My reflex was to begin this post with an apology for straying off topic. It's Halloween, after all, and if you've been visiting this website for a while you already know we go a little crazy during this time of the year. Halloween is Christmas for introverts, a season when we allow our inner lives to go outside and play for a few weeks. How can I not indulge this urge?But, as I was crafting my unnescessary apology, it occurred to me that the Universal Monsters series is alarmingly on topic for the CHS. For Barnabas Collins, alone, DARK SHADOWS pinched elements of Dracula, The Mummy and The Phantom of the Opera. The show later introduced its own Wolf-Men and, had DARK SHADOWS lasted another year or two, we almost certainly would have seen some variation of Invisible Collins. (The Gillman was probably never an option on the table.)
With that in mind, here's the ultimate Halloween treat: Universal Classic Monsters: The Complete 30-Film Collection. Universal has struggled to keep these films relevant during the last few decades, with mixed results. I've yet to see the Tom Cruise version of THE MUMMY but, if it gets someone to check out the original Universal Monsters films, it can't be all bad. Every time one of those CGI-heavy revamps gets unleased in theaters, we get new releases of the classic Universal Monsters films, collections which have steadily been accumululating the lesser films in the franchise into the various home video releases. This new collection represents about 20 years of labor on the part of Universal, a process that included significant remastering of the keystone films. They're available in two releases: the DVD box set for $65.99 (that's just $2.20 per movie) and the Blu-ray collection for $180.95 (that's $6 per movie.)
My advice? Lock your doors, bolt your windows, turn off your cell phones and binge the entire damn collection in one sitting.
Via: Amazon.
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