Let’s talk about my insatiable appetite for pre-postmodern horror. I don’t care about sorority girls getting slaughtered because they ran the wrong way up the stairs; I basically don’t care about anything that’s not in black and white. I like stuff that takes place in creepy laboratories, where some desperate soul is trying to violate the natural boundaries between life and death. The Universal monster movies of the 30s, the Val Lewton stuff of the 40s, the nuclear panic stuff of the late 50s/early 60s. So it’s a given that my favorite part about the weeks leading up to Halloween is that Turner Classic Movies floods their schedule with ancient, half-forgotten horror films. Halloween itself is kind of a letdown, because it means the well of stuff I love is about to dry up.
But as usual, YouTube makes it all better. As a child of the 80s, I think I always had some awareness of of the Boris Karloff films, particularly Bride of Frankenstein, but it was filtered through Young Frankenstein, Elvira and “Weird Science” (the Oingo Boingo song, which I definitely heard years before I saw the movie). Above, you’ll find a clip of the creation of the bride from the 1935 sequel to Frankenstein; below the jump, the various cultural detritus that led me to it. Happy Halloween!
