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Kind of hard to choose– each one has elements that make it unique and entertaining– I’m going to go through a list here with my comments in case you’re trying to decide what to watch this spooky season. Loaded with shadows and gothic atmosphere with some chills but no gore they are a nice all ages choice for Fall Entertainment;

THE A BLOCK

• PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) Lon Chaney Sr in a role that he made completely his own. It’s a silent film but give it a chance, especially the Red Death scene and the rooftop drama that follows.
• DRACULA (1931) After a very promising and atmosphere filled start it comes screeching to a halt and appears like a filmed stage play, which is what it was. Bela Lugosi was great though, and it holds up.
• DRACULA (1931-Spanish Version) Filmed at the same time on the same sets as the Lugosi film, if you can get your hands on this one it’s well worth a watch, better camera angles and a more fluid camera movement keep things visually interesting. Many critics cite Carlos Villar’s performance as Dracula as being the superior of the two– I don’t agree, but it’s a good movie.
• FRANKENSTEIN (1931) DRACULA was such a huge (no pun intended) monster hit for Universal they must have thought they were dreaming when the numbers came in for this one. Karloff gives the performance of a lifetime as The Monster and Colin Clive is so nervously on edge you’re surprised he makes it through the whole film.
• THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) James Whale reteams with Boris Karloff who is cast as a deformed deranged mute Butler in a house owned by the bizarre Ernst Thesiger and his family– if you thought the first time a crazy homicidal family together in a film was TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE you’re wrong. This one also features Gloria Holden and Charles Laughton. It’s bizarre, it’s creepy, it goes places where you don’t expect it to. Well worth a watch.
• THE MUMMY (1932) Karloff plays ImhoTep– a long dead egyptian Mummy who comes back to life and basically performs the Dracula play almost scene for scene. It’s a good movie and if all your recollections of Mummy movies are someone walking around in bandages strangling people you’ll be surprised by this one.
• THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) The feature film debut of Claude Rains (Casablanca) directed by FRANKENSTEIN’s James Whale– it’s a brilliant black comedy with a homicidal madman on the loose who just happens to be invisible. The effects hold up even today.
• THE BLACK CAT (1934) Based on Poe’s short story in title only- the first team up of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi- Karloff is a mad architect and Lugosi is a deranged doctor with a compelling fear of cats– his first instinct on seeing a cat is to fall backwards through a window or to hurl a knife at it. Now I’m not a giant cat fan, but the two neighborhood cats who hang out in my yard sometimes sitting with me on my deck chair on a warm afternoon have never gotten that kind of welcome from me. Lugosi is hell-bent on revenge against Karloff but he’s going to pretty much make up his plan as he goes along, a honeymoon couple including the very effiminate David Manners don’t have much hope of standing up to the madness that follows which includes Satan Worshipers.
• WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935) More Jekyll and Hyde than Werewolf but it’s a very solid fright film with some truly great moments. Henry Hull is the pompous Dr Glendon who is bit my Warner Oland’s (at the time Hollywood’s Charlie Chan and one of the biggest actors of the day) Werewolf passing the curse on to him.
• BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) If Universal held James Whale back when he made FRANKENSTEIN they unleashed him with BRIDE because it’s loaded with the trademark cast of strange Whale Character actors, and black humor that wasn’t present in the first one. Ernst Thesiger is absolutely brilliant as Dr Septimus Pretorious who lures poor Colin Clive back in the labratory to give reviving dead folks another go– this time a mate for The Monster (a returning now speaking Karloff). One of the rare times a sequel surpasses the original.
• THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936) If you’ve seen ED WOOD this is the movie where Lugosi is called Karloff’s sidekick leading to a not great result. It’s a good movie, strange choices by director Lambert Hillyer (Dracula’s Daughter 1936 and THE BATMAN 1943) including a curly wig and moustache for Karloff– but its got some good chills and a great cast.
• SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) The conclusion to the Frankenstein Trilogy (which will somehow continue for five more chapters) is probably the weakest of the first three but it’s grown on me over the years– Basil Rathbone is the aforementioned son, since Colin Clive died of nerves in 1935 after finishing BRIDE– and this time Bela Lugosi is on board as Karloff’s Monster’s best BFF Ygor who the villagers have tried to kill over and over again for his crimes but to no avail.
• THE WOLFMAN (1941) Lon Chaney Jr is Larry Talbot, a nice enough leech who comes to England to visit his father Claude Rains and to hit on Evelyn Ankers– taking her on a night out to a gypsy fortune teller he runs into a werewolf and sho enuff he’s soon a werewolf himself. It’s a B-Movie with an A-Level cast and it’s the end of the true A Universal Horrors.

THE B FILMS – As World War II came rolling in the budgets got cut and the stories became shorter and more matinee type fare, but there are still some good ones.

• THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940) Okay how does a movie that comes out before WOLFMAN land on the B-film end of it– because WOLFMAN had literally an A-Level cast and this one doesn’t. It doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, because it is– and if you want a Mummy movie with a lumbering Mummy dragging his foot and strangling people this one is it. Features ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL star Tom Tyler as Kharis the Mummy.
• GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942) Lon Chaney is back this time as the first actor to take over the role of The Monster as Karloff felt it was played out. Lugosi is back from his turn on SON as Ygor this time hoping the new mad doctor (Frankenstein’s OTHER son) will pop his brain into The Monster’s Body making him big and strong. It doesn’t quite work out.
• SON OF DRACULA (1942) Lon Chaney takes over the Dracula role making him one of the few actors to play all of the Universal Monsters (he’ll soon don the Mummy Costume too) but he’ll be too fat to get into the gill man’s suit in 1954 so ALMOST all of the Universal Monsters– I guess he didn’t play the Invisible Man either. Now set in Louisiana for some reason, Dracula comes to town hoping to marry into a prominent family– not sure he’s actually playing Dracula’s son or not– and to be honest Chaney is a little chubby for Dracula.
• MUMMY’S GHOST, MUMMY’S CURSE, MUMMY’S TOMB (1942-1944) Lon Chaney takes over the Mummy role– and while these are moody and fun programmers all running an hour or less, they’re pretty much the same movie. TOMB takes place in Massachusetts so there’s that. I like them, I just don’t remember enough about each one to differentiate them.
• FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943) It’s a sequel to both GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE WOLFMAN – talk about economizing! It’s starts out with one of the spookiest openings of all the Universal films as grave robbers seek the jewels buried with Larry Talbot and it goes from there. Chaney is back as Talbot/Wolfman and Bela Lugosi is now The Monster. It works because remember at the end of GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN they implanted Lugosi’s brain into the Chaney version of The Monster– and he even talked with Lugosi’s voice at the end of that film. Well, they tried that with this film and test audiences got hysterical with laughter so they cut all of Bela’s dialogue or references to him being blind so he stumbles around awkwardly for no reason. It’s a good B-Movie and one the moves quickly.
• HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) If two monsters in a movie are good, then four must be twice as good, so they worked up a script featuring Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man and the Mummy– when they got to filming they dropped the Mummy and added Boris Karloff but not as the Monster (he’s now played by the third actor to take the role, Glenn Strange) but as Dr Neiman who himself was a mad doctor before he eventually meets Dr Marcus at the bottom of a swamp and they open a very famous department store that I often shopped at. It’s a monster palooza! Poor Bela is dropped as Dracula because he was off doing live performances across the country and John Carradine comes in as The Count– he’s fine but he’s no Bela.
• HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945) The first House film brought in audiences so they whipped up another one, whipped up like a housewife whips up an omelet (that’s a line from SON OF FRANKENSTEIN) this time with a different mad doctor but the Wolfman (Chaney), Dracula (Carradine) and the Monster (Strange) back for another round.

And This one should be considered another A Film;

• ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) This one was a blockbuster for Universal– and revived Bud and Lou’s career (at one time they were the biggest box office draw in the world). Dracula (a triumphant returning Lugosi) needs a brain for The Monster (Glenn Strange) so he can take over the world with a lumbering mindless brute, Lon Chaney’s Wolfman is now on the good guy side and he wants to stop them so he enlists Bud and Lou to the job. It’s an actually laugh out loud movie and a great way to send off the Universal Monsters in style.