OLD MONSTERS NEVER DIE.....

Harry Treadaway as Victor Frankenstein and Rory Kinnear as his creature in PENNY DREADFUL.

The monsters are back! They live! They walk among us again. Thankfully, I don't mean the serial killers, maniacs or torturers that have infested our film and television screen for too long. I'm talking about the genuine article. You may have noticed that over the last few years there has been a revival of classic literary and cinematic monsters on both big and small screens. Some time back Universal revived their classic Egyptian mummy character, Im-Ho-Tep. True, he didn't look a lot like he did back in 1932 when played by Boris Karloff, but the film was fun and resulted in some fun spinoffs.
Then Dracula himself was back in a television film, a min-series and a feature film, DRACULA UNTOLD. Then there was THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES (soon to be followed by a second series) which featured elements of the original story and included Mary Shelley herself as a character.
Charlie Higson gave us JEKYLL AND HYDE which told of the original Jekyll's grandson coping with the family curse as well as bunch of other monsters, including Spring Heeled Jack. and various monster makers and hunters causing havoc in 1930's London. To my mind the best of all was the television series PENNY DREADFUL which quite convincingly managed to combine Victor Frankenstein, three of his creatures, Dorian Gray, witches, exorcisms, resurrectionists, Dr.Jekyll, Dracula and a werewolf in one narrative. Strong stuff.

"I'll be back!"

For a few years now there have been various turns at updating GODZILLA and Peter Jackson gave the mighty KING KONG a remake. The Godzilla people have now done a complete reboot of the Kong story in KONG : SKULL ISLAND with the avowed intention of reuniting the two monsters for KING KONG VS. GODZILLA in the not too distant future.

The Mummy (2017)

At the moment Universal Studios, as well as promoting their impressive backlog of classic movie monsters (yet again) are launching monster universe with yet another rethink of THE MUMMY which manages to include Russell Crowe as Dr.Henry Jekyll! We are promised, for the future, not only Johnny Depp as THE INVISIBLE MAN but the possibility of Dwayne Johnson as THE WOLFMAN, Xavier Bardem as FRANKENSTEIN and Angelina Jolie as THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. " A World of Gods and Monsters", indeed.

The boys are back in town.