Classic Monsters Unmade: The Lost Films of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Other Monsters

by John LeMay

Seen every classic monster movie from the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN to the 2020 INVISIBLE MAN? Well, here's some you're guaranteed to have never seen, either because they are now lost - like DRACULA'S DEATH (1921) - or because they weren't produced at all, like WOLF MAN VS. DRACULA (1944). This book has got it a version of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN where Bela Lugosi speaks as the monster? Check. How about Lugosi commanding an army in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER? Got that too. Or, what if Boris Karloff played the Invisible Man instead of Claude Rains? Yep, that's covered too. More of a Mummy fan? How would you like to see Kharis terrorize a carnival then get sucked into a tornado? It would've happened had THE MUMMY'S RETURN been made. If unfinished terrors are up your alley, then this tome is for you!

428 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 17, 2021

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bunch of treatments on scripts of Universal horror movies that didn't get made for one reason or another. A bit repetitive, but very interesting. A must for the monster fan!

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this compendium of trivia about lost and unrealized visions of horror from the silent era and the Golden Age of Universal horror. Some of the abandoned ideas read like parodies -- Dr. and Lady Frankenstein running away from the old manor to become carnival puppeteers may be the least likely of a number of cracked ideas -- and the process of turning concepts into finished films is endlessly fascinating to me. I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if someone had edited it to reduce the instances of mangled syntax, typos, and factual errors that make the text read more like a fanzine than a volume of actual scholarship.

[Mhorg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous!

A must for any fan of the classic universal monster movies! An amazing amount of information about films the studio proposed, but either didn't make or revised until it became the version audiences are familiar with today. Honestly, many of these were better off not being made, but two I would have liked to see were the original Frankenstein meets the Wolf man (I really despise the title) where the monster talks and Chamber of Horrors, which became House of Frankenstein. Chance would have had more monsters in it. A well researched book, and a fun read.

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title word 'unmade' is the key to what this book is about. It's about movies that were planned at some level but, for one reason of another, never got made. They range from films from 1899 on.

Some of these include the most famous monsters like the Wolfman, Dracula. The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein.

Some of the movies are also foreign-made. There's also a variety of others including The Phantom Swordsman and The Invisible Man.

The book also goes into what actually happened that prevented the movies from being made and how some of the movies and information about the movies has been destroyed due to fires or other reasons.

There's also an appendix, a bibliography and footnotes.


Very interesting to see what could have been but never was although, in most cases, it's not a terrible loss because the not-made movie would have been rather bad to say the least.

[J.P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and fun read. Less of a serious movie history book and more of a light collection of oddities from a fanzine writer. Some entries are more less interesting than others but as a universal monsters fan I loved hearing about the lost or unmade films that we’ll likely never get to see. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the lost silents, the insane alternate versions of Bride of Frankenstein, the original version of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Dracula vs the Wolf Man.