Universal Horror Sequels -- The Music of Universal Horror and Drama Films

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Date Posted: 17:51:24 08/13/12 Mon
Author: DAN
Subject: Universal Horror Sequels

After watching "Son of Frankenstein" the other day with my cousin and his wife, we got into a discussion about how Universal didn't put much care into the continuation or timelines of some of the films in their horror series, Mainly Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and the Mummy series.

Well I think the continuation of the Frankenstein Monster in any of the sequels was ok. Each of the Frankenstein monster's appearances in all the sequels began where the Frankenstein monster was last seen. The Wolf Man's continuation was pretty good until "House of Dracula."

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER:
This sequel followed "Dracula" where it left off. The only difference was the minor name change of Van Helsing to Von Helsing.

SON OF DRACULA:
If you accept Alucard as the son of Dracula like I do, then this one is fine the way it is.
But some people believe that Alucard is the original Dracula. So if you go with the idea that Alucard is Dracula himself, then SoD would be full of holes.

HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN:
Dracula's skeleton in Lampini's Chamber of Horrors is supposed to be the original Dracula. Now this would be ok if it weren't for the fact that Countess Valeska burned her father's body in "Draula's Daughter." ok maybe Drac's skeleton might still be left, but the wooden stake would have burned up.

HOUSE OF DRACULA:
The part where Dr Edelmann found the monster in the cave near his castle was alright if you can accept the fact that the Monster managed to end up at Edelmann's place from the quicksand near Dr Niemann's.
It looks like Niemann's and Edelmann's labs would have had to border each other for this to happen.
Ok now, big problem here, Dracula and Larry Talbot (Wolf Man) just show up out of the blue with no explanation of how they came back from their deaths in HoF?

Alright as we get into the Kharis Mummy series, it looks like Universal didn't put much care at all in the sequels to "The Mummy's Hand"
They just seemed to slap together a script to these sequels without any care as to where the last one left off.

MUMMY'S TOMB:
This one followed Hand ok, but why did they have to wait for 30 years to satisfy the curse? And Babe's last name was changed from Jensen to Hanson.

MUMMY'S GHOST:
Prof Norman tells his class about the mummy being destroyed in the Banning house fire, but yet it looks like the mummy escaped somehow and was wandering around the woods for a couple of years just waiting for somebody to boil up some tana leaves.
I mean I could understand if when Yousef Bey ( John Carradine) came to Mapleton, he recovered Kharis' body from the ashes and brought him back to life? Also they changed the tomb's name from Karnak to Arkham.

MUMMY'S CURSE:
Kharis carried Ananka into the swamp at the end of Ghost.
In Curse, both Kharis and Ananka emerged from the swamp 25 years later when a crew of workers drains and excavates the swamp.
But the big problem here is, the swamp is no longer in Mapleton Massachusetts, it's now in Louisianna.

Well, I suppose that when these films were first seen in theaters back in the day, people probably didn't notice these things as we do now.

But never the less, even with these shortcomings, I never get tired of watching the Universal Horror films.

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Replies:

[> Re: Universal Horror Sequels -- Tim, 22:50:58 08/15/12 Wed [1]

Some excellent points and observations, Dan.

Like Dan, I think of Alucard in Son of Dracula as the son of the original Dracula, not Count Dracula himself. Countess Zaleska destroyed the body of the original Dracula in Dracula's Daughter, as Dan notes in his comments about House of Frankenstein.

House of Dracula is fun, but has lots of flaws. By this point Universal didn't appear too enthused about the future of the Frankenstein series, and horror films in general.

In 1948 Universal gave the big three, the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula and The Wolf Man, a final send off in the comical Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. The comedy duo would later encounter The Invisible Man and The Mummy.

I am not as familiar with The Mummy series as Dan is, but clearly Universal put less care and less budget into their horror sequels as time went on.

Tim

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