The Introverted Obelisk

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox takes a look at the 1948 horror-comedy classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein , where Universal's legendary monsters discover that dealing with two bumbling baggage handlers might be more trouble than they're worth. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello play Chick Young and Wilbur Grey, two unsuspecting deliverymen who become...

Send us Fan Mail The doors of Castle Dracula are open, the cobwebs haven't been dusted in centuries, and the Count is expecting company. Unfortunately, checking in is considerably easier than checking out. This week on The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox sinks his teeth into Universal's 1931 horror classic Dracula , starring the legendary Bela Lugosi as cinema's most famous vampire....

Send us Fan Mail The opera house is alive with music, romance, and murder, and somewhere beneath the stage, a disfigured violinist is making sure the show goes on! Today on The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox pulls back the curtain on Universal's lavish 1943 adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera , starring Claude Rains, Susanna Foster, and Nelson Eddy. Unlike the shadowy nightmare of the 192...

Send us Fan Mail Universal had already given audiences Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Mummy when James Whale introduced a different kind of monster in 1933: one you couldn’t actually see. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man stars Claude Rains as Jack Griffin, a scientist whose experiments have successfully made him invisible. Unfortunately, Griffin has discovered how to d...

Send us Fan Mail By 1943, Universal had spent more than a decade building some of horror’s most famous monsters. Then somebody finally asked the obvious question: what happens if we put two of them in the same movie? Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man brings Lon Chaney Jr. back as the tormented Larry Talbot, resurrected from the grave and once again cursed to become the Wolf Man whenever the moon is...

Send us Fan Mail By 1942, you might think the Frankenstein family had learned something from three movies’ worth of angry villagers, burning buildings, ruined laboratories, and inconveniently resurrected corpses. They had not. The Ghost of Frankenstein continues Universal’s monster saga with Lon Chaney Jr. taking over the role of the Monster and Bela Lugosi returning as Ygor, who once again demons...

Send us Fan Mail Eight years after Henry Frankenstein first decided that death was more of a suggestion than a permanent condition, Universal returned to the family business with 1939’s Son of Frankenstein . Basil Rathbone stars as Wolf Frankenstein, Henry’s son, who arrives at his father’s estate hoping to escape the shadow of the family name. Instead, he discovers that the Monster is still alive...

Send us Fan Mail Four years after Frankenstein helped define the Universal horror movie, James Whale returned to prove that apparently one trip into the laboratory wasn’t enough. Bride of Frankenstein picks up where the original left off, with Boris Karloff’s Monster surviving the burning windmill and Henry Frankenstein attempting to leave his experiments behind. That plan lasts until the wonderfu...

Send us Fan Mail James Whale’s Frankenstein didn’t invent the mad scientist, the laboratory full of questionable equipment, or the idea of creating life where nature probably intended otherwise, but it brought them together so perfectly that horror movies have been borrowing from it ever since. Released by Universal in 1931, Frankenstein stars Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, a young scientist d...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, Obie Knox digs into 1941’s The Wolf Man, one of Universal’s defining monster movies and one of the most influential werewolf films ever made. After an encounter with a mysterious wolf leaves Larry wounded and Bela the fortune teller dead, Larry begins to fear that the old legends are true and that he has become a werewolf. We look at Lon...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we venture into the Amazon to revisit Universal's 1954 classic, Creature from the Black Lagoon . After exploring the fascinating history behind the creation of the Gill-man—including Milicent Patrick's long-overlooked contribution to the creature's iconic design—we dive into the film itself, following an expedition that d...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox journeys back to 1932 to explore one of the films that helped define classic horror: The Mummy . Long before shambling bandaged monsters became Halloween staples, Universal introduced audiences to a far more unsettling vision of the undead—an ancient Egyptian priest whose greatest weapon isn't brute strength, but patience...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox travels to 17th-century Moldavia for Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960), a gorgeous Gothic nightmare that begins with one of the more memorable executions in horror history. Barbara Steele stars as Princess Asa Vajda, a witch condemned to death by her own brother and fitted with a particularly unpleasant spiked mask before promi...

Send us Fan Mail A college student looking for material on witchcraft probably shouldn't begin by checking into an isolated New England town permanently buried under fog, but The City of the Dead has other plans. In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox heads to Whitewood, Massachusetts, where Nan Barlow's innocent research trip leads her straight into a town with a very lo...

Send us Fan Mail Christopher Lee trades the fangs for a pentagram as The Introverted Obelisk enters the world of Hammer horror with 1968’s The Devil Rides Out . Lee stars as the Duc de Richleau, a man who discovers that his young friend Simon has fallen under the influence of the charming but sinister Mocata and his circle of occult followers. What begins as an uncomfortable social call quickly es...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a committed skeptic discovers that the supernatural doesn't particularly care whether he believes in it? This time on The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox takes a trip to 1957 for Jacques Tourneur's wonderfully atmospheric tale of skepticism, black magic, cursed parchment, and the dangers of accepting anything from a man who openly admits to practicing t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox ventures into the African jungle for Monster from Green Hell (1957), a creature feature that asks one very important question: what if giant radioactive wasps decided humanity had overstayed its welcome? The story begins with an experimental rocket carrying radioactive wasps into space, only for the mission to go spectacularly...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox heads deep beneath the earth for a creature feature where the biggest problem facing humanity is not aliens, mad scientists, or mysterious experiments gone wrong, but a group of prehistoric scorpions that have apparently been waiting millions of years for their chance to ruin everyone’s week. Released in 1957, The Black Scorpi...

Send us Fan Mail Join Obie Knox for another descent into The Introverted Obelisk as the Swarming theme continues with one of the most influential creature features ever made: Them! Released in 1954, this Atomic Age classic transformed ordinary ants into towering predators and helped establish the blueprint for decades of giant monster cinema. In this episode, Obie follows the investigation that be...

Send us Fan Mail Join Obie Knox for another journey into the strange world of Atomic Age horror as The Introverted Obelisk spins a web around the 1955 science fiction classic Tarantula . This week, a quiet Arizona desert community becomes the unlikely home of one of cinema's most unforgettable giant monsters after an experimental growth serum transforms an ordinary spider into a towering nigh...

Send us Fan Mail Dive beneath the waves with The Introverted Obelisk as we journey into the Atomic Age for Phantom from 10,000 Leagues , a creature feature where radiation once again proves to be humanity's worst traveling companion. This 1955 sci-fi horror film blends seaside mystery, Cold War anxieties, and a surprisingly persistent sea monster into a story that asks what happens when scien...

Send us Fan Mail Journey back to the dawn of giant monster cinema with The Introverted Obelisk as Obie Knox explores The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms , the landmark 1953 creature feature that helped shape the future of monster movies for decades to come. Long before audiences met Godzilla or countless other towering terrors, this film introduced moviegoers to a prehistoric predator awakened by mankin...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Introverted Obelisk , Obie Knox climbs aboard one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest suspense films, The Lady Vanishes . What begins as an ordinary train ride across Europe quickly transforms into a twisting mystery where memory, deception, and paranoia all seem to be traveling in the same compartment. After a young woman named Iris befriends the kind and unassumin...

Send us Fan Mail Heatwave Horror Month continues as Obie Knox descends beneath the streets of Los Angeles to revisit one of the strangest creature features of the 1960s: The Slime People . This low-budget sci-fi horror oddity wastes absolutely no time introducing its monsters, throwing audiences headfirst into a city abandoned to hulking subterranean creatures armed with spears, surrounded by an i...

Send us Fan Mail This month, The Introverted Obelisk kicks off Heatwave Horror Month with the 1964 drive-in cult classic The Horror of Party Beach . What starts as a carefree day of sun, surf, and dancing quickly turns into chaos when a radioactive monster rises from the ocean, leaving a trail of destruction along the shoreline. Equal parts beach party musical and creature feature, this film has e...