THE dusty vaults of Universal Studios have much to offer lovers of classic cult cinema: Creeping Horror, the latest multi-disc offering from Eureka, proves that point nicely with a fascinating selection of creaky old low budget gems from the 1930s and 40s.
The studio may have made its name with the string of game-changing monster movies it churned out in that era, but this is a much less familiar collection of creepy B-movie beauties.
Treating them chronologically, the black and white thrills begin with Murders In The Zoo, the earliest and easily the best film on show here. Released in 1933, just before the infamous Hays Code attempted to regulate horror hijinks with a touch of draconian censorship, it's a properly nasty and violent little tale of grisly goings on down at the zoological gardens.
Well, by today's standards, it's fairly tame stuff - but for 1933, it was strong meat indeed.
Lionel Atwill is a blood thirsty and insanely jealous zoologist who kills off anyone throwing a casual glance at his beautiful wife (Kathleen Burke) by enlisting the help of the snakes, crocodiles and wild beasts lurking in the nearby cages.
More an essay in cruelty than a straight horror, there are still sequences here that will live long in the memory, including one where the green-eyed Atwill sews together a man's lips – and this is the uncut version, so prepare to be shocked all the same.
For Horror Island (1941), the mood lightens a tad, as a bunch of get rich quick shysters head to a haunted castle in search of buried treasure. Shot on some impressively Gothic sets, including the famous stone staircase from the 1931 Dracula, this is a fun and frothy slice of B-movie escapism directed by George 'The Wolf Man' Waggner. In terms of actual scares, it's very light, but there's nothing wrong with such silliness at times, right?
The bold Lionel Atwill returns, albeit briefly, in Night Monster from 1942. Another low-rent pot boiler that boasts Bela Lugosi in a small role as a sinister butler – and little else, really – it's a very cheap but oddly entertaining tale of a maniac on the loose in an old mansion's grounds. Keep an eye out for the old Universal stock footage lifted from previous fantasy fables used here to, presumably, pad out the running time a little.
House Of Horrors, the youngest film on offer here with its 1946 release date, is a similarly cheap but just as diverting romp through horror movie cliches. Martin Kosleck is a crazed sculptor – is there any other kind in these films? – who saves the life of the hapless Rondo Hatton and then gets him to murder the art critics who've dissed his precious work.
Hatton was a familiar face in fantasy films of the time, famous for his overbearing physique and the fact that he suffered from the disfiguring disease acromegaly, and therefore perfectly suited to the role of 'hulking bad guy'.
All films have been nicely polished up for this new release, making it a must-have old school horror selection for any cult collector.
