Editing Monster (section)

====Pre–World War II monster films====
[[File:Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff).jpg|thumb|left|150px|Hollywood's interpretation of Frankenstein's monster, played by [[Boris Karloff]]]]
During the age of [[silent film]]s, monsters tended to be human-sized, e.g. [[Frankenstein's monster]], the [[Golem]], [[Werewolf|werewolves]] and [[vampire]]s. The film ''[[Die Nibelungen|Siegfried]]'' featured a [[dragon]] that consisted of [[Stop motion|stop-motion animated]] models, as in [[RKO]]'s ''King Kong'', the first giant [[Monster movie|monster film]] of the sound era.

[[Universal Pictures|Universal Studios]] specialized in monsters, with [[Bela Lugosi]]'s reprisal of his stage role, [[Dracula]], and [[Boris Karloff]] playing [[Frankenstein's monster]]. The studio also made several lesser films, such as ''Man-Made Monster'', starring [[Lon Chaney Jr.]] as a carnival side-show worker who is turned into an electrically charged killer, able to dispatch victims merely by touching them, causing death by electrocution.

There was also a variant of Dr. Frankenstein, the mad surgeon Dr. Gogol (played by [[Peter Lorre]]), who transplanted hands that were reanimated with malevolent temperaments, in the film ''[[Mad Love (1935 film)|Mad Love]]''.

[[Werewolf|Werewolves]] were introduced in films during this period. [[mummy|Mummies]] were cinematically depicted as fearsome monsters as well. As for giant creatures, the cliffhanger of the first episode of the 1936 ''[[Flash Gordon (serial)|Flash Gordon]]'' [[Serial (film)|serial]] did not use a costumed actor, instead using real-life [[lizard]]s to depict a pair of battling dragons via use of camera perspective. However, the cliffhanger of the ninth episode of the same serial had a man in a rubber suit play the Fire Dragon, which picks up a doll representing Flash in its claws. The cinematic monster cycle eventually wore thin, having a comedic turn in ''[[Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein]]'' (1948).