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Some of the best movies to watch during the Halloween season (and some of the coolest movies in the horror genre) are the classic Universal Monsters movies. Those awesome black and white movies that were built around characters like Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, The Mummy, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, among others. So now that Halloween weekend is upon us, we here at Arrow in the Head have put together a list: Universal Monsters Franchises Ranked! Below you’ll find our rankings of the classic franchises, from least to favorite. Check it out, and let us know how you would rank these franchises by leaving a comment!

Honorable Mention: Abbott And Costello

The comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello certainly weren’t Universal monsters (or any other kind of monsters), but they earn an honorable mention on this list because they played an...

Universal Horror Collection Volume 5

Blu ray

1943, 1944, 1945, 1941 / 61, 61, 63, 64 min.

Starring Ellen Drew, John Carradine, Acquanetta

Cinematography by George Robinson, Jack MacKenzie, Maury Gertsman, Victor Milner

Directed by Edward Dmytryk, Reginald Le Borg, Harold Young, Stuart Heisler

The Universal Horror Collection Volume 5 should appeal to ape suit fans everywhere—and spoiler alert—one of the films in the set is genuinely good, a lyrical genre-buster that is as inventive as it is poignant.

That movie, The Monster and the Girl, shares space with a trio of bottom-rung potboilers concerning the misadventures of Paula Dupree, a beautiful circus performer with the bad habit of changing into a monster—though she’s not “changing” so much as reverting to her true nature; Paula is a deracinated gorilla given human form by a not-so-mad doctor The statuesque Aquanetta plays Paula and, except for some grunts and growls in her ape state, her’s is a completely mute performance.

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By Fred Blosser

Universal Pictures released three horror films about Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman, as it attempted to refresh its aging portfolio of monster series in the early 1940s. “Captive Wild Woman” debuted in 1943, followed by two sequels, “Jungle Woman” (1944) and “Jungle Captive” (1945). Paula Dupree never made a lasting impact on popular culture as other Universal horror characters did, coming too late in the studio’s 15-year horror run to gain much traction. By 1945, when “Jungle Captive” was dumped onto a double-bill with “The Frozen Ghost,” the cycle was on its last gasp. There was never an Aurora scale-model kit for the Ape Woman in the mid-1960s as there were for the studio’s more famous monsters, and nary a word about Paula when Universal started making noises a few years ago about reviving its trademarked monsters for a new “Dark Universe” film franchise.

Brains on Ice! week kicks off at Trailers from Hell with director and Tfh creator Joe Dante introducing Universal's 1943 film "Captive Wild Woman," starring John Carradine as a mad doctor who transforms a circus ape into doe-eyed sex-bomb Acquanetta via a brain swap.A sci-fi twist on Universal’s popular wolfman cycle, this was the first in a trio of ‘Paula the Ape-woman’ movies (including Jungle Woman and Jungle Captive). Resourcefully directed by former editor Edward Dmytryk, who structures his low budget thrills around circus footage from Kurt Neumann’s 1933 The Big Cage. Even with all that extra padding, the whole thing tops out to a zippy 61 minutes of gorilla-girl action.