December 14, 2004
Monster Legacy Collection
Finished my Universal monster movie collection when my Monster Legacy Collection set came in the mail today. What a great set - Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man DVD's, plus the bonus busts of each that came with it. Way cool, there is 5 movies in each collection, 'cept Wolfie which only has 4. The busts are really nice, much larger than I thought and they look really neat. I also got the other three collections - Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Paid about the same for these, but no busts. Still, it's nice to have all these sets in my collection. I can remember watching them when I was young and just loving 'em to death.
I went through the whole Mummy collection on the weekend. The original Mummy was cool, but pretty slow going. They used some German technique of holding a scene for an extra long time to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, I forget what the word for it is. Definately not for today's ADD type viewer. Boris Karloff is very good in this one, he's got that look and that voice that'll creep the living fuck out of you.
The second movie [Mummy's Hand] was a lot quicker paced and light-hearted, still lots of fun. The third [Mummy's Tomb] picks up where the second one left off, even having a short recap of what happened in the previous film. All these movies reuse footage from the previous films, then change the story around a bit. Like second movie calls the mummy Karis rather than Im-Ho-Tep [?] and he is revived via Tana leaves rather than the magical scroll. Anyway, Mummy's Tomb was pretty good but not quite as good as Hand. The actors from Hand come back as the same characters 'cept older, you can tell because they're wearing a lot of makeup and their hair is dyed grey. :)
My favourite of this set is the fourth movie [Mummy's Ghost]. It has John Carradine as the priest, and he's the creepiest of the bunch. This movie has a strange, eerie vibe to it and the way it ends is way cool, not the typical ending for movies made during this era.
The last movie [Curse] is easily the worst of the bunch, you can tell the vein was all played out and they were just going through the motions at this point. The way the mummy is slowly trundling towards his victims, and then they just hop in their car and drive away, is both funny and somewhat sad. Hey, this is The Mummy, show some respect, some fear!
Great set, I was very pleased with it and I hope the rest are as good. I started the Invisible Man set a couple days ago, still working on the first movie. Never really watched this one before, but Claude Rains has a wicked voice, lots of fun listening to his evil schemes.
Posted by Fungii at December 14, 2004 07:20 PM |