Largely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents veers between taut, psychological thriller and ghost story with such seamless accomplishment that it’s easy to see why the distributors were baffled as to how to bracket it. In the red corner, we have all of the hallmarks of the Poe-esque ghost story: the Gothic mansion, whose beauty and tranquillity is forever stained with family tragedy and shame. Into this is added the external innocent, in our case Deborah Kerr’s Miss Giddens, a Governess who has been sent to take charge of two orphans kept at a distance by their benefactor uncle. At first enchanted with her new life, Miss Giddens rapidly comes to discover that this is a corrupted Eden; stifling under the oppression of a collective and hidden shame, and, perhaps, something supernatural to boot.

If this was as far as it went, The Innocents would still be hailed as a ghost story of stunning execution. Clayton was blessed with seeming to catch a few of his cast and crew at the peak of their game, and cinematographer Freddie Francis was undoubtedly one of them. Much has been written about his pioneering use of hazing and blurring in the scenes involving the apparitions. Rightly so, as without it the latent ambiguity of Miss Giddens experiences would be lost. However, that one aspect of his work has to be set in the context of his genius for giving the entire film an ethereal aura, which is at one and the same time intoxicating and deeply unsettling. He was undoubtedly assisted in this by the wonderfully tense screenplay of, among other, Truman Capote and Sir John Mortimer (how often do you get to write that?). It rockets along, and in avoiding the pacing pitfall suffered by most period piece ghost stories gives The Innocents a very modern feel. By lulling the viewer into this dreamlike state, Clayton has us perfectly positioned to share Miss Giddens’ journey with her.

Which leads us into blue corner; the psychological dissection of our intriguing protagonists. Cinema studies of the human conditions work best when they have a cast decent enough to carry them off. Here, Clayton was again fortunate in drawing a once-in-a-career performance out of Kerr. She wrings out the hidden frustrations, anxieties and desperations of Giddens with an increasingly startling and unsettling intensity, perfectly balancing her position as both victim and tormentor. It’s a testament to his performance that the ten-year old Martin Stephens (he of Village of the Damned fame) provides a perfect counter-foil to an actress at the top of her game. The two of them dominate the screen as they seek to define and determine the nature of their relationship, and through that the truth behind what is happening at Bly House. Descending from sweet playfulness through to mutual (and even paedophilic?) dependency, we’re left with the wonderful frustration of asking whose story has this been all along: his or hers?

Whether through design or default, The Innocents will always provoke debate between those who see it as a ghost story and others who view it as a character study. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; Clayton provides a textbook example of how to do both.

On paper, you could be forgiven for thinking that you probably had seen it already, as many of the elements that would define the series are present and correct from the start – a man in a rubber monster suit smashing up miniature replicas of Tokyo, the anti-nuclear subtext, hundreds of Japanese people screaming in panic… But whilst subsequent Godzilla films have their moments, they’re a world away from the heart and soul that you’ll find in the very first film. There is absolutely nothing camp about this movie; instead it’s a stately, emotional and at times even harrowing film that treats its subject matter thoughtfully and with gravitas.

Godzilla is of course an ancient monster woken up after millions of years and given terrifying powers by the Japanese H-bomb tests. Obviously, this puts the theme of nuclear weaponry front and centre in the film, but to describe it as simply an anti-nuclear polemic is an over simplification. Godzilla is far more multilayered than many subsequent horror and sci-fi movies that use a simplistic environmental warning as a narrative rationale for monsters and zombies; instead, director Ishiro Honda’s triumph is the way he rejects upfront preaching for a sophisticated threading of ideas throughout the film. Godzilla indeed represents the destructive power of the atomic bomb both on a literal and an allegorical level; however, Serizawa’s dilemma over the deployment of his Oxygen Destroyer (which occupies most of the second half of the film and is written off too easily by many critics as a simple plot device) reflects the wider issues surrounding the ethics of atomic power: should a discovery be suppressed if there are many ‘bad’ applications for it above and beyond its immediate advantages? And once a discovery has been made, can there ever be any turning back? That the Oxygen Destroyer ultimately saves the day, despite being an even more destructive superweapon than those lamented in the film, suggests a thoughtful ambivalence about the nuclear issue, rather than the soapbox grandstanding of lesser directors.

But as well as brains, the film has a very human heart to it as well. Honda deliberately resonates with recent events that would sit very heavily in the Japanese national memory; characters discuss openly the horror of nuclear warfare that hit the country only nine years previously, and the opening scene on the boat is uncomfortably close to the Castle Bravo test earlier in 1954, where the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was poisoned by the fallout from American nuclear testing. These are scars that run deep, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the scenes surrounding Godzilla’s first attack on Tokyo. Subsequent films shied away from showing the human cost of the monster’s rampages but here it is in full force: orphaned children in hospitals sending Geiger counters into overload; a hysterical mother sitting with her two babies on her doorstep shouting that they’ll all be joining their dead father soon; schools of children praying for an end to the onslaught. It’s sobering, harrowing stuff, made all the more emotional by the dispassionate way Honda’s camera simply records the events as they unfold.

Crucially, the effects – although creaky by modern standards – don’t let the side down. This is partly helped by the noir-ish black and white look of the film, where most of the monster action takes place at night, but equally it’s hard not to be impressed by just how well Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is realised. Unlike the friendly green dinosaur he would later become, here the monster is a dark, brutish killing machine who towers over the city with ominous force. Helpfully, the actors play it for real as well with no mugging to the camera, and it’s hard not to find at least some pathos in the central love triange of Serizawa, Ogata and Emiko.

Honda and his team made plain their debt to King Kong nearly twenty years earlier, and whilst that film may have been the first to successfully realise the concept of a huge creature running rampage in a major city, to my mind Godzilla remains the finest giant monster movie ever made. The spectacle we expect from such a film is there if that’s what you’re looking for, but almost uniquely for the genre, it is overshadowed by the concepts, ideas and genuine emotion. In subsequent films we root for the monster and cheer when he knocks down another skyscraper, but here Honda successfully conveys the sheer terror of living through such an unstoppable onslaught. Godzilla is never preachy or presumptive in its nuclear subtext, but instead offers a harrowing and heartfelt yelp of pain from a culture that had all too recently suffered the worst destruction that science could then concoct.

The Spanish version runs for 20 minutes longer than the Browning version, and in general the extra time is well used to flesh out the story and add to the latent atmospherics of the tale. An abundance of small changes demonstrates the point. For instance, when the carriage carrying Renfield arrives at the village at the foot of Borgo Pass in the Browning version the villagers quickly dissipate and leave one sole peasant to beg the doomed lawyer not to proceed. The Spanish version fleshes this out a bit by having a larger group of villagers trying to warn him of his fate. The sincerity of a flock of people begging with Renfield not to proceed as opposed to a couple of men is much more effective at creating a genuine sense of foreboding and the feeling that these people really are terrified of the occupant of Castle Dracula.

On a broader level the Spanish version is a little more skilful at drawing this out of the story than the Browning version. The relationship between Eva and the Count is a lot more complex in this than the simple hunter-prey dynamic forwarded by Browning. As in the book the latent sexuality of the Count is allowed to shine through, as is that of his victims. I think this is helped by the excellent performance of Lupita Tovar as Eva, who comes across as a fuller and more rounded woman and who lacks the fragility of Helen Chandler’s Mina Harker. It’s a little easier to understand why Dracula risks being unmasked and destroyed to track her down, and also helps compound the tragedy of his insatiable existence that he can’t help himself.

My understanding is that the Universal crew would use the sets and film during the day whilst the Spanish crew took over by night. This would certainly help to explain some of the more accomplished direction and camerawork of this version as they were able to observe the Universal team at work and observe where improvements could be made. Perhaps because of its provenance in Broadway the Universal version at times feels like a stage play, especially the very static scenes towards the end once we’ve left Transylvania. To its credit the Spanish version almost completely avoids this and manages to keep the film injected with a sense of pace and tension. It still falls into the minor trap of losing itself in the drama of the Seward house in the closing scenes. The same thing happens in the Browning version, and Dracula becomes almost a bit character at times. Because this version establishes an edgier dynamic between the Count and the other characters early on his absence is less noticeable. In fact, I think this version would have benefited from being a bit longer. Whereas the Browning version is probably just on the mark in terms of length at times it feels like a stage play that could lose ten minutes or so. In contrast this version feels as thought it was made as a film in its own right rather than as an adaptation of a stage show, and for this reason it never feels burdensome or badly paced.

I couldn’t end without a few words on how Carlos Villarias compares to the legendary Bela Lugosi. Undoubtedly Lugosi is still the finest Dracula there has ever been. Taken as a whole though, watching this version made me realise that he is perhaps too dominant in Browning’s version. Because of his brilliance he cannot help but dominate the screen, and for this reason he perhaps prevents the other characters from truly developing or the subtleties of the story from emerging. The obverse is true with this version; whereas the cast are all perfectly competent none of them is outstanding (bar Tovar, above), but this allows the story to take priority rather than individual performances. If only Bela had learnt Spanish………

In the decades since its initial release, Freaks has lost none of its power to shock. Regardless of whether or not the film is any good it is a unique experience to behold. Tod Browning spared no effort in tracking down real circus and carnival performers to appear in his movie, with predictably genuine results. The problem is that he seems to have spent rather less time in deciding what he would do when he actually found his misfits.

As a result Freaks is quite a difficult film to read. This has nothing to do with the actual plot, which is fairly linear and holds no surprises. What is more problematic is Browning’s ambiguous representation of the freaks themselves. With great fanfare the film opens extolling the inherent virtue of our plucky underdogs, observing that their community is one of mutual support and inherent virtue. There is no wallowing self-pity and mean-spirited vindictiveness here. Though the freaks are obviously different their ‘code’ helps to ensure that their dignity is maintained and their worth recognised.

On this reading the truly unsavoury character is Cleopatra, who has no regard for the peculiar but particular place the freaks have in the circus hierarchy and so sets about manipulating Hans, to the growing chagrin of both his fellow freaks as well as the other circus performers. The conclusion of her machinations is rendered slightly less brutal on this reading, coming across as righteous vengeance against a wicked, unpitying force.

The problem with this is that there is an implicit fault in Browning’s treatment of the freaks, one which renders them susceptible to the wary disregard embodied in Cleopatra. Essentially, we know nothing of them beyond their physical impairments. The overt attempts to elucidate their everyday lives are focused principally on Hans, but this is too quickly overshadowed by his entanglement with Clepoatra. We are therefore left to reflect on the portentous warning delivered at the beginning of the film-that the freaks are a secretive group who have their own rules and who do not look kindly on people who transgress them. It is difficult not to see in the interactions between the freaks and even those befriend them a certain discomfort at an insurmountable divide. One wonders whether Venus does not pity the freaks just as much as Cleopatra, making her befriending of them just as devious as that of Cleo and Hercules. The final scenes, with the freaks advancing out of the shadows, reinforces this characterisation. Emerging from their shadows to enforce their code seems like the most natural thing in the world to Browning’s freaks.

In places it feels as though Browning’s mask drops and we see Freaks for what it is; a celluloid retelling of the traditional carnival freak-show which forms the very backdrop of his film. That it is powerfully done cannot be denied, but its attempts to portray itself as more leave it open to the charge of being just as exploitative as those whom it attempts to demonise.

There was a time, if oft-quoted legends are to be believed, when an Englishman could leave his home unlocked without fear of being robbed blind by hoards of smacked-up hoodies. Indeed, so pervasive were English good-manners that we managed to conquer a third of the globe with them. Nations cowered not before our fleets and armaments but in deference to our irresistible gentility. Is it coincidental that the arrival of The Beatles and the ‘permissive society’ heralded the decline of our Empire? I think not.

The triumph of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, and of this 1960s adaptation, is that they perfectly portray the supposed security of this era whilst using its very gentility as the most effective weapon against it. The calm and tranquillity of Midwich, and the similarly ordered lives of its inhabitants, act as blinds to the contemporary themes Wolf Rilla chooses to emphasise from the book. Most obvious amongst them is how society deals with subversion from within. Unlike (too) many horror films the majority of the village residents are more than aware of the threat posed to them by the children so no time is wasted pointlessly establishing any menace.

Instead-and this is VOTD real strength-the problem of what should, and indeed can be done provides the ultimate moral dilemma to our protagonists. The struggle between balancing liberty and security is never an easy one, especially so when your enemy is psychic. It is perhaps fitting that the Professor is ultimately called upon to solve a problem he was instrumental in worsening. But, so understandable is his minority opinion in the debates leading up to this that one cannot help but admire his eventual conversion and share his regrets that things didn’t work out differently.

The ‘dayout’ afflicting Midwich is wonderfully conceived and majestically portrayed. Intertwining it with the opening credits (reminiscent of the opening to Day of the Dead) ratchets up the tension brilliantly, as well as giving the film a thoroughly modern feel. This is built upon by Geoffrey Faithfull’s stylish cinematography during these initial scenes. The use of rapidly changing and varied camera angles, peppered with scenarios designed to capture the magnitude of the ‘dayout’ give VOTD a surprisingly fresh feel for a film released in 1960.

The cast and script are perfectly attuned to do this, having an archetypal period feel on the one hand but again managing to feel perfectly fresh on the other. This is undoubtedly one of the best acted films I’ve seen for a long time, with George Sanders and Martin Stephens injecting their clashes with a disconcertingly effective sense of impending menace.

This sometimes comes at the expense of the minor characters, but they’re so intriguing that this neglect is rarely overly conspicuous. A little more character development might have been beneficial though, especially given the seeming randomness of the fate dealt out to Midwich and the other communities around the world. The quality of the performances arouses a natural curiosity in the characters being portrayed, and tantalizing tit-bits of information are all too often skipped over. It would be instructive, for example, to know why Professor Zellaby left marriage until so late in life. This is obviously of importance in light of his subsequent reluctance to see the true nature of the children and could perhaps have been explored more. However, these trifling shortcomings only arise because Village of the Damned is a quality production in every other respect.

This wasn’t the first thought I had whilst watching Vincent Price walking around the deserted streets of his vanquished city, but it certainly cropped up. This is perhaps because The Last Man on Earth captures the utter solitude that must confront any person with the misfortune to bear that title so well. Despite the obvious technical limitations of the time Ubaldo Ragona obviously put real thought into getting across the isolation of Price’s new world. After a plague wipes out everyone else on Earth (just about) Robert Morgan, who has a mysterious immunity to the disease, manages to go on living life for three years in this new, quiet world. There are lots of little touches which help trap us there with him. The fact that Morgan keeps track of time by writing on his kitchen wall (calendars being no longer printed) is just one of these and is perhaps the most telling, reminiscent as it is of prisoners scratching lines on their cell walls to measure the duration of their imprisonment. Overall though, Morgan seems to be coping very well with his new routine. When we see him collecting his groceries and filling his car with petrol it is difficult to see what has changed, coming across as a Romero-esque back-handed compliment to the state of society. It would seem that boredom is the greatest threat to Morgan’s survival.

Until one realises that one quite serious change is the fact that the only other people to have survived the plague are a race of nocturnal vampires/zombies. This is where the ‘I Am Legend’ adaptation works so well, and also, conversely, where it trips the film up a little. Though Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay for Ragona it is apparent that the final result is the product several re-writes. Thus, the early parts of Last Man set out Morgan’s sense of siege brilliantly, both in terms of the vampires trying to feast on him and also his own sense of inadequacy as a man of science in being unable to stem the plague. What slightly lets the film down is how little time it devotes to the emotional consequences of all of this on Morgan. The sense of rage boiling away in him at seeing his family succumb, and the need for revenge against the vampires and their curse that he blames for this is lost somewhere along the way. His systematic comb through the city preying on the vampires is subsumed by his overall meticulousness in trying to survive so is freed from any sense of retribution. The scene where he oversleeps at his wife’s tomb hints at what is really driving him along but the rather lengthy flash-back to happier times dilutes the potency of the message somewhat.

This helps account for what can seem like rather a heavy-handed and muddled ending. As we are unaware of what Morgan’s real motivations are (for they clearly transcend survival, even through the occasional haze of Ragona’s direction) his closing remarks are incapable of conveying the latent power of Matheson’s book. The three-way struggle between the vampires, the ‘mutants’ and Morgan is reduced to a simple, elemental fight between good and evil. However, the complexities of deciding which side represents what are flagged up but are never utilised or explored. It is a tribute to Price’s fine performance that the innate sorrow of Morgan’s plight shines through, even if the ultimate absolution of the book is denied him.

Rouben Mamoulin has a damned good stab at exploring the theme in this, the first sound version of the book. Like the vast majority of adaptations, the perspective of the work is shifted entirely from the narration of Utterson (who is entirely excluded here) to following Jekyll himself. Though this removes the mystery elements of the original story (where Jekyll and Hyde were presented as separate figures initially) I think it’s to the advantage of the film. Almost nobody now would sit down and watch a Jekyll and Hyde film without knowing that they were the same person, though my apologies if you would have and I’ve ruined it for you. You only have to endure Keanu Reeve’s grinding and distracting narration in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to know that an overly literal devotion to the original text is not always advisable for a film treatment. By focusing the story entirely on Jekyll’s downfall we’re not only forced to confront the horror of what is happening to this eminently likable man but must also try and decide who exactly is to blame for it.

I say this because from the start Jekyll himself is a complex character. The initial sugar-lumps of him lovingly tending to his patients in the charity hospital, charming his delectable fiancé, and mesmerising his audience with his scientific knowledge point to a man confident in himself and happy with the world around him. Mamoulin’s great success though is recognising that beneath this veneer things are not all that they seem. The first time we see Jekyll with Muriel Carew for example, we’d be forgiven for thinking that he is utterly devoted to her and wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her (I lost count of the number of ‘I love you darling’s that were bandied around). What Mamoulin does excellently is show that this dependence is not necessarily a good thing and raises the possibility that Jekyll is almost too in love to the extent that it is a force of harm in his life rather than good. The subtlety in Stevenson’s story-brought out beautifully in this film-is that Jekyll experimented with the twin sides of his personality not because he was a virtuous and curious man of science but because he was a flawed man.

All too often adaptations paint the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde as an elemental struggle between the good and evil, with the latter, when released from its shackles, finally overpowering the former. What makes this film work so well is that it recognises that things are a lot more blurred than this. It’s a little underplayed in relation to Hyde, with his malevolence quickly anchored on sexual depravity rather than primeval brutality. He is quickly-too quickly perhaps-confined to scowling at people until towards the end of the film when things really get going. It’s difficult to resent Hyde because, unlike Jekyll, he is at least honest in his actions. It’s fascinating to see the duel between the ‘two’ intensify to the point where Hyde finally reveals the secret and curses the man he ‘hates most in the world’. It’s also instructive to note that this contrasts with Jekyll, who only seeks to stop Hyde once the killing starts and who even then never brings himself to express hatred for him. Once again the question of who is the more moral is not an easy one to answer. You can never quite tell whether Jekyll resents Hyde’s presence or whether he secretly longs to be overpowered by him and revels in seeing his long-supressed desires fulfilled. I suspect that it is the latter. Hyde is not a ‘bad’ Jekyll so much as Jekyll is a cowardly Hyde.

This is to say nothing of the superb job Mamoulin did in presenting the film. Frederic March is irreplaceable as Jekyll/Hyde, and gives a performance which has few rivals from the 1930s. The make-up on Hyde will be familiar to any viewer of Red Dwarf but March is flawless in using it to full effect. The first transformation is utterly mesmerizing and gives the Invisible Man a run for its money in the special effects department. I can’t praise this effort highly enough. Everything about it works, from the effective dissection of a moral minefield through to the way that it’s beautifully packaged. Though Hyde’s repugnance does eventually lead to the viewer losing their initial sympathy with him I am still unsure whether Dr. Jekyll was ever likeable at all. I think that this was the point all along and I’ll wager that I’d still be unsure after another 120 years.

Many of the prevailing traits of Romero’s work – characters in conflict against a backdrop that is supernatural but has very real practical consequences – arrive fully formed; indeed, the conflict between the seven inhabitants of the farm house is really the entirety of the film, with the frenzy of killing in the final reel really only serving to accelerate the plot towards its brutally ironic climax. But if the ideas are there, the characterisation isn’t; the survivors are a rather obvious cross-section of late 60s America, who fight one another from the word go – there’s little interaction other than shouting, which rather leads one to the conclusion that those massacred by the zombies rather deserve their fate for being so wooden-headed. Many of the films quieter moments are the scenes between Ben and Barbara, but the fact that she’s permanently shell-shocked means there’s little opportunity to understand her as a person. It’s presumably intentional that it’s only really Ben who earns the full respect of the viewer, and this is probably in part down to Duane Jones’ commanding but subtle performance.

This rather one-note characterisation is probably the only weak link in the film, but for my money it makes it a lesser film than both Dawn of the Dead and Martin, both of which feature far more rounded protagonists. There’s a lot less wall-to-wall splatter than in Dawn as well, but this means that when it all kicks off in the finale the gore scenes have extra punch. The photography captures events with a claustrophobic, almost documentary realism, which really makes the best of the director’s limited resources. Though I feel Romero went onto greater things, Night of the Living Dead more than deserves its place at the top of the horror tree, simply for the way it broke horror out of the Universal / Hammer mould and gave it a new shape that carried both shocks and contemporary resonance. He gave us a new form of horror movie in which terrible events struck real people in real places and had real consequences, and for this reason alone many later classics owe him an inestimable debt.

First up, the acting in Revolt has to be some of the worst I’ve ever encountered on film. After ten minutes it becomes apparent that we can expect nothing from the leads – Dean Jagger and Dorothy Stone – and the only character with even the faintest hint of intrigue about him is (with Roy D’Arcy shining in the role) criminally underused. The script is truly awful, feeling as though it has been tacked together by rummaging around at the bottom of a shredder and gluing together the remnants of better movies. The Halperins clearly didn’t really care about the story as such, and contented themselves with devising a plausible scenario on which to ground a White Zombie follow-up. There are some moments of promise here, with the Cambodian mythology scenes offering the briefest moment of hope to those looking for a continuation of the excellent work the Halperins did in establishing the terror of black magic in White Zombie. This is quickly trodden underfoot though, and the heavy-handed love tryst that provides the sedentary core of the story resurfaces. What’s worse is that it’s obvious that the Halperins are trying to emulate the success of their earlier classic by transplanting sections of it directly into Revolt (most obviously in the superimposing of Lugosi’s eyes during the trance scenes); the jilted lover act premise is at the heart of this, but unlike White Zombie there isn’t enough of an internal narrative in Revolt to sustain the leaps of faith necessary for audience engagement.

Lasting only 64 minutes, Revolt of the Zombie feels like an interminable ordeal. The acting is so bad that it transcends ineffectual and becomes genuinely off-putting. Once this happens the threadbare script provides no safety net, and the pointlessness of the plot becomes inescapable. I can’t blame the Halerpins for wanting to cash in on their White Zombie success, but it’s such a shame that they didn’t use the opportunity to develop on the themes that made the original so captivating. Definitely one to avoid.

Like all of Wood’s movies the production on Bride of the Monster is dire. There is a mismatch between his interior and exterior shots, continuity between night and day is completely overlooked and his sets wobble worryingly during any action scenes. Having said that, it isn’t half as bad as his later Plan 9 From Outer Space and it rarely becomes distracting or too disruptive to the plot. Wood actually comes close to turning out something quite atmospheric if one can look beyond the barely disguised photograph enlarger machine as the ‘Atomic ray’ or the tellingly listless giant squid that lurks in the swamp, and there is a genuine hint of menace surrounding Lugosi’s secluded lair.

Likewise, though the script is as shoddy and clichéd as they come it is far more accessible and less convoluted than some of his offerings, so it is easy to overlook the hackneyed journalists and policemen. Wood also manages to marshal his players effectively, especially in light of the fact that one of the leads (Tony McCoy) wasn’t even an actor but the son of his financial backer. In so far as comparisons with his other works go, Bride of the Monster is a polished piece with none of the unnecessary plot twists or padded characters he allowed to creep into his other offerings. As I said above, the flaws we see here are those that you could pick out in many other B-movies of the era, movies which (unlike Bride) fail to overcome their physical defects with worthy plots or memorable acting performances.

It is Bela Lugosi who really shines, and if ever an example was needed of an actor rising above his material then this is it. The psychotic Dr. Eric Vornoff was Lugosi’s last speaking part, poignantly playing the mad scientist stereotype that became the staple of his later films. He dominates the screen with this role and fills it with his old commanding personality and sincerity. The lovely scene where he unburdens himself (“hooome? I haff no hooome”) is as touching as Tim Burton rendered in Ed Wood to those familiar with Lugosi’s career, and is a fitting swansong to the cinematic giant. For this reason alone it is difficult for me to dislike Bride of the Monster, for despite his limited resources Wood treats Lugosi and the material with the heartfelt respect they deserves and manages to churn out a respectable little movie which proves (though none is needed) that he’s far from the worst director in film history.