Let's Thank Universal Pictures for Monster Movies!

Chuck (0:01)

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Josh (0:11)

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry Gould-Roland is here with us too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, kicking off the great month of October.

Chuck (0:24)

That's right, one of our favorite months. I just watched Backrooms last night. Can you tell me to see that?

Josh (0:30)

Yeah, what did you think?

Chuck (0:32)

You know, I thought it was kind of cool while I was watching it, but it was one of those movies where after when I thought about it, I really didn't like it very much.

Josh (0:40)

Huh, what didn't you like about it?

Chuck (0:43)

It ended up, I thought it was cool looking and had a lot of cool stuff, but afterward, I was like, it felt like just some kid had a bunch of cool ideas that didn't end up making a movie. And then when I read the background of the movie, I was like, oh, that's kind of exactly what it was.

Josh (1:01)

Yeah, I guess I didn't take it like that at all. I just enjoyed it on its face. I wasn't aware of the mythology behind it and everything like that, which apparently it built on pretty well.

Chuck (1:14)

Yeah.

Josh (1:15)

But yeah, I just liked it as it was, I think.

Chuck (1:18)

Yeah, I think it felt like he was like, it would be cool if I did this, and this would be cool, and this would be cool, and if I introduced this agency, that'd be cool. And then like none of that went anywhere, and so I was going like, wait a minute, you can't just throw a bunch of cool things in a movie and have it be a movie, kid.

Josh (1:33)

I disagree that that's what he did.

Chuck (1:35)

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people liked it, so I'm, well, I don't know about the minority, because a lot of people felt like I did too. So I think it's devices, what they say.

Josh (1:42)

That's crazy. It's such a neat movie. Everybody just needs to relax and enjoy a neat movie.

Chuck (1:47)

Yeah, just like everything you like.

Josh (1:49)

Exactly, that drives me bananas. Yeah, so we are talking about movies in particular, which I guess is why you brought up Backrooms.

Chuck (1:58)

That's right.

Josh (1:59)

I got a couple of movies to shout out now that I think about it. Have you seen Undertone? It's a horror movie about a podcaster, so it's really like right up your alley.

I finally saw Martyrs, which is an amazing movie that, yeah, that's a really amazing movie. And then I also saw The Devil's Bath.

Chuck (2:20)

Okay.

Josh (2:21)

I would not necessarily recommend that to everybody. It's a very dark movie, and it's in German, and it's subtitled, and it's set in the middle of the 18th century.

Chuck (2:31)

Okay.

Josh (2:31)

In rural Germany.

Chuck (2:33)

Tough watch.

Josh (2:34)

Not in the way that you would think. It's more just like some of the gut punches that come through really hard gut punches. But if you're into really disturbing, dark, psychological horror, I would recommend it.

Chuck (2:47)

All right.

Josh (2:48)

Okay.

Chuck (2:50)

That sounds great. You wanna talk about the Uni Monsters?

Josh (2:53)

Yeah, we're talking about the Universal Monsters, and we should probably talk about horror films in general, because a lot of people point to the Universal Monster movies starting in the 1930s as essentially kicking off at least monster movies, if not the horror genre itself. And there were other horror movies that came first, but it wasn't until the 20s, pre-Universal, admittedly, that people started trying to scare audiences, hence the beginning of horror movies.

Chuck (3:24)

Yeah.

Specifically, the cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu in the early 1920s kinda got that going. But like you said, it was really the 1930s when we got Dracula's and Frankenstein's and Mummy's and Wolfman and stuff like that, that things really kicked off.

Josh (3:40)

Yeah.

Chuck (3:41)

And we have a family to thank for that. If you, I don't know if these theaters are still there. I really hope they are. I'm sure they're still there, but I don't know if they have been taken over by a different name. But the Lamley Theaters in Los Angeles were always these great, sort of usually independently minded or showing maybe not the first run big hits of the day.

And there were a few Lamley Theaters, and they come from the Lamley family, which is where Universal Studios comes from. A German immigrant in 1906 named Carl Lamley opened a Nickelodeon in Chicago, and a few years later opened up the Independent Motion Picture Company, and then merged with a few other companies to create Universal Pictures in 1912