If anyone is a fan of the old 1930's " Dracula "...
I have all the original monster movies from that era - Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman... as well as the sequels made through into the 40s. I can watch them over and over. Even today they look remarkably well done, especially the use of lighting.
Dracula was by far the best and creepiest. Cinematography was superb and atmospheric. The sequels tended to deteriorate into scary ghost and monster films, all of them lacking the classical formality Lugosi crafted into the character in the first. The first captured the book quite well. Stoker's own sequels tended to be more melodramatic and histrionic, as do the movie sequels.
Frankenstein was excellent as a crafted piece, but ventured too far from the book, so it missed the central tragedy of the novel and ended up just about a monster. That was corrected somewhat in the sequel but the attempt to humanize the monster, while entertaining, didn't quite come across. After that, the sequels became monster chase movies.
Wolfman was actually a good drama but is hampered today by the special effects of its time which look corny today. Only the original actually had a good albeit predictable plot; the rest were all monster chases.
The Mummy was really just Frankenstein in Egyptian disguise, although it had an entertaining story line that catered to the then-current craze for Egyptian things post-Carnavon's Tutankahmen's crypt discovery. Sequels were laboriously predictable.
Surprising good remakes have been done - the Branagh Frankenstein, Coppola's Dracula and the recent Wolfman release. An American Werewolf in London was also quite good, and even a bit funny, but the Paris sequel was, like most country music, merely derivative.
None of the Mummy remakes, however, have quite lived up to the original, although they have been more humorous. Bubba-Hotep was actually quite witty. But they lack the brooding sense of menace in Karloff's original.
I love monster films but don't think of them as horror. Some - the Gojira (Godzilla) series run into the pureile and fatuous, at least after the original. Still, they can be fun.
Others like The Creature From the Black Lagoon are merely B-flicks, but equally fun, although most are mere variations on the same theme. A lot have that gluey righteousness about them - human science creates/unleases a monster that would have remained dormant if we didn't open the doors of exploration. Many end with that sort of saccharine statement about there being places science should not go. Morality fables with monsters. Yawn...
Roger Corman combined monsters and horror in a few of his movies - my fav being the Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters. Most aren't very frightening but some have a cachet as good B-flicks. He had some skills as a director of this genre.
King Kong remains one of my favourite films of all time, but the remakes have all been drearily overdone and bloated. It its day, King Kong was a masterpiece of special effects. Peter Jackson took a tightly crafted, action-packed 90-minute plot and stretched it to three hours of repetitive chase scenes and excessive computer animation, adding scenes thew original director cut, making it one of the dullest movies I've ever seen. His casting of Jack Black as the director was such a poor choice it still makes me wince. It belongs in the Wal-Mart 2 for $5 bin.
The remake of Godzilla was fun, and despite the New York setting was in keeping with the spirit of the original. Not as campy, but well-paced and lots of action.
Dracula flicks were made into campy blod-splattered horror in the 50s and 60s with actors like Christopher Lee, and that eventually spawned today's massive - and massively silly - vampire TV shows.
Monster movies can be fun. Today's slasher films with their focus on torture, mutilation, vivisection and so on may delight the sociopaths and psychopaths but not me. Who enjoys watching people being hurt?
