The Buffy Episode That Secretly Honored The Earliest Cinematic Universe

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 minute ago

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is arguably the most seminal series of the ‘90s, influencing literally decades of movies and TV shows. There’s a reason every superhero film is full of “Whedon-esque” dialogue: because everyone writing modern movies grew up watching Buffy crack pop culture-inflused jokes while dusting vamps, one stake at a time. On top of the clever writing, the show succeeded because it turned the horror genre on its head, presenting someone who would normally be the victim in a scary movie (namely, a pretty little blonde) into someone who scared even the most frightening monsters. 

Horror fans naturally flocked to Buffy because it featured vampires, werewolves, zombies, and just about every supernatural threat you could imagine. Ironically, though, all this surface-level scariness often kept fans from seeing the spooky forest for the trees. For example, most audiences realize very early on that the episode “Beauty and the Beasts” is an homage to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But few have realized that this episode is also an homage to the earliest cinematic universe: Universal Monsters!

Nowhere To Hyde

“Beauty and the Beasts” is an episode where the Scooby Gang discovers a horrific murder and thinks that the killer could be their pal Oz, who transforms from a laconic rocker to a hungry werewolf at the sight of the full moon. The real culprit is a Sunnydale High student who has been taking a potion to make himself stronger and more virile (Chadmaxxing, as the kids might say). But he ends up turning into a rage monster who beats his girlfriend and kills innocent victims. Buffy is ready to put him down for good, but she doesn’t have to, as the Incredulous Hulk is killed by Angel, who has mysteriously returned to life.

From the very beginning, Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans easily clocked that “Beauty and the Beasts” was referencing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which an upstanding scientist creates a potion to help unleash his dark side. That happens to the young antagonist at the heart of this story, and, as with Dr. Jekyll, the monster he unleashes ultimately gets him killed. What most fans didn’t clock, though, is that this underrated episode also serves as an homage to the cinematic universe that Universal Pictures created when their famous monsters began popping up in each other’s films.

An American Werewolf In Sunnydale

Nearly 80 years before Robert Downey Jr. kicked off the MCU, Universal created the original cinematic universe by combining some of its most famous properties. Audiences had already fallen in love with iconic movies featuring monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, and in the ‘40s, the studio began making crossover films like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. These killer crossovers became major hits for the same reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe did: namely, that audiences enjoyed seeing directors turn the silver screen into a playbox filled with their favorite toys.

What does this have to do with “Beauty and the Beasts?” Well, this Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode has its Mr. Hyde (who appeared in Universal’s Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) squaring off against the transformed Oz, who is the Buffy equivalent of the Wolf Man. He also fights against Angel, who is the Buffy equivalent of Dracula (at least, until the real Dracula shows up in Season 5). Meanwhile, our titular Slayer is a kind of stand-in for Van Helsing, battling both the Wolf Man and Mr. Hyde before the episode is over.

In many ways, Buffy’s homage to the Universal Monsters is quite appropriate: if not for the success of the 1931 Dracula, we wouldn’t have had nearly a century of movies and TV shows based on everyone’s favorite bloodsuckers. Plus, while “Beauty and the Beasts” isn’t the best Season 3 episode, it does channel the best thing about Universal’s old crossover monster movies: namely, seeing a bunch of crazy monsters get into deliciously over-the-top fights. It’s enough to make me wish Buffy had updated her hilariously out-of-date Season 1 tag line: “if the monster mash comes, beep me!”