I have always thought of the Mummy as the most neglected and derided of the classic Universal monsters but it has been pointed out that actually that crown belongs to the Invisible Man. I wonder why? No recurring actor? No continuing storyline? The descent into silliness? I enjoy the original and its four sequels but I don't find myself wanting to revisit them very often.
3 comments:
I realized that the invisible man was the most ignored classic monster when I bought a t shirt with all of them on it except him. The bride is shown more love and she has only 5 minutes of screen time. It didn't have recurring actors, unless you count Jon Hall. Then again he played different characters. It had a vague continuing storyline. It was always a relative experimenting with the formula. The Dracula series didn't have continuity either. The decent into silliness was only for two movies, but it ended on a serious note, with an evil invisible man.
To me the biggest reason he is neglected is because of an image. Lugosi is Dracula, the creature design is cool, when you think of Frankentein it's Karloff, same with the bride, think of a mummy and you think of Kharis. Now, unless someone is like you and me Lon Chaney Jr is the mosThere's gnizable werewolf. Naschy and he are tied in my book. Coming back to the invisible man, that's just it, he's invisible. The movies boast incredible images like him unwrapping in front of a mirror. There's just nothing frightening about his image that gets burned into your memory.
I guess you're correct about there being nothing frightening about the image of the Invisible Man but I suspect that his bandaged look (the one mot likely to be used in promotional materials) looks too much like the Mummy for Universal to place him in a group shot. Can't confuse the consumer!
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