Showing posts with label Karloff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karloff. Show all posts
Frankenstein 1970 (1958) Karloff of Future Past.
The Horrors of Archive.Org: Karloff Edition
In the late 50's Boris Karloff got his own brief show on the radio (Kids, a radio show is like a podcast you didn't have to download done by professionals.) . Each episode he read a different story from the pages of The Readers Digest. While most of them lean toward horror, by episode 3, Karloff is reading something called The Story of Wood. I chose the first episode to share with you folks, The Vampire's Grave.
Here's Karloff on a show I've never heard of before, Duffy's Tavern. While the first part of the show is devoted to the importance of war bonds (and face it, you always wanted to know that), the last half of the show features Boris as a demented doctor.
Proving you never know what you'll find on archive.org. I ran across these home videos taken on the set of Son of Frankenstein showing a full color monster clowning about on the set.
Finally I'll leave you with a flick, The Ghoul from 1933 starring Karloff. The Ghoul was both the first British film to be labeled "horror" and the first such film of the talking pictures era. The plot concerning an Egyptologist who comes back from the grave to reap revenge is a bit like The Mummy, but it's packed with Karloff being sinister as hell, so who cares!
These are just a few examples of the great, free horror gems awaiting you at Archive.org. A search for any classic horror star is sure to turn something up, and it just proves that you never know where horror might be lurking.
Black Friday (1940): Karloff's Doorbuster Special on Transplanted Brains
Hello folks. Welcome to my last entry for Frankenstienia’s Boris Karloff Blogathon. I’ve had lots of fun watching all these great Karloff films this week, and I’m astounded by the variety and volume of posts people contributed on Boris. There were so many interesting sides to the man, and it looks like over the course of the week pretty much every angle got covered. So I want to send a big thanks out to Pierre over at Frankenstienia for doing such a great job getting this thing going and keeping up with the deluge of posts. If you haven’t been checking it out, then take some time to go over there and see what’s going on.
That’s enough thank you’s I think. Now it’s time to get into today’s film. The day after Thanksgiving is known to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year, and to retailers, it has become known by the moniker Black Friday. So when I discovered that Mr. Karloff had starred in a film of the same title, then I knew I had to watch it. The film concerns busy businessman Boris Karloff who is on a quest to find the must have toy of the season, the Turbo Man. However Bela Lugosi is a hard working divorcée who needs a one of the action figures for his kid as well, and…. Huh? Oh, yeah. My fault. That’s the plot for the big blockbuster movie Jingle All the Way. Let’s try this again.
Boris Karloff plays Dr. Ernest Sovak, and when his best friend, mild mannered English professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), gets run over by a car, Dr. Sovak is desperate to save him. Coming into the hospital at the same time is mobster Red Cannon (Stanley Ridges) who has been shot and paralyzed. Dr. Sovak operates on the two men replacing Kingsley’s damaged brain with that of the mobster. When Kingsley makes a recovery, he seems alright at first, but then he starts exhibiting characteristics of the mobster whose brain resides in his noggin. Dr. Sovak sees an opportunity to find a large amount of money Red Cannon hid before he died, and takes Kingsley to NYC to see if more memories come back. The trip to the city brings back more than Sovak planned for, and soon the professor is reaping the mobster’s vengeance on his old cronies (which includes Bela Lugosi in a small supporting role). As Kingsley spirals further out of control, Sovak is forced to make a decision on how to stop the friend whose life he had saved.
With a running time of only 70 minutes, Black Friday moves at a pretty fast clip, and this helps the threadbare plot seem less suspect because they don’t give you much time to think about it. It’s not that the film is written badly. It’s more that it doesn’t make much sense. How in the world do you put someone else’s brain in a body and they retain any sense of self? Maybe I’m thinking too hard on this one. This is a slice of science fiction nonsense that doesn’t need to be even vaguely factually accurate to be entertaining. Black Friday is not a thinker. Rather it’s the complete opposite. This is not a film that benefits from dwelling on its minutia. If you just accept the conceit and move on, then it’s a fun ride to the end.
I haven’t seen Karloff in enough roles where he wasn’t playing a monster or creep, and even though Dr. Sovak is not exactly on the level, he’s more flawed man than monster. Karloff is given time to flex his dramatic chops in this film, and I really enjoyed seeing him work. Sovak is a sympathetic character, but he’s also a bit of an asshole. He might have gone to great lengths to save his friend, but when the possibility of getting a chunk of change came his way, than he was more interested in that than his pal’s wellbeing. At one time the script called for Karloff to play the professor/mobster and Bela Lugosi to play the part of the doctor, but Karloff insisted on playing Sovak. The film is probably much better for this choice, and I can’t see Bela, as much as I like him, being able to bring off the conflicted emotions that Dr. Sovak goes through.
It also would have resulted in the loss of a great performance. Stanley Ridges was a character actor relegated to mostly minor roles when he landed the part of George Kingsley, and then he stole the show. Doing a Jekyll and Hyde routine in order to bounce back and forth between the loveable Professor Kingsley and mobster Red Cannon, Ridges really impresses. He was almost unrecognizable when he would change, and I honestly thought that it was being played by two actors until I took a look at the credits. While Karloff impresses with a strong dramatic performance, Ridges really shows that he deserved to have more prominent roles thrown his way. In the years to come, he would get quite a few of those in films like The Sea Wolf (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942).
While Bela Lugosi is second billed in this film, he really has very limited screen time as one of Red Cannon’s traitorous partners, Eric Marnay. While I enjoyed Bela hamming it up as a mobster with a Hungarian accent, it really could have been anyone in the role. It was really such a small role that the novelty factor of seeing Bela didn’t add much. Of the eight films that Karloff and Lugosi made together, this is also the only one where they don’t appear onscreen together. Without a meeting of the two horror legends, there seems to be little reason for Lugosi to inhabit the role in the first place.
Black Friday was directed by Arthur Lubin who was taking a shot at a sci-fi title after a string of war and crime films. Lubin doesn’t bring anything particularly special to the film, and it has a workmanlike quality that so many B grade pictures from the era had. Lubin would not find his muse in the world of science fiction. In fact, he would not hit his stride until 1941 when he directed the Abbott and Costello classic Buck Privates. He would go on to work primarily in comedy thereafter including a couple more Bud and Lou films, a pair of Francis the Talking Mule movies, and the 1964 Don Knotts live action/animation classic The Amazing Mr. Limpet.
Black Friday is not a film to boost up the classic status, but it is a solid effort from everyone involved. Even though I was disappointed that the film was not focused on Boris Karloff trying to wrap up his Christmas shopping early, I still rather enjoyed what I saw. This is a great quick watch that I would recommend to any Karloff fan who hasn’t seen it. That brings an end to my coverage of Boris Karloff, but this won’t be the last of the horror icon we see around this place. Reading about all his other great films in the Frankensteinia Blogathon has given me an even greater appreciation of Karloff and his legacy. They don’t make stars like him anymore, but thankfully we have all his great films to go back to for years to come.
Bugg Rating
The Mummy (1932): Or, Boris' Other Bride
Hello, folks. First off, happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and I hope you’ve all given plenty of thanks. Lot’s of bloggers have been giving thanks this whole week to Boris Karloff thanks to the Frankensteinia’s Boris Karloff Blogathon. I’ve had great fun reading all the posts and getting a chance to take in a few classic Karloff films as well. Today I wanted to talk a bit more about Karloff, but as usual, I also want to turn my eye to another Beautiful Lady of Genre, Miss Zita Johann. After the great success of Frankenstein and The Old Dark House, Universal wanted another property for a Karloff lead. The movie that they made was The Mummy, and what is Imhotep without his long lost love?
I’m sure most of you have seen The Mummy, so I won’t spend very long on the synopsis. Some nosey archeologists in Egypt unearth the cursed body of Imhotep (Karloff), and even though it’s clearly marked, the young upstart archeology student just has to open the container with the cursed scroll on it. You know what happens next, the mummy comes to life, the kid goes crazy, and Imhotep takes it on the lam. Cut to ten years later, Imhotep gets another group to dig up his old girlfriend. He has a plan to get her back, but it’s going to take finding her resurrected form. Luckily for him, she’s right in Cairo in the form of Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), and if he can just keep his magic scroll and pesky archeologists in line, he’ll reunite with his lost love.
I’ve glossed over the whole archeologist angle of the film because honestly that part of the picture is not all that interesting in the first place. The milquetoast hero character, the appropriately named David Manners as Frank Whemple, isn’t very fun to watch, and Edward Van Sloan, who’s been very good in many things, only shows up here to give a repeat performance of his performance as Van Helsing in Dracula. Only this time there’s an amulet of the goddess Isis standing in for a cross. Surely, this Universal horror, the first not to have literary forbearer, owes a great deal to Tod Browning’s 1931 film. From its cast of characters to the story of love across the ages, there are many comparisons to be drawn.
The love story, while similar to Dracula, finds its own footing in the Egyptian mythology from which it was drawn, and Karloff’s Imhotep is surely no suave, dapper count. From the moment Karloff’s character is introduced to us under layers of Jack Pierce’s makeup, he presents a foreboding figure. Even after he sheds his wrappings, Karloff’s gaunt frame and sunken eyes convey everything essential about the character. Add to that the makeup that made his skin look paper thin, and no matter if he was wrapped up from head to toe or not, there was no mistaking Imhotep for anything but a revived corpse. Karloff’s languid performance makes up for the film’s plodding pace and boring protagonists. Just the scenes where he gets his crazy hypnosis eyes going are enough to make up for an awful lot. Before I move on, I just have one last thing about Boris Karloff. When it comes to the big time Universal Monsters, there’s The Mummy, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein. When you immortalize 50% of those characters, there’s no wonder that hundreds of folks would spend whole week writing about you.
The object of Imhotep’s affections is a Helen whose face might well launch a whole crapload of ships. Zita Johann was an Austrian born actress, but she perfectly embodied the poise and grace of someone that was supposed to have been the resurrected form of an Egyptian priestess. One interesting thing about The Mummy is that its setting is 1932, and unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, it could portray modern style. Zita Johann was perfect for this. With her slight frame and huge eyes, these days she would probably be plastered on a tabloid page alongside Kira Knightly and a title reading “Are They Too Thin?”, but even though she was thin, her look seemed very natural. I also thought her costuming seemed chosen to reflect Helen as a modern girl as opposed to the girl of Imhotep’s dreams. Her performance is a perfect compliment to Karloff’s imposing performance, and I wish she had done more films. She had a very short screen career before leaving Hollywood for Broadway, but she returned one more time to the genre in 1986 for an appearance in the less classic film Raiders of the Living Dead.
While The Mummy is a film fraught with goofs (mouths neglecting to move when a character is speaking), fumbles (the uninteresting hero characters), and faults (a weak story that seems derivative), Karloff and Zita sell the film with the help of director Karl Freund. Before coming to American, Freund established his reputation in Germany as a skilled cinematographer working on films with Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. When he arrived in Hollywood, he climbed behind the camera for Tod Browning’s Dracula, and within the span of two years, he was in the big chair shooting The Mummy. The influence of German expressionistic film is evident throughout, and some conceits, like shooting the flashback sequence like a silent film complete with exaggerated expressions, were genius ideas.
The Mummy is a film that only half works, but the half that’s doing the work is doing a hell of a job. Freund told the story with his images, Karloff delivered an imposing, iconic performance, and Johann provides the alluring qualities that make it seem like a guy would come back from the dead for her. When I was younger, The Mummy was my least favorite of the Universal films because it was slow, didn’t have any direct sequels, and there wasn’t more of Karloff in the bandages. As an older viewer, I appreciate it more warts and all, and it’s a classic film that belongs in any horror fan’s library.
Bugg Rating
Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer, Boris Karloff (1949): Who's On First? No, Boris Killed Him.
Last month I got to talk about one of my favorite horror comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. This great film united the comedy duo with a trio of Universal monsters, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolfman, and Frankenstein played by Glen Strange. While Boris Karloff had been offered the role, he declined rather than play the character in a comedy. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was a box office success, and the studio immediately started feeling around for another horror themed film for the funnymen. The script they found, originally titled Easy Does It, was intended to be a vehicle for Bob Hope. With a little tinkering, it was refocused for the comedy team, but the femme fatale villain, Madame Switzer, was kept the same. Then five days before shooting began the Switzer character was changed to a swami and Boris Karloff was hired. That is how they finally arrived at Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, and we arrive at my second post as a contributor to Frankensteinia’s Boris Karloff Blogathon.
When famous criminal lawyer Mr. Strickland comes to stay at the Lost Caverns Resort Hotel, he doesn’t take kindly to the bellhop skills of Freddie Phillips (Lou Costello), and the lawyer goes so far as to get Freddie fired. The indignant bellhop vows to get even with the big city lawyer, but he thinks it over and goes to apologize only to find the lawyer dead. Freddie quickly becomes the main suspect. With only hotel detective Casey Edwards (Bud Abbott) on his side, Freddie must find out which of the seven hotel guests, all former clients of Strickland, has done the deed. That is if he can resist the charms of the beautiful Angela Gordon (Lenore Aubert), the mystical hypnosis of Swami Talpur (Boris Karloff), or getting steamed to death.
If the story sounds a bit like a typical drawing room mystery from the 1940’s, that’s because it is. Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff takes on much more of properties of the noir thriller than their previous film, A&C Meet Frankenstein, did of horror films. In Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff the corpses pile up, often literally, and the scene where Bud and Lou play cards with a couple of stiffs was shocking enough to get cut out in some countries. Needless to say, there is little in the film the modern viewer might find “scary”, but this film does have a much different tone than other Abbott & Costello films. The title of the film was supposed to be Meet the Killers, but Universal didn’t want the film confused with their 1946 film The Killers. This probably led to the clunky title that features so prominently the name of Boris Karloff.
While the shocking scenes in the film might seem passé to modern audiences, the humor remains strong as ever. This was the seventh and final film that the comic duo made with director Charles Barton. With Barton, Abbott and Costello refined their vaudeville routines for the movie screens, and made a string of their great films that stand as the best in their catalog. Where some of the Marx Brothers films feel out of synch with the current taste in humor, it’s hard to watch Bud and Lou interact and not see the roots of what would become both situational comedy and the buddy flick. Lou Costello especially shines in this film, and his delivery and comic timing is right on point, and while he does have his typically Costello moments, he pulls it back to great effect in this film.
My first contact with this film came when I picked up the Goodtimes Video version of this at a Wal-Mart sometime in the late eighties. I was drawn to it both because of Abbott and Costello and, of course, Boris Karloff. Sadly, Boris, as the turbaned Swami Talpur, gets precious little screen time. He does make the most of what he gets. The routine he does with Lou Costello is priceless. The dimwitted Freddie proving too dumb to be hypnotized is the highlight of the film. Karloff gives his creepy best as the Swami, but there’s little to do but ham it up while Costello gets the laughs. Boris looks like he knows as much, and he looks like he’s having fun spoofing his own image.
In the end, as an Abbott and Costello film, it doesn’t add up to Buck Privates or A&C Meet Frankenstein, and as a Boris Karloff film, it will never top any lists. It is however an enjoyably, slightly odd little film that will entertain comedy or Karloff fans. If there’s any film that A&C Meets the Killer, Karloff really reminds me of, then it’s Clue. So if you enjoy that film, you might want to give this one a spin. That’s all for today’s Boris Karloff love. I’ll be back Thursday night with another selection. So after your post turkey nap, come on back and get all wrapped up in some more Boris.
Bugg Rating
Black Sabbath (1963): Less Tony Iommi, More Boris Karloff
One hundred and twenty two years ago today, at 36 Forest Hill Road, Peckham Rye, London, England, William Henry Pratt was born. One hundred years ago, Pratt traveled to Canada to persue a career in acting and changed his name to Boris Karloff. Seventy eight years ago, Karloff donned Jack Pierce’s makeup and became the Frankenstein monster. Once upon a time in Italy, forty six years ago, Boris made a film with Mario Bava, and that brings us to today, the start of the Boris Karloff blogathon brought to you by Frankensteinia. There’s going to be a lot of Karloff talk right here at the Lair and on a ton of other great sites all the week, and I’m really excited to get to start with one of my favorite Karloff films.
Long before I knew anything about Mario Bava; I remember catching Black Sabbath playing on TBS sometime in the early eighties. The moody atmospheric film was completely different from anything I’d seen Karloff in before, and it completely captured my imagination. In many ways I can trace my fascination with Italian horror cinema back to seeing this film. When my interest into the genre was kindled some years later, it was partially because I found out Black Sabbath’s country of origin, and I immediately dropped a chunk of change on the two Anchor Bay Mario Bava boxed sets. They contain many great films, and I’ve talked about most of them at one time or another. Yet somehow I’d never talked about that mysterious first film that taught me about the varied career of Boris Karloff and the atmospheric films of Mario Bava.
Black Sabbath is an anthology film, and depending on if you see the American International Pictures release or the Italian film, the order and feeling of the stories varies quite a bit. While I am sure that the original version I saw was the AIP release, for the purposes of this review, I watched the Italian version. The film is made of three stories, and the Italian title of the film, I tre volti della paura, translates as The Three Faces of Fear. It was given the title Black Sabbath by AIP to capitalize on the success of Bava’s Black Sunday which they had also distributed in America. In the Italian version, the three stories are book ended by Boris Karloff’s monologs which were refilmed, re-cut, and reordered for the AIP version. Boris once lamented their omission from the US version of the film and reminisced about how much fun had had shooting them.
After Karloff introduces the film while bathed in a glow of red and blue light, the film begins with ‘The Telephone’. As the segment begins, high class call girl Rosy (Michele Mercier) is harassed by a series of calls where seemingly there is no one on the other end of the line. After a few calls, a strange man begins to harass her and vows to strangle her to death. The caller finally reveals himself to be Frank (Milo Quesada), her ex-pimp, who has escaped from jail, and Rosy seeks solace with her estranged lesbian lover Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) who she invites over. The rest of the tale unfolds with lies, deceit, and mistaken identity combining for an unseemly end for all three."The Telephone" is a moody, atmospheric mini-gialli that functions as a great introduction to the stylish world of Mario Bava’s film making. In some ways, I feel like this part of the film with its jazzy score, moody lighting, and beautiful women foretell of Bava’s stylish 1964 film Blood and Black Lace. This is segment is truely Hitchcockian, but coupled with the Italian bent for sleaze that makes everything better. It doesn’t hurt that both women are absolute beauties either. It’s a wonderfully filmed story that hints at the direction Bava’s work would take.
The next segment is “The Wuderlack“, based on the story La famille du Vourdalak (Family of the Vourdalak) by Leo Tolstoy. As in Tolstoy’s tale, a traveler ends up in a small village just as their father, Gorcha (Boris Karloff) has gone off to fight a criminal named Ailbeck. Before he left, he warned them that if he did not return in five days, he would become infected with the blood curse wuderlack (a.k.a vampirism). In exactly five days, Gorcha does return, but he is a haggard, changed man. The family must decide what to do with Gorcha before he gets a chance to do all of them in.If the first face of fear was the human monster, the second is a decidedly supernatural menace. Not only is this period tale gorgeously filmed, but it really utilized the gravitas that Karloff could bring to the screen in a spooky role. Gorcha is a horrifying character, and the iconic image of him staring through the window at the traveler always sticks in my head. Lavish and exciting, this second tale really keeps the film moving along at a great pace, and it does not at all draw back form the atmospheric tone of Bava’s film even though its setting wildly deviates. The Wunderlack is a classily told tale of vampirism, and there’s a pretty interesting post about the source materials over HERE. Bava would never touch on the classical vampire again (only the futuristic kind in 1964’s Planet of the Vampires), but the style of this film with it’s gothic setting, colored lights, and heavy fog reminded me much of his 1972 film Baron Blood.
The final segment is called “The Drop of Water” again casts the face of fear in a supernatural light, but this time the menace is a spirit attached to a ring. When an elderly medium dies, Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux), the nurse who has been charged with attending to the body, steals a ring from the old lady’s finger. As she does she knocks over a glass of water and a fly which has been drawn to the corpse buzzes around her head. Later that night, the lights at her home go out, there is the sound of dripping water, and Miss Chester receives an unexpected visitor.“The Drop is Water” is also credited to a Russian author, this time Anton Chekov. I tried to track down some information on this story and came up empty so who knows where exactly Bava got this tale. “The Drop of Water” is the most macabre of the three tales with its ghastly ghost and Miss Chester’s terrifying fate. The ghost has an especially unnerving appearance, and its head was sculpted by Mario’s father Eugenio Bava. The majority of this segment focuses solely on Jacqueline Pierreux as Helen Chester, and her portrayal of a woman haunted by guilt and ghosts is very effective. While this segment has the most straightforward story of the three, I find it highly enjoyable. While there are many hints at Bava’s later work in this segment as well, the film that most often comes to mind during it is Susperia. Bava’s use of colored gels and atmospheric sequences undoubtedly had a profound influence on Argento’s films.
Only in the last moments of the film where Karloff bids us a farewell does Bava make a misstep. As Karloff still dressed as Gorka menacingly bids us to “Dream of me. We’ll become friends.” the camera rolls back and reveals the set, the cameras, and the special effects. While I can almost see this as an “it’s only a movie, folks” reassurance to those weak of heart, its tone becomes so vastly different in those last few seconds that I have a hard time reconciling it with the rest of the film. That being said, it’s not like ten seconds of footage at the end of the film could ruin the experience.Black Sabbath is one of my favorite Italian films, Bava films, and anthology films. Its three segments are all very different, but with the stylish steady hand of Mario Bava guiding each of them, they feel like a cohesive experience. If you’re a fan of Bava, Karloff, or Italian cinema, this is a must watch, and I can’t recommend it enough. So check it out, and also check out Frankensteinia for a lot more about Karloff for today, his birthday, and all this week. This isn’t the last we’ve seen of Boris around here this week either, so until next time, Dream of me. We’ll become friends. Hmmm, that sounds creepy in an entirely different way when I type it out.
Bugg Rating
The Old Dark House (1932): A Whale Tale
Director James Whale sat in the big chair on 23 films during his brief career, but the much acclaimed horror director only had four spooky features to his name. Three of them are considered to be horror canon especially for fans of Universal horror, 1931’s Frankenstein, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, and 1933’s The Invisible Man. It was only recently I heard of Whale’s other nightmarish vision, a film that reunited him with Karloff.
Based on the 1927 novel Benighted by British author J.B. Priestly, the film was adapted for the screen by screenwriter R.C. Sheriff, who would write Whale’s Invisible Man, and playwright Benn. W. Levy. It begins with a trio of travelers lost during a rainstorm in the Welsh countryside. When the road gets washed out by a mudslide, they find a foreboding manor house and seek shelter from the violent downpour. They gain entry from the menacing butler Morgan (Karloff), and soon find themselves guest of the very strange Femm family. While the travelers try to make the best of their circumstances, they become endangered when Morgan gets drunk and releases Saul, an insane pyromaniac who is intent on burning the mansion to the ground.
In a way, The Old Dark House was the Scary Movie of its time. Whale’s film played with the conventions of the gothic horror film by bringing modern people into the mix. While a normal horror film would have the characters looking out for danger around every turn, the travelers who end up in the Femm’s mansion are more concerned with flirting and having a good time. Much of the humor has a dry, British wit, and at the time, it did not play well at all to an American audience. Many viewers may still find the film’s humor to be a bit obtuse. I know there were several lines of dialog that were meant to be humorous that were completely lost on me. On the whole, the film does have a very funny tone to it even through the more dramatic last act.
Apart from Karloff, who I will get to in a moment, there are several other recognizable stars in this film. Charles Laughton, who would become a major star with 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty, made his American debut with this film, and his character Sir William Porterhouse is one of the most entertaining of the stranded travelers. Making his second appearance on The Lair this week, Melvyn Douglas was much more suited for the role of hep cat Roger Pendrel than his part in The Vampire Bat, and his scenes with the lovely Lillian Bond are both humorous and sweet. Raymond Massey, who would land bigger roles in Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace and TV’s Dr. Kildare, shows up as Phillip Waverton, but he never becomes much of a character though he does get to fight Karloff. One performer I have to mention I did not recognize, but it bears mentioning that Gloria Stuart played Waverton’s wife Margaret. It was hard to recognize Ms. Stuart because her most well known role would come almost 60 years later as Old Rose in Titanic. You also get an appearance from Ernest Thesiger as Horace Fenn. Thesiger would memorably pair with James Whale again as Dr. Pretorious in 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein.
Now on to Karloff. As the film starts, even before the Universal logo, the audience is given this message, “Karloff, the mad butler in this production, is the same Karloff who created the part of the mechanical monster in "Frankenstein". We explain this to settle all disputes in advance, even though such disputes are a tribute to his great versatility.” Boris is all but unrecognizable as Morgan, the mute, alcoholic butler. The few garbled grunts that he emits betray none of the rich baritone that would become his trademark sound. Karloff is given little to do but look menacing as he does not even end up being the “big bad” in the picture. The Old Dark House was only one of eight films that Karloff made in 1932, and Morgan was far from a starring role. It was a workmanlike performance, but the film didn’t call for anything more than that.
The Old Dark House was remade in 1963 by another horror great, William Castle, and when the remake was released, Whale’s original film was withdrawn from circulation. For many years the film was thought to be lost, but when the rights to the film reverted to author J.B. Priestly, they were bought by film archivist Raymond Rohauer who saved the film and had the master print restored. While The Old Dark House will never stack up to James Whale’s other classic horrors, it is a very different kind of film from anything I had seen from the era. It will remain an offbeat film that will likely only spark the interest of Karloff or James Whale completists. It’s not a bad film by any stretch, but also not one I can recommend for anything beyond a curiosity.
Speaking of Karloff, Frankensteinia is going to be running a Karloff tribute blog-a-thon tho coincide with Boris birthday next month. As I have a lot of love for Mr. K, I'm going to be putting my 2 cents in as well. If you want more details or want to participate, check out the link above or the banner in my sidebar. It should be a ghoulish good time.
Bugg Rating
I'm afraid there was no trailer available, but I found a clip from one of my favorite parts of the film where Gloria Stuart is menaced by Eva Moore as Rebecca Fenn.
Targets (1968): Karloff's Overlooked Classic
When Horror fans, or even the non-Horror loving public, hear the name Boris Karloff, the image that comes to mind is the lumbering square-headed brute known as the Frankenstein Monster. Of course, Karloff was much more than that. He was the Mummy, Mr. Wong, the narrator of The Grinch that Stole Christmas and an actor with 199 credits to his name that touch on almost all genre of film. He was also the star of Peter Bogdanovich’s first film with Targets (1968).
Bogdanovich had filmed about half of Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels, and Corman offered him a job with some stipulations. He had to use footage from Corman’s 1963 film The Terror (which itself was a product of Corman, Jack Hill, and Francis Ford Coppola’s direction.) and had to use up 2 days that Karloff was contracted to work for Corman. In the end, Bogdanovich crafted such a film that Karloff worked for five days and refused to be paid for any extra time. This was a Karloff who was in failing health. He had one lung, had difficulty standing or walking, and had to wear braces on both legs. Yet he gives one of the most vigorous and inspired performances of his career.
Karloff stars as Byron Orloff, a character who was much like himself, a remnant of the classic era of horror movies who has come to the end of a long career. He is tired of making cut rate films, playing the same tired characters he’s played before, and he’s ready to go home to England to live out his life in retirement. Peter Bogdanovich stars as Sammy Michaels, a young director who is trying to get Orloff for one last film, one he feels will change how the public feels about the horror actor, but Orloff is adamant he is going to retire and even refuses to do a public appearance at the Reseda Drive In. In the end, he still intends to retire, but he acquiesces to making the last appearance.
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Meanwhile, Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) is your average all American boy. He’s young and married to a pretty girl, but they still live at home with his parents. He also feels like something strange is happening in his mind, and Bobby, a crack shot, keeps buying more and more guns. Eventually, he kills his mother and wife before climbing a water tower and sniping motorists. In an effort to escape the police, he drives into the showing of The Terror at the Reseda. There the paths of the screen monster and the real life killer will cross, and their fates become intertwined.
The script, by Bogdanovich, his wife Polly Platt, and Samuel Fuller, could nearly have been labeled as “Based on True Events”. Not only are Karloff and Bogdanivich’s characters very close to their actual selves, the character of Bobby Thompson was based off the events of 1966 when Charles Whitman went on a rampage and killed 14 people from atop a tower in Austin Texas. While the details are not exact, the inspiration is clear, and while the events are based on something in the past, the idea, the disassociated lonely killer who takes lives indescrimately, is something that rings very true and very real still today. Targets is a film which is certainly a product of it’s time with the drive in and southern California setting, but it doesn’t feel dated at all. Both storylines are just as strong as they were when the film was released.
O’Kelly and Karloff both ground the film in their own ways. O’Kelly’s innocent gone mental is an engaging character which is only enhanced by the wonderful shots that Bogdanovich and Laslo Kovacs involved him in. Since little about his character is spelled out, the gliding tracking shots that follow his actions make for seamless viewing. The camera in some ways becomes one with the killer in these sequences.
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Then there’s Karloff turning in a sensitive portrayal that had to be informed by his own life experience. If it were made today comparisons to Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler would be unavoidable. For any fans of classic horror, it is a deeply moving performance that will make you recall all the great roles the horror master took on. He is also very funny, and my favorite moment in the film comes when he wakes up with a hangover and is shocked by the look of his own face. Many film goers over the years have has a similar reaction to seeing Karloff’s gruesome visage, and it makes for a very amusing and poignant moment which was a product of improvisation on Karloff’s part.
While Karloff made a couple more low budget features (Blind Man’s Bluff, Isle of the Snake People, and Alien Invasion), it would be better if Targets could be remembered as his last film. On the other hand, the career of Peter Bogdanovich was just beginning. In 1971, he would make The Last Picture Show and follow that up with films such as Paper Moon, Mask, and The Cat’s Meow. Sadly, even though he had shown a deft hand at creating an original horror themed film, he never returned to the genre. Targets was a moment in time. It caught the change in the era of film, and was perhaps the classiest production ever to come from the house of Corman. It took me many years to getting around to seeing it, and I think that it an overlooked classic. So if you haven’t seen this one, I implore you to check it out, and then let me know if my review was right on Target itself.
Bugg Rating
The Halloween Top 13: Number 10: The Bride of Frankenstein
Hello again, and welcome back as the countdown keeps going on, and we reach number ten. From the tropical locales of yesterdays selection, we turn now to a more Gothic setting, and one of the famous pictures to come out of the Universal monster movies. In 1931, Frankenstein had shocked the world and the studio heads with it's box office success. The suits soon demanded a sequel to the creature feature and there were several rejected drafts including one where the monster became educated and carried on his creators research and one where Henry Frankenstein built a death ray to hold the world hostage. Luckily neither of these were used because the studio also wanted the man behind the camera, James Whale, to come back. He agreed to do so for complete creative control, and finally he approved a script by playwrights Edmund Pearson and William J. Hulburt. It contained many of the elements of earlier versions, and was based out of a lesser known story toward the end of Mary Shelley's novel. In the novel, the monster demands a mate of his creator, but ultimately Henry destroys the woman before he brings her to life. Not so with the movie version and thus the world now knows of..... The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, and Valerie Hobson. Directed by James Whale.
As the movie opens we are greeted by the author herself, Mary Shelley (Lanchester), sitting around with Lord Byron and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is a dark and stormy night, and soon the conversation steers to the demure Mary's story of the monster and his mad creator. She reveals to the men that she has not yet told the whole story, and so begins our tale.
At the end of Frankenstein, Henry Frankenstein (Clive) and the monster (Karloff) were trapped in a burning mill, and the monster tosses his "father" from the peak of it. The villagers assume the monster has perished as well as his creator. Soon they learn that the monster lives, and somehow so has Henry. the scientist is grateful to still be alive and seems to have seen the error of his ways. He is eager to heal from his wounds and marry his beloved sweetheart Elizabeth (Hobson). However, Henry is visited by his old professor Dr Pretorius who wishes to form a partnership to continue Henry's experiments with artificial life. Pretorius has created life of his own in the form of several small people that he keeps in jars which he shows to Henry after they drink a toast to "a new era of Gods and Monsters". Henry however is reluctant and refuses to participate in the Doctor's scheme.
The monster roams the countryside in desperate need for food, but perhaps more importantly a desperate need to communicate. He is misunderstood as he attempts to speak to a shepherd girl who he has to then save from drowning. The townsfolk form one of their ever
popular angry torch carrying mobs and capture the monster. They take him to the local dungeon, but he is quickly free. Back into the countryside he meets up with a blind violin player whose music the monster finds soothing. They quickly form a bond, and the blind man even teaches the monster to talk as well as how to smoke a cigar. However some lost hunters come along and break up the monster's relationship with his "friend".
On the run again, the monster seeks refuge in a mausoleum where he encounters Dr. Pretorius. The scheming Doctor soon learns of the monster's longing for a companion and uses the monster for leverage to make Henry agree to make a bride for the creature. With no other choice, Henry must fire up the Cosmic Diffuser one more time, and as lightning crashes the words "It's alive" once more ring out in the night.
Film Facts
--Karloff broke his leg during the filming, but the metal struts used to give him the "monster walk" braced the leg until it could be properly set.
--The Bride of Frankenstein is the only one of the classic Universal monsters to have never killed anyone, and she has the shortest screen time of them all.
--The film had many problems securing it's release due to the censorship of the Hays Office, but perhaps the most bizarre case of censorship comes from Japan where they demanded Pretorius' tiny king in a bottle be cut as it "made a fool of a king".
--Many people feel that James Whale, who was openly gay, injected the script with elements of homosexuality. People point to the relationship between the blind man and the monster and Pretorius' "sissified" demeanor. Personally, I think they are reading too much into it.
Why Do I Love It?
As good as the original Frankenstein is, this movie marks James Whale's strongest film making. The film is shot beautifully, and the camera moves smoothly which is something seldom seen in films of the era. The performances are very strong as well with Karloff turning
in a very emotional portrayal of the monster. Karloff was against the monster speaking, but I feel that it adds an element of humanity to the monster that allows the audience to feel for him. It also allows the monster to utter one of the more famous lines in the Universal monster movies when he utters "We belong dead." It has real emotional impact, and magnifies the stirring conclusion. Colin Clive does very well reprising his role as well, and always entertains. When he gets in the lab and turns on those crazy eyes, he is magnetic. Ernest Thesiger inhabits the role of Pretorius in a way that Bela Lugosi and Claude Raines, who were both considered for the part, could not have achieved. It is simply a wonderful movie and is the perfect example of when script, cast, and director achieve something that truly has a life of it's own.
Bug Rating
Our top 5 List today comes from Simon McCorkindale, guitarist/occasional vocalist for Mary Shelley Overdrive. Check out their site at http://maryshelleyoverdrive.blogspot.com/ and you can download a couple of their EP's for free. I have them both and their album so I might be biased when I tell you folks that it kicks ass, but it does. Here's how Simon's list goes.
1: ALIEN: My absolute favorite movie, regardless of the season. Love the story, the actors, the production design, the pacing ... it's a perfect film from top to bottom.
2: THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN: Good, perverse fun. Violent, funny and unrepentant (even if Victor Frankenstein is a crybaby.)
3: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD: I obviously like my horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, and this film has both in spades. I love the John Carpenter re-make, but prefer to watch this one around Halloween.
4: CREEPSHOW: Not my favorite George Romero movie (that would still be the original Night of the Living Dead) but still one of my favorites. Creepshow is the greatest Halloween party you've never been to, complete with cheesy lights, phony-baloney costumes and camp acting. This movie is celluloid joy.
5: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT: I don't care what anyone says, I love this movie. Those of us who caught it in the early days of its run were able to enjoy the film before the hype machine destroyed all audience expectations.
Great picks again and what a coincidence that Bride of Frankenstein was on there. It was almost like I planned it that way, but surely not, the Bug would never stoop to such cheap hucksterism. So come back and join us tomorrow for Number 9 on the list and more of your lists as well!
I'd also like to throw a special mention that The Lightning Bug's Lair along with a few other LAMB blogs were featured in an article on She Likes To Watch a blog written for the San Luis Obispo, Ca Newspaper, The Tribune. I'd like to extend my thanks to Sarah and let everyone know they should check out her blog through the Halloween season and beyond.
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