Dan Curtis was a television producer and director of the ’60s and ’70s. While his actual output was varied, he was primarily known for bringing gothic horror settings to American television sets. Most famously, he was the creator and producer of Dark Shadows, a Gothic soap opera that eventually introduced daytime TV to its first sympathetic vampire, Barnabas Collins.
Buy Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters Blu-rayDan Curtis was also prolific in producing, writing, and sometimes directing TV movies, and this collection, Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters, includes three of his films. They’re based on the three the most famous horror stories of 19th Century English Literature: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and Dracula. Curtis was deeply involved in these films, though in different capacities. Besides producing, he wrote or co-wrote the teleplays for the first two and directed the third.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the first one made. Shot in 1967 on video and starring Jack Palance as the titular character, it frames the story differently than the book. That is structured as a mystery, where a lawyer tries to uncover the hidden connection between his dear friend Dr. Jekyll and a brutish, violent man named Hyde.
Of course, everyone knows the connection (same guy, just with a potion) so this version doesn’t pretend to make a mystery of it. What it does is explore the seductive, positive aspects of losing all of one’s inhibitions, before delving into the dark side of it.
And Hyde starts out a lot of fun. The whores all like him. And when he’s confronted by a gang who think he’s gotten too friendly with one of the girls, he dispatches them with panache… until he slits one’s nose in two with his sword cane.
Jack Palance’s performance in this TV-movie is a study in deep contrasts. As Jekyll, he’s mostly mild-mannered and constrained, which is not a typical Palance performance. His Hyde bellows almost every other word. It is not subtle, but then neither is the character.
The style of filming, on elaborate and beautiful sets, seems (like all the movies here) to be a cross between filmic set-ups and the cost-cutting techniques of soap operas. There’s a lot of basic camera movements, pans and zoom-ins where a film would likely have used more shots and set ups. The scenes often consist of long takes.
Frankenstein, one of two movies here from 1973, opens with a scene that is almost identical to the first scene in Jekyll & Hyde: serious scientists shout down a colleague who is trying to read his paper. This paper is about creating life in the laboratory, which we all know is going to happen before the first act is over. This take on the classic story adheres rather closely to the novel, much more so than the famous Universal film from 1931.
Brilliant but arrogant Victor Frankenstein wants to extend man’s life, so he makes one. The novel is almost silent on the actual methods of resurrection, but since the 1931 film, everyone has decided you have to hit a corpse with lightning, so that’s what happens here, too. The creature that arises is like an enormous infant and is played with surprising tenderness by the very large Bo Svenson. Things quickly get out of hand, the creature gets loose, and Victor refuses everyone’s help.
I liked that this film stuck to a major theme of the book: Frankenstein is an arrogant asshole who probably could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if he just owned up to what he’d done. Instead, he abandons the creature, who goes around accidentally killing things because he doesn’t know what death means. Everyone hates the hideous giant because he’s hideous, and a giant. And in one sequence he accidentally rips a man’s arm off.
Of course, eventually he tries to make friends with a blind person. In this version, like the book, it’s a blind girl. She is kind to him. But they’re interrupted by her family, and chaos ensues. Ultimately, the creature discovers Dr. Frankenstein, and that he is his creator, and abandoner. The creature demands a companion, or he will take out his revenge.
Dracula, the only movie in this collection that was shot on film, does not adhere to the book nearly as closely. With a screenplay written by the great Richard Matheson, the story is streamlined, with several characters and plotlines eliminated. It has the familiar beats: Jonathan Harker arrives at Dracula’s castle. Dracula is buying property in London. He’s delighted to find one of the suggested places is close to where Harker’s friend Lucy Westerna lives.
This is because Dracula believes Westerna is the reincarnation of his long-lost wife. This might be a familiar plot device in Dracula stories now, but it was completely invented for this adaptation. There’s nothing like that in the novel, where Dracula’s motivation is conquest. The film’s explicit connection to Vlad the Impaler is also new.
The story follows the broad outlines of the Dracula narrative, competently told. Jack Palance again plays the title character, and he takes the character in an interesting direction. His Dracula is largely, intentionally charmless. Passionate, but never relatable, and filled with a barely contained fury. He’s like an animal in human form.
All these movies have their flaws, of course. They’re all at least 50 years old and made for television, so of course they’re dated. And each has individual issues. I thought Frankenstein was largely over lit. Dracula in his movie has the power to control wolves. Unfortunately, the wolves cast in this movie are the sweetest, floofiest looking German Shepherds the production could find, and do not inspire terror.
Jekyll & Hyde and Frankenstein were shot on video and in sets. The materials for Jekyll & Hyde are simply not well preserved. The colors and images are smeary and often indistinct. Frankenstein, shot more than half a decade later, looks much better preserved. Dracula was shot on film, and on location. Though it still has many of the stylistic tics of soap-opera filmmaking it looks much better than the other films.
These movies are clearly for enthusiasts. A general audience likely wouldn’t have the patience to look past the aesthetic cheapness to appreciate the writing or the performances. I found them all fascinating. Dracula is probably the best all-around movie, but I found Bo Svenson’s performance in Frankenstein to be the most affecting, and a great take on the character of the creature.
Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters is a welcome collection from a by-gone area where good stories were done for cheap. They have to be taken on their own terms, but I found something interesting and refreshing in each one of these adaptations.
Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Cult, a division of Kino Lorber. There are two Blu-ray discs, with Dracula on its own disc and the other two films on the second. There are on-disc extras for each film.
All three films have introductions by Jeff Thompson, who wrote The Television Horrors of Dan Curtis. Dracula has an audio commentary by Mark Dawidziak, archival interviews with Jack Palance and Dan Curtis, and some alternate footage and scenes.
Frankenstein has a pair of audio commentaries, one by Rodney F. Hill, and one by actors Robert Foxworth and John Karlen. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has an audio commentary by Steve Bissette and an archival video interview with makeup artist Dick Smith.
