By David Knoles

When anyone thinks of Halloween and the all-time classic horror movie monsters who haunt it, only three names come to the forefront, and they aren't Freddy, Jason and Michael. These were the original creatures of the night that haunted our dreams in glorious black and white. They rampaged through the movie houses and ravaged the drive-in theaters. They became the kings of the late, late show on television, and even after as long as 70 years since their original releases, their videos and DVDs are still hot sellers. Who are they? Who else but Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf man?

Frankenstein and Dracula were characters out of literature. Frankenstein began as a game in 1816 played by Mary Shelley, poet Percy Shelley and a notorious writer of the age named Lord Byron. It was on a storm-swept night that Lord Byron suggested a competition in which each of them would write a ghost story to see which could produce the most terrifying. Byron came up with a tale called The Vampyre. But Mary topped them all with her story of the modern Prometheus, as she called him, Frankenstein. Although publishers were at first reluctant to print this "blasphemous" portrait of a man who plays God by using science to create a living monster from sewn-together parts of dead human

A similar fame awaited English writer Bram Stoker when he pulled out his pen and began to chronicle the devious doings of the Transylvanian Count known as Dracula. Influenced by stories like Bryons Vampyre and ancient legends of unholy creatures lurking in the grim Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Stoker based his character on a nefarious Romanian nobleman called Prince Vlad, the Impaler. What he came up with was Dracula. The novel was hailed as a pinnacle of horror when it was published in 1897. Like its predecessor, Frankenstein, it has never been out of print.

It's little surprise that these terrors would not be content to simply stay on the printed page. Both became the subjects of a plethora of stage productions both in Europe and the United States. When that new-fangled wonder, moving pictures, arrived in the early 20th century, both Frankenstein and Dracula found their way onto the flickering screen in silent versions of the books and plays that spawned them. In fact, Frankenstein was the first film made by moving picture inventor Thomas Alva Edison as a short film in 1917. A few years later in 1922, German director F.M. Murnau made a dark and disturbing vision of Dracula (without bothering

But it wasn't until 1931 that the full horror of these tales literally bludgeoned moviegoers into fits of nightmares. That was the year Universal Studios released the first of its classic creature-features, Dracula, directed by Ted Browning, based on the award-winning play of the same name (rather than Stoker's novel) and featuring the Hungarian actor, Bela Lugosi, who had made the play a smash hit on Broadway. Following in the wake of the unbelievable success of the undead count, Universal commissioned director James Whale to bring Frankenstein to the screen. Featuring Colin Clive as the obsessive scientist, Dwight Frye (who played Renfield in Dracula) as his assistant, Fritz, Edw

With this kind of response from filmgoers, it only stands to reason that there would be sequels. The sequel to Frankenstein came four years later with the release of The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. With James Whale back at the helm and both Colin Clive and Boris Karloff reprising their original roles, most critics found The Bride of Frankenstein far superior to the original, and some hailed it as the greatest monster movie ever made.

Bride of Frankenstein offered more than a few unusual twists. It begins in a posh English manner on a stormy night, recreating the scene in which Mary Shelley conceived her hideous monster. Mary, played by Elsa Lancanster, who later appears as the monster s bride-to-be, tells her companions, Shelly and Byron, that her story didn t end when the town s people torched the windmill, and the action begins anew at the smoking ruins. The monster has survived by falling in a pool beneath the mill, and the poor townsfolk soon learn he s on the loose again. He is captured, escapes, is befriended by a blind peasant who teaches him to talk, is driven away and finally comes into contact with another mad scientist, Dr. Pretorious played to the hilt by Ernest Tesiger who convinces Dr. Frankenstein to continue his exper

Bride of Frankenstein also gave Boris Karloff a lot more to do as the monster. His speaking role added even more pathos to the misunderstood monster, and he comes off as a great deal more bitter than actually evil. Although Karloff s monster in the third installment of the series, Son of Frankenstein, speaks as well, the lines ended there. As far as audiences went, it seems they preferred that their nightmares be seen and not heard.

Frankenstein and Dracula made Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi into the Hollywood heavy-hitters of horror. And it wouldn't be until 1941 that a contender for the crown appeared. He came in the guise of Lon Chaney, Jr. playing the lead in Universal Studios new slab of monster movie madness, The Wolf Man. Based on ancient legends of shape-shifting humans who become the personification of evil curses, The Wolf Man breathed new life into horror, to say nothing of the box office. Deliciously written by Curt Siodmak and directed by George Waggoner, this dark moody vision of horror paired Chaney with Claude Reins as his stiff-necked father, Bela Lug

While Dracula and The Wolf Man were lone hits (the sequel to, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, didn t feature Lugosi was considered an abysmal disappointment) there were eight films in the Universal Frankenstein horror series from 1931 to 1949. Interestingly enough, the sequel to The Wolf Man, and the re-appearance of Dracula were among them. The eight films were Frankenstein (1931); The Bride of Frankenstein (1935); The Son of Frankenstein (1939); The Ghost of Frankenstein

Following the success of Bride, Son of Frankenstein featured Basil Rathbone as Henry Frankenstein's adult son who finds the monster lurking about the family grounds in the care of a hunchback named Igor played by Bela Lugosi. Although the monster is killed in a vat of boiling mud, Igor digs him out in Ghost of Frankenstein and leaves the chore of dealing with him to Frankenstein's other son played by Lionel Atwell, who played the one-armed constable in Son of Frankenstein. Atwell transplants Igor's brain in the monster at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein, but it doesn't work out all that well. That is why Lon Chaney, Jr. finds him on ice i and wildly successful Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Throughout the series, the major stars became more or less interchangeable. Take the role of the monster for example. Although Boris Karloff is best known as the Frankenstein Monster, he only played the lumbering juggernaut in the first three films. Lon Chaney, Jr in Ghost of Frankenstein, assumed the role but he returned to the role of the Wolf Man, Larry Talbot, in the next sequel. Bela Lugosi stepped into the monster s shoes in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man. Even though the producers of the original Frankenstein had offered the role of the monster to Lugosi in the wake of his success in Dracula, his wooden, lackluster portrayal was la

But if Karloff was finished with the monster after The Son of Frankenstein, he wasn't done with the series. He returned in The House of Frankenstein, as the revenge-driven mad scientist. But he refused a chance to return one last time to the role that made him famous in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Even though Lugosi returned as Dracula and Lon Chaney, Jr. reprised his role as the wolf man, Karloff believed the film would be a disrespectful bomb, and declined the role as the monster. But he was wrong. Premiered in late 1948, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein not only received rave reviews, but it became the surprise blockbust

While Lon Chaney, Jr played several Universal monsters, including Frankenstein and the mummy, he considered his role as Larry Talbot the pinnacle of his career, and it was one he was into for the long haul. First appearing as the tortured Talbot in The Wolf man, he made canine comebacks in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Although during the series he was bludgeoned by a silver-handled cane, buried in a crumbling castle, frozen in ice, shot with a silver bullet and swept away, along with Count Dracula, in the angry seas after a plunge off a castle wall, the saga of the wolf man actually had a happy e

Meanwhile, Bela Lugosi, who was so intimately tied to his role as Count Dracula that he was buried in his original cape, wasn't quite as faithful to the role that made his career. He only played the famous Count twice. Although Lugosi portrayed vampires in many films over his career, culminating with a final appearance in Ed Wood's Plan Nine from Outer Space, he only played the Count in Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In The House of Frankenstein and The House of Dracula, actor John Carradine gratuitously played the Count. Although Carradine s portrayal made the legendary Count

It only goes to prove that the only thing that can really kill a movie monster is bad box office.