On Halloween Day, Meaghan and Shirin celebrate the end of October with a love letter to the Universal Monsters—and the filmmaking moves that made them immortal.
We trace the real beginnings of Universal horror (hint: Jekyll & Hyde was on screen long before Bela Lugosi’s Dracula), peek at the bootleg chaos of Nosferatu, and geek out over Lon Chaney’s groundbreaking makeup that hard-coded the “look” of classic monsters—Phantom’s skull-mask, Frankenstein’s square brow, caped Dracula, and the bandaged Invisible Man.
Beyond trivia, we dig into why these creatures endure: unchecked power (The Invisible Man), inner conflict (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde), the tragedy of creation (Frankenstein), and the tug-of-war between terror and seduction (is your vampire a monster…or a crush?). We talk modern riffs—from sympathetic monsters to today’s reboots—and why Universal’s IP keeps shapeshifting across eras without losing its bite.
If you love Halloween, classic cinema, or just believe monsters say more about us than about them, this one’s for you.
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