Universal Monsters Movies Ranked
Few studios became associated with a single genre quite like Universal did with horror movies in the 1930s and 1940s. With their popular run of Universal Monster movies, one of the lasting powerhouses of Hollywood helped to establish the techniques with which you could effectively provide thrills and chills to audiences, building a legacy that remains impactful to this day.
Prior to the invention of the Talkie, Carl Laemmle Sr’s Universal had already made its mark with its lavish and atmospheric “Super Jewel” The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), starring Lon Chaney. But, as as a new decade dawned, the studio was looking for guaranteed crowd-pleasing movies that could be made quickly and relatively cheaply for a public in desperate need of escapism.
The Universal Monsters series of over 30 movies revolving around half a dozen memorable monsters was a lucrative venture to say the least, and stands alongside the Godzilla and Carry On franchises as one of the longest running of the 20th Century. But which entries have stood the test of time as iconic examples of horror, and which should be left dead and buried as dated products of the era?
Throw the switches and pray for a stormy night, because this Movie List, which ranks all 32 movies in the classic Universal Monsters franchise from worst to best, is alive… it’s aliiive!
Read First: Where to Start with Universal Classic Monsters
32. Son of Dracula (1943)
A descendant of Dracula (Lon Chaney Jr) disguises himself as a European aristocrat named Alucard, newly arrived to the USA, and begins a new reign of terror.
Padded, dull and somewhat problematic to modern eyes, Universal’s penultimate Dracula sequel is definitely not one for the ages.
It also features one of the most miscast lead roles in the whole canon: Chaney could convince in a variety of tortured roles but not as a supposedly sophisticated undead nobleman (a creature of the night who thinks it is the height of deception to spell his family name backwards).
31. The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
A direct sequel to The Mummy’s Ghost, Lon Chaney Jr’s undead Egyptian Kharis is revived in the bayous of Louisiana to continue to wreak havoc as he once more seeks a modern reincarnation of his lost love.
The second of Universal’s 1944 Mummy films is largely forgettable and merely recycles the same plot as the previous movie in a slightly different location.
You have to feel sorry for Chaney in his uncomfortable looking costume trudging through fake swamp sludge while trying and failing to look scary, but there’s certain pulp entertainment value in that even so.
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30. The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
High Priest Yousef Bey (John Carradine) travels to the USA to find and revive the mummified bodies of an Ancient Egyptian princess and her guardian Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr), before a modern woman bearing a striking royal resemblance (Ramsay Ames) causes the mummy to run amok with heartache for his love from a millennia ago.
The first of Universal’s two Mummy films released in 1944 starring Chaney is slightly better than The Mummy’s Curse, and there’s some novelty in the film’s monster-terrorising-maidens action taking place in a very American environment that couldn’t be more different to the usual Egyptian desert setting, but otherwise it’s business as usual.
It has even got one of the go-to Universal Monsters sequel title suffixes (for those keeping count, there were 2 x Ghost; 2 x Son of; 2 x Revenge and 4 x gender-flipped follow-ups).
How dare you put Dracula so far down. We shall have to fight this out in the SecondCutPod podcasts.