During the early period of talking pictures, Universal Pictures began a successful Gothic horror film series. Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) was quickly followed by James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and The Old Dark House (1932), both featuring monstrous mute antagonists. Some of these films blended science fiction with Gothic horror, such as Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) and featured a mad scientist, mirroring earlier German films. Frankenstein was the first in a series of remakes which lasted for years. The Mummy (1932) introduced Egyptology as a theme;Make-up artist Jack Pierce was responsible for the iconic image of the monster, and others in the series. Universal's horror cycle continued into the 1940s with B-movies including The Wolf Man (1941), as well as a number of films uniting several of the most common monsters.[9]
Other studios followed Universal's lead. The once controversial Freaks (1932), based on the short story "Spurs", was made by MGM, though the studio disowned the completed film, and it remained banned in the UK for thirty years.[10] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Paramount, 1931) is remembered for its innovative use of photographic filters to create Jekyll's transformation before the camera.[11] With the progression of the genre, actors like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were beginning to build entire careers in horror. Both appeared in three of Val Lewton's atmospheric B-movies for RKO in the mid-1940s, including The Body Snatcher (1945).
