50 Universal Classic Monster Movies Ranked
The latest: Can you smell what The Scorpion King is cooking? It joins our list of Universal Classic Monster movies!
Before your cinematic universes and extended galaxies and interconnected constellations, there were the Universal Classic Monster movies. A loose confederation of sequels and spinoffs, they were the biggest motion picture events in the early life of cinema. The 1920s kicked things off with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera before the franchise moved into its 1930s golden era. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Invisible Man all released between 1931 and 1933, and they remain masterpiece staples of the horror genre.
In the 1940s, Universal ramped up production, frequently outpacing quality control. Among the sequels was the introduction of The Wolf Man in 1941, as well as Universal’s turn to self-parody with the arrival of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The comedy duo would Meet Frankenstein in 1948, carrying well into the mid-’50s. Creature from the Black Lagoon was the final hurrah for the original line of Universal monster movies.
In 1999, The Mummy was revived in the summer blockbuster era, bringing in enough fans young and old to encourage two sequels. Van Helsing and The Wolfman also arrived in the decade or so after the Mummy relaunch, though the lackluster returns on those meant Universal was ready to try something new (read: what Marvel was doing).
2014’s Dracula Untold was to be the start of a so-called Dark Universe of connected monster movies. After that movie failed to draw much blood out of the box office, 2017’s The Mummy was going to be the “new” new start of the Dark Universe. Until that movie also bombed spectacularly.
And so we arrive at 2020’s The Invisible Man, which reportedly cost 30 times less than The Mummy to make, and with no aspirations to be tied to any larger universe. In 2023, the studio released a comedic follow-up to Dracula with Renfield, all about the Count’s poor beleaguered aide. Then the studio took a few bites: First with The Last Voyage of the Demeter in 2023, based on a chapter from the Bram Stoker Dracula novel, and then in 2024 with Abigail, a loose re-imagining of Dracula’s Daughter. Now, we rank all Universal Monster movies by Tomatometer! —Alex Vo
98%
96%
95%
94%
92%
91%
90%
89%
83%
81%
100%
95%
93%
90%
87%
80%
80%
81%
73%
67%
67%
63%
64%
67%
63%
60%
58%
57%
56%
55%
50%
46%
48%
43%
40%
40%
40%
33%
32%
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17%
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13%
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