Let's See What's On the Slab
The Frankenstein Legacy Collection

It was apparently a suit's idea. "We've got this film called Van Helsing coming out. It's using all our old properties. Why not release all those old properties on video again? It won't cost us much, and it'll help publicize Van Helsing."

The dream of Victor Von Frankenstein was a vast, overreaching quest, whatever you can say about its craziness. He wanted to create life. Not in that conventional, disgusting, messy way involving a member of the opposite sex. He wanted to create it by himself, with his own scientific knowledge and a little lightning. Compare that ambition to the desire of a movie executive to boost the company's bottom line for this financial quarter, to hang onto his phony-baloney job a few months longer. Today's madmen no longer dream big; that's why America is in trouble.

Victor got his hands dirty by digging up the bodies of murderers. The suit can't bear to touch the actual movies, calling them by the bland name "properties." To show you how Universal disregarded its own heritage, the original trailers for these movies aren't on the disk. The trailers say "A Realart re-release." Realart was a crummy little studio, owned by Universal, which distributed films that the mother company was ashamed of - unlike Universal's fine quality products like Ma and Pa Kettle at Home and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.

It doesn't matter that this collection exists because of a suit's cheap promotion idea. Universal's "Monster Legacy" collections are the most exciting thing to come out on DVD in years. For around $20 per set, you can own the classic monster movies that established horror as an American genre, for better or worse.

I'm not going to insult you by reviewing the Frankenstein movies. If you're this far into science fiction, you should know and appreciate these movies already. If not, get the collection and watch the movies. What I will discuss is the way these disks are presented.

First of all, why do studios do such a poor job of putting multiple disks in a custom box? The Harry Potter disks fall out of their case, because the little gizmos that hold the center holes break off or are weak. The Frankenstein disks have the opposite problem; they are so hard to get out of the case you can easily smear or scratch them.

Worse, the disks are designed weird. The original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein are on a one-sided DVD with a label. Its menu shows all five movies in the collection. If you choose the other three movies on-screen, it tells you to put in the other disk.

The other disk is two-sided. It has one of those little "ring" labels on the inside of ONE side. It doesn't tell you what's on each side of the disk. But if you pick the wrong movie on its identical menu, it'll tell you to turn the disk over. This is clumsy. You may have to sit through three of those FBI and Interpol notices (that the law forces you to watch) before getting to the movie you want to see. Why not put the listing on the little ring label?

Both disks have good extras. Disk 1, with Frankenstein and Bride, have full-length commentaries by film historians that are smart and make sense, and good "making of" documentaries. The inevitable hype for Van Helsing occurs on Disk 2, Side 2, in an interview with Van Helsing director Stephen Sommers. A documentary on The Bride of Frankenstein restates the opinion of most film critics, that Bride is better than the original Frankenstein, and is one of the great American films, period. There's also a strange collection of movie posters, promotional stills and sound clips called "The Frankenstein Files," looking like Ken Burns's Civil War documentary. Weirdest of all is Boo!, one of those quickie short subjects studios used to throw together, with clips from Frankenstein and Dracula, and a sarcastic wiseguy narrator.

Although this collection has its flaws - the weird way they made the disks - its value and importance are impossible to deny. Buy it and enjoy it.

Thomas E. Reed is a television engineer in Orlando, Florida. He was surprised that, instead of featuring this out in front at Wal-Mart, they had the stinker You Got Served instead. Here's some advice to dance teams; when you get served, and the Frankenstein Monster serves you back, then it AIN'T on, because he thought you were a flower and threw your dead body in the creek. On h you can serve him.