheme to kidnap the woman and kill her fiancé and father in his Edgar Allen Poe-inspired torture dungeon. To do his dirty work, Vollin turns a wanted criminal (Boris Karloff) into a hideous monster to guarantee his subservience.
What Jim Says...What more can I say about the inclusion of the Universal Monsters Collection? What surprises me most is how many films are part of the series. According to some lists, there are more than 70 movies in the official canon. (I thought there was only a dozen or so.) Going in, I knew it would probably be unwise to expect Universal to have 35mm prints of these lesser-known works, and I was not proven wrong. Thankfully, the studio did have a lot of these titles beautifully re-mastered for digital projection and, most likely, that's the only way we're ever gonna see them on a big screen from this point in time onward. I polled the Retro fans about which films to select for this season's Universal Monster program. I really expected a strong showing for 1943's The Phantom of the Opera. Instead, the voting was overwhelmingly skewed toward this billing of Karloff and Lugosi.