A Bucket of Blood (1960)

Director Roger Corman is fast becoming a bit of a hero of mine. Whilst it would be a stretch to consider him a great director, it would appear that his great talent was being able to stitch together something fairly enjoyable from the most slender of resources. A Bucket of Blood, like much of his output, was made using the small change he found down the back of the sofa; apparently it was shot over a three day weekend because the rain meant that he couldn’t play tennis. His directorial style is probably best described as “efficient”; there’s no imagery or shots in this film that strike you as being particularly bad or good - Corman gets in, does what he has to do and gets out again. Read more

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Received wisdom dictates that Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale’s own follow-up to his epochal Frankenstein, is one of the few sequels that actually outclasses the original. Bettering a film as magnificent as Boris Karloff’s first outing as the nameless monster is quite a tall order, and although I accept I’m in a minority opinion, I really don’t think the sequel comes anywhere close; instead of the all-conquering masterpiece I was expecting, it’s actually a bit of a curate’s egg. Read more

The Invisible Man (1933)

Somewhere along the line, director James Whale decided to start incorporating comedy into his horror movies. Many people consider 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein to be the high-point of his genre-mixing, but as far as I’m concerned it’s his earlier film The Invisible Man, based on HG Wells’ novel, that’s the most successful. Whilst Bride is obviously a great film, the camp comedy doesn’t sit too well with the tragic elements of Mary Shelley’s story and Karloff’s doleful performance. The fact that the Invisible Man’s central protagonist is, erm, an invisible man, gives a greater opportunity for the comedy to arise organically out of scenario, especially with the script’s bumbling policemen, hysterical barmaids and angry mobs. Read more

The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy is almost like an early greatest hits film for the fledgling Universal monster series, pairing director Karl W Freund (responsible for the lovely cinematography on Dracula) with Boris Karloff, then riding high on the success of Frankenstein. The combination is, predictably, absolutely electric; but whilst the film is undeniably a masterpiece, it’s also an unexpectedly quiet, almost dreamy affair. Wisely, Freund doesn’t try to get Karloff to repeat his Frankenstein performance as Im-Ho-Tep; all we see of the mummified version of his character is his face and hand, leaving the rest to the imagination. Read more