Friday, January 18th, 2013

School was good today.

I showed my blog to the people on my table in English, and the teachers and my classmates thought it was quite good.

In Chinese, we did the usual.

In Science, we did some more work on our posters about Ashton Island, and the energy crisis.

And now for something I like.

The Universal Monsters

What exactly are The Universal Monsters?

Well, they’re some of the oldest, most legendary horror movie monsters ever created. All of them have a massive impact on pop culture, horror movies and countless books, films, TV Shows, music, etc.

These monsters were created by Universal Studios in the 30s to 50s, and had a huge impact on the monsters we all know and love today.

I’ll start talking about them. In order of the year they were released. But to do an entire post about them would use up a lot of my time and energy, so I’ll post about them one at a time. Starting with our blood sucking Count Dracula.

( NOTE: I’m NOT talking about just the films themselves. I’m mainly talking about the MONSTER.)

DRACULA (1931)

” Children of the night! What music they make.”- Count Dracula welcoming Renfield to his castle.

Dracula wasn’t the first Universal Horror Film, but it was the studio’s first big hit. Yes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera were all very successful, but this one made the public love Universal and got the money rolling in big time. And this is based on the novel by Bram Stoker.

Basically, it’s the story of an undead vampire, who starts off by inviting the unassuming Renfield to his castle. Before that, Renfield was warned by the locals that the castle had vampires, but he ignores them. He serves dinner to him, then hypnotizes Renfield. Later, Dracula kills a pleading Renfield by biting him then throwing him down a staircase.

After that, Dracula proceeds to attack the ship Vesta, killing everyone on board. Renfield is now his raving loony assistant.

Later at The Royal Albert Hall, Dracula, in London, meets Mina, Dr Seward, Mina’s fiance John Harker and Lucy Weston, the family friend. Dracula enters Lucy’s room at night and sucks her blood out. She dies.

Renfield is studied by Van Helsing, who discovers he is a vampire. Meanwhile, Mina gets bitten as well.

Now it’s up to our heroes to kill the Vampire for once and for all and end his killing spree.

And now for the monster.

Basically, Dracula is on the bottom of my list. Yes, quit complaining. He’s No. 8.

Why?

Well, let’s start with the good things, to make him happy.

First, he’s very smart. He knows black magic, he can hypnotize people, and he can transform into ANYTHING at will.

He has a creative way of killing people- sucking the blood out of their neck. He is also very good at stealth, has superhuman strength ( of 20 strong men) and he’s undead, AND STILL LOOKS MIDDLE AGED.

He is also very cultured, serving fine meals and offering comfy beds to his guests/victims/idiotic people who didn’t believe the locals/enemies. And he even admires his enemies too, calling Van Helsing a very clever man.

And now, the bad things.

He’s rather weak for a guy who’s undead. I mean, there are so many ways to kill him. You can burn him, chop his head off, shoot him, stake him, garlic him, scare him with a cross/crucifix/Bible/holy water, and show him sunlight.

Also, the thought of a guy sucking blood never appealed to me either.

But overall, he’s the most elegant out of all the Universal Monsters, and a very frightening one too.

Next up tomorrow: Frankenstein’s Monster.