Dan Curtis was best known as the creator of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, directing the supernatural horror film Burnt Offerings, and producing the made-for-TV movies The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, which led to the short-lived but still popular series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Curtis also had the opportunity to bring the stories of some classic monsters to the screen – and on October 28th, just in time for Halloween viewing, Kino Cult will be bringing Curtis’s takes on Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Blu-ray in a set called Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters! Copies are available for pre-order at THIS LINK.
Here’s the description of the set: Widely acclaimed for having modernized television horror in the 1960s and ’70s, producer Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker) also embraced more traditional approaches. This special edition presents Curtis’s made-for-TV versions of the three foundational monsters of filmdom. Adapted by Richard Matheson (Somewhere in Time) and starring Jack Palance (Shane), Dracula was filmed in Eastern Europe and was the first film to make a connection between Bram Stoker’s vampire and Vlad the Impaler. Bo Svenson (Part 2: Walking Tall) portrays the heartbreakingly childlike monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde features a ferocious performance by Palance as the scientist who unbridles the deepest, darkest urges of the human animal.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the first of these movies to air, showing on ABC on January 7, 1968. Curtis produced the movie, which was directed by Charles Jarrott from a screenplay by Ian McLellan Hunter. Jack Palance plays Jekyll and Hyde, and was joined in the cast by Denholm Elliott, Tessie O’Shea, Torin Thatcher, Oskar Homolka, Leo Genn, Billie Whitelaw, Rex Sevenoaks, Gillie Fenwick, Elizabeth Cole, Duncan Lamont, Paul Harding, Donald Webster, and Geoffrey Alexander.
Frankenstein aired on ABC on January 16, 1973. In addition to producing the movie, Curtis also wrote it with Richard H. Landau and Sam Hall. Glenn Jordan was the director. In addition to Bo Svenson as The Monster, it stars Robert Foxworth, Susan Strasberg, Robert Gentry, Heidi Vaughn, Philip Bourneuf, Robert Gentry, Jon Lormer, William Hansen, John Karlen, and Willie Aames.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was meant to air on CBS in October of 1973, but it was pre-empted for an address by President Richard Nixon on the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew and didn’t air until February 8, 1974. Curtis directed this one from the script by Richard Matheson, and Jack Palance co-stars with Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner, and Murray Brown.
Will you be buying a copy of Dan Curtis’ Classic Monsters and adding these versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to your Blu-ray collection? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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