Blumhouse's Compendium of Horror

Leave it Jason Blum to butcher horror history. The first episode completely skips over Lon Chaney and his Universal films like they didn't exist. How can you not talk about "The Phantom Of The Opera"? No mention of Paul Leni's masterworks "The Man who laughs or "The Last Warning ". It just jumps into Dracula as if Universal has never dabbled in the Horror genre. Fun real fact, Lon Chaney was going to play Dracula until he passed the year before because him and Tod Browning had made the lost film "London After Midnight" together.

Following Dracula they talk about the other monsters in the catalog, clumping The Wolfman in with the 30's monsters, cause according to this episode Universal Monster's died out in the early 40's, even though "The Wolfman" was 1941 and jump started the second wave of the shared universe sequels, not to mention the Abbot and Costello stuff which is fantastic. Lon Chaney Jr was the 40's, not 30's.

Another downside to this show was the guest they got to speak on the films, other than John Carpenter and Greg Nicotero, the rest were just people from academia trying to push their narrative on films they had nothing to do with. One goes to say "The Bride Of Frankenstein" was early feminism, cause she rejected the man she was created for. No, she rejected him cause he was hideous and she had yet to realize she was the same as him. Patton Oswald says Dracula played into Kink because people like to be dominated and consumed? UH no.

One also brings up the Hays code and says that it cracked down cause of films like Dracula's Daughter, false, that came out after the Hays code. I don't like people changing history to fit their narrative, there is one truth not multiple.

Was so looking forward to seeing this and after the first episode it was one continuous allegory for every social, progressive view in the past 50 years. Even without screenwriters saying so everything had to be twisted around to make their story some underlying wrong or victimhood point. I thought this was supposed to be about horror history and how it morphed over time. And get insights from the masters who created it. The movie was about 20% that and 80% trash. I do not recommend this movie for any serious fan of the horror genre unless you want to be preached to. So very very disappointing.

Pretty dull, which is a real shame as there are some potentially insightful talking heads (from the Biz and academia) but it just seems really poorly conceived and directionless.

Its a real worry when in the first episode one of the first statements from Blumhouse describes Frakenstein as a) a monster and b) American. Maybe it'll fill out and offer more but after the first episode I'd describe it as school media studies project made by a child who's just got into scary movies and thinks blood, creepiness and nail-varnish makes them interesting whose parents have great connections in the industry but has wasted that nepotism.