Universal Monsters Movies Ranked
29. Phantom of the Opera (1943)
The career of brilliant musician Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) is cut short by physical infirmity and being horribly disfigured by acid while lashing out at uncaring patrons. He dons an opera mask and seeks revenge while also trying to ensure his favourite opera singer Christine (Susanna Foster) gets the leading role she deserves.
Universal’s second adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s “The Phantom of the Opera” was also their first monster movie in striking Technicolor, reusing many impressive studio sets from previous lavish projects – notably the 1925 silent film Phantom.
Despite bringing back Claude Rains to entertainingly chew more scenery ten years after The Invisible Man, this one lacked a particularly strong vision and is now somewhat inessential.
28. The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
Kharis the Mummy (Lon Chaney Jr) is transported to the USA where he is compelled to avenge the desecration of his Princess Ananka’s tomb years before.
This works well enough as an early prototype slasher-style horror with the Mummy working his way through a list of targets deserving of his wrath, but it is also cheap and brief, and made all the cheaper and briefer by including an extended highlights reel of the previous film at the start.
This was the first of three films rapidly diminishing in quality that starred Chaney under the bandages.
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27. The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)
The invisible men of this series generally tend to be morally unsavoury types, and it’s no different in this instalment which follows a fugitive (Jon Hall in his second appearance as The Invisible Man) conveniently given the power of invisibility by an obliging scientist to exact revenge against the people who cheated him out of a fortune.
This one is rather boring and unimaginative in its setup, but it still boasts some clever visuals and a few much more intriguing and gruesome sights as we head towards the finale featuring multiple blood transfusions under duress and an aggravated invisible dog.
26. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
“It has been said that a man’s best friend is his mummy”
The doofus double act (Bud Abbott and Lou Costello) get framed for the murder of an eminent Egyptologist and try to stop a gang of criminals from finding and sacking a long-lost tomb.
All the Abbott and Costello spoofs have their merits, but they are probably best watched in isolation as they definitely break the continuity of the first-ever Cinematic Universe.
More perfectly-timed slapstick and farcical antics make it not really matter that the Mummy himself isn’t actually on screen for very long, unless you’re counting the finale which has lots of living people pretending to be mummies for a variety of convoluted and very silly reasons.
How dare you put Dracula so far down. We shall have to fight this out in the SecondCutPod podcasts.