Reviewing the classic horror films has proven to be more challenging than I had anticipated, not because they were unwatchable, but because discussing them deserves more effort than I can give right now. But in the interest of educating you, gentle readers, here is a quick overview.

Dracula (1931): If someone made this today it would be marketed as an art film. There is exactly one drop of blood in the entire film, you never actually see Dracula bite anyone, and even the big stake-out happens off-camera. Still, the set design is tremendous, the acting is good, and the atmosphere surreal and dreamlike, reminding me of Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast. The horror in this is purely in your imagination.

Frankenstein (1931): More of an action film than Dracula, this provides our first on-screen violence, even if there is still a noticeable lack of overt horror. There was much more humor in it than I would have guessed, much of it at the expense of the German villagers. The climactic scene with the monster at the windmill is fairly tense, though. However, Karloff's acting (and the makeup artist's creation) make it a classic.

The Mummy (1932): Karloff again, this time in Egyptian garb as the titular reanimated corpse. After having his eternal rest disturbed, the monster goes on the hunt for the reincarnation of his lost love. It could be a chick-flick, except for the (mostly off-screen) killing of people who get in his way. Boris turns in a good performance, but just for your information, he only wears the bandages for a short time at the start of the film.

The Invisible Man (1933): Okay, this guy does wear the bandages. For the time the special effects were pretty good, with a battle in the snow showing footprints appearing from nowhere, and the classic scene where he unwraps his head revealing nothingness. The sociopathic scientist gets a bit more down and dirty than the previous monsters, too, clubbing people to death and so on.

The Wolf Man (1941): Lon Chaney, Junior, doesn't get to walk with the queen, in case you were wondering. He does get to chew the scenery rather thoroughly in this surprisingly touching (and again, bloodless) film. Everything that can possibly go wrong for Larry Talbot does so, from getting turned into a werewolf to failing to live up to his father's expectations. Suspenseful in places, but never scary, the film's horror comes from the inexorable approach of Larry's fate.

The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954): This was originally released to the theaters in glorious 3-D, but I only have the black and white version. Even so, this was the most modern of my initial six films, and it shows. The acting is more cinematic and less stage-y, they made extensive use of underwater photography and location shooting (a lot of it was shot at Silver Springs), and the Gill-man is still a pretty convincing monster. Well, except that he isn't really a monster, just a creature that wants to be left alone and has a wholly understandably attraction to Julie Adams, the swimsuit-clad love interest. (She's a dead ringer for Jennifer Connelly, by the way, and has a small role on Lost.)

In the course of watching these films I realized a common thread linking them, and differentiating them from the more modern brand of horror. In these early films the danger was largely spiritual or psychological — cursed immortality, blasphemy, the loss of self-control — whereas in the modern films the danger is almost always physical death or mutilation. Perhaps a people who no longer concern themselves with philosophical or spiritual matters can only find terror in the more mundane threat of physical harm.