‘It was because of Boris Karloff that I became, when I did, a picture director. Boris owed producer Roger Corman two days work, and Roger offered me the job of taking those two days and, along with some other elements and days, create a brand new Karloff movie. This was in late 1966, and Boris had been a star since 1931, thus after 35 years, his name by itself could still carry a picture. So we wrote Targets (1968) for Karloff, wrote him the part of Byron Orlok, a famous horror movie star who wanted to retire because his kind of Victorian horror could not compete with the modern horror of a sniper killing randomly (as a young Texan did in Austin in 1966).
‘The script was sent to Karloff and he liked it, though his role was written with a number of self-deprecating lines and moments of self- debasement, so in our first phone conversation from LA to London, Boris said, “Since I’m playing a character very like myself, do I have to say such terrible things about myself?” I argued that he was so well liked as an actor and as a person that the more bad things he said about himself as an actor or person, the more the audience would say it wasn’t true. Karloff never brought it up again, and said all the self-abusing remarks in the script just as they were written. And superbly.
‘He had a great speaking voice, and the brilliance of a born storyteller. When I heard him on TV doing his memorable narration for Chuck Jones’ classic cartoon feature of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, I determined that I could not make a Boris Karloff picture and not have him tell a story somewhere in it. Which gave birth to one of the best scenes in the film. Boris—in one continuous shot—tells a riveting two or three minute “scary story” about a merchant from Baghdad who thinks Death is looking for him in Baghdad and so flees to Samarra, which turns out to be exactly where Death has ” an appointment with him tonight-in Samarra.”
‘The text was borrowed from a little-known play by Somerset Maugham, and Boris nailed it with consummate skill on the first take. It was 1:30 in the morning on a little sound stage on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, and we’d been shooting with Karloff since 8:00 that morning. Right after Boris finished, and I yelled, “Great! Cut! Print! That was terrific,” the entire weary crew burst into spontaneous applause. You could tell Boris was touched and gratified by their reaction, and Evie Karloff, his wife, had tears in her eyes. Karloff was 79 at the time, with steel braces on both his legs, suffering from a bad case of Emphysema, and had less than two years left to live. He never complained at the long hours, he was always the ultimate trouper.
‘When I asked him once how he really felt about being typed from Frankenstein (l931) onward, he looked at me curiously. “The Monster? How do I feel about the Monster?” He smiled distantly. “He gave me a niche. For which I am ever grateful. He gave me a career.” And what a unique career it was— for this kind, soft- spoken, polite English gentleman, born William Henry Pratt—but known with as shiver throughout the world by just one word—Karloff. Long live Boris!’ — Peter Bogdanovich
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Stills
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Further
The Official Boris Karloff Homepage
The Pit!: the Boris Karloff Fan Page
Boris Karloff News, a fan page
PATHOS: The Boris Karloff Fanlisting
Books about Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff Biography @ The Thunder Child
Boris Karloff’s ‘Thriller’ TV series, an episode guide
Boris Karloff’s work in radio
The Boris Karloff Gift Shop
Watch Boris Karloff movies @ Retrovision
The Boris Karloff Collection @ Executive Replicas
Boris Karloff presents ‘Mondo Balordo’
‘Dear Old Pals? Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi’
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General
Boris Karloff Interview (1960s)
Boris Karloff documentary
Boris Karloff – This Is Your Life (1957)
We speak with Sara Karloff, Daughter of Horror film legend Boris Karloff
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Interview
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19 of Boris Karloff’s 156 films
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Peter Bogdanovich Targets (1968)
‘The story concerns a quiet insurance agent / Vietnam veteran, played by Tim O’Kelly, who murders his young wife, his mother and a grocery delivery boy at home and then initiates an afternoon shooting rampage from atop a Los Angeles area oil refinery. The character and actions of the killer are patterned after Charles Whitman, the University of Texas sniper. The character of actor Byron Orlok, named after Max Schreck’s vampire Count Orlok in 1922’s Nosferatu, is patterned after Boris Karloff himself, who in fact plays the part in his last appearance in a major American film (although Bogdanovich states that, unlike Orlok, Karloff was not embittered with the movie business and did not wish to retire). In the film’s finale, which takes place at a drive-in theater, Karloff — the old-fashioned, traditional screen monster who always obeyed the rules — confronts the new, realistic, nihilistic late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, unassuming multiple murderer. He slaps the murderer into submission and the police arrive and affect an arrest.’ — Pop Matters
Trailer
Excerpt
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Daniel Haller Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
‘An early film to be adapted from the work of H.P. Lovecraft. This time it’s The Colour Out of Space reworked as a last gasp of creaky old-school gothic, made just before George Romero’s living dead breathed new life into the horror genre. It’s relatively dated for a 1960’s horror film, but suitably gothic enough to compliment the Lovecraft mythos. Plotwise it’s a linear and creaky ‘old dark house’ formula with the requisite unscary spiders and rubber bats. But the atmosphere of the house pervades and the various creatures mean there’s never a dull moment. Boris Karloff proves he’s still got it, giving an earnest performance. Even though his character is bound in a wheelchair, it amusingly doesn’t stop him from creeping up on people. Without him, there would be no film.’ — Black Hole
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Excerpt
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Robert Day Corridors of Blood (1958)
‘In various genre studies, commentators have often called Corridors of Blood a Sadean film and linked it with other films that came out around the same such as Horrors from the Black Museum (1959), Circus of Horrors (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960). All things said, Corridors of Blood is a fair and reasonable film, whether considered either as horror or historical drama or some peculiar melange of the two. While clearly operating on a low budget (there is only a single painted backdrop of the city of London beyond the slum area, for instance), the art director has exerted some effort in making the sets and dressings look authentic for the period. Director Robert Day does a fair job and the story is reasonably absorbing. Boris Karloff plays well in the mad scientist role he perfected – a scientist whose endeavours seem highly sympathetic and not at all mad, really. Christopher Lee adds a sinister undercurrent as the murderous blackguard, while Francis De Wolff shines as the burly blackmailing innkeeper.’ — Moria
Trailer
the entire film
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Robert Day The Haunted Strangler (1958)
‘The first half of The Haunted Strangler is a civilized look at Victorian London, with socially minded novelist Boris Karloff investigating a 20-year-old murder case. Still, it’s Karloff, right? So when the elegant, snow-haired king of horror movies finally wanders into a graveyard in the middle of the night, shovel in hand, intent on digging up the bones of a serial killer, the viewer can breath a sigh of relief: we’re back on familiar turf. Freshly dug turf, that is. This is not the last surprise in this neatly turned picture, which has some genuinely disturbing moments mixed into the cut-rate atmosphere. The plot borrows from the legends of Dr. Jekyll and Jack the Ripper, and the presence of Karloff specifically invokes his earlier horrors in Val Lewton’s moody shockers, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher. The horror maestro, 70 years old, is exceptionally agile; stripped to the waist and fighting a straitjacket, he looks as though he’s about to outwrestle his two burly attendants down at the local insane asylum.’ — Robert Horton
Trailer
the entire film
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Joseph Pevney The Strange Door (1951)
‘This Universal Studios production has the tone and feel of the gothic horror flicks that Hammer Films would start doing so well throughout the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. It compares favorably to Hammer’s lesser efforts, but it is pales in comparison to Hammer’s greatest gothic chillers. Boris Karloff makes his usual solid contribution to the film, but he doesn’t have much to do except to serve as a dark comic relief and the guy who may or may not save the day in the end.’ — The Boris Karloff Collection
Excerpt
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John Rawlins Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947)
‘Boris Karloff plays “Gruesome” an evil criminal who robs banks using a gas that freezes unsuspecting witnesses. Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) and the team try to foil his plans. The film itself is hokum, of course, with a plot about crooks who can ‘freeze’ time and rob banks, straight out of its comic-book origins, but Karloff, probably desperate for work at this time (1947), elevates the proceedings by his presence and it all makes for an entertaining 65 minutes.’ — The Video Cellar
the entire film
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Douglas Sirk Lured (1947)
‘Before becoming associated with melodrama Douglas Sirk (Hitler’s Madmen/ All I Desire/ Written on the Wind) made this decent thriller about a hunt for a serial killer. London is plagued with a serial killer preying on young women. After the eighth victim is reported missing and the usual poetry letter waxing poetic about death and beauty being synonymous, “A beauty that only death can embrace,” that’s been lifted from Charles Baudelaire, is sent to the police by the madman to mark his conquest, Inspector Harvey Temple (Charles Coburn) of Scotland Yard talks American taxi-dancer Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball) to act as a decoy to get the culprit out in the open. Sandra has to deal with an insane dress designer Charles Van Dreuten (Boris Karloff), who has her modeling his creation and suddenly goes violently berserk when he thinks she’s a designer spy.’ — Dennis Schwartz
Excerpt
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Mark Robson Bedlam (1946)
‘In 1946, producer Val Lewton made Bedlam, with Boris Karloff and Anna Lee, his most expensive and probably his least successful picture at RKO, in spite of the real horrors it showed of London’s truly infamous Bedlam. The studio was completely unappreciative of the picture’s very fine film qualities and almost sloughed it off after its release. Much of Bedlam is rather high-handed, its script often too literate and affected (m’lord this and m’lord that) for its own good. The lively dialogue is eminently quotable, but there is little of the visual flair that once proved a Lewton trademark. Too many of Bedlam’s horrific passages, especially once Nel is locked away, are offset by ponderous exposition.’ — Lewtonsite.com
Excerpt
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Robert Wise The Body Snatcher (1945)
‘One thing The Body Snatcher clearly isn’t, however, is another great Karloff/Lugosi collaboration. Ever since Ed Wood, it’s been hard to look at any of their collaborations without hearing Martin Landau roar, “Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit! That limey cocksucker can rot in hell!” On this evidence, it’s not hard to see why Lugosi might have wound up feeling that way. Karloff is in most scenes and has all the best lines, whilst Lugosi is lumbered with an utterly thankless role as MacFarlane’s handyman, popping up only a few times with very little of consequence to say or do. That this wound up being their last collaboration makes it all the more bittersweet. Given that today we tend to hold both men on an equal pedestal, it’s pretty sad to see that Hollywood at the time did not treat them with equivilant respect.’ — Brutal as Hell
Trailer
Excerpt
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Erle C. Kenton House of Frankenstein (1944)
‘By 1944, the Universal monsters had become too familiar to be truly frightening. The Frankenstein monster alone had already appeared in five films. Universal’s solution was to treat their gaggle of ghouls as old friends. The Frankenstein series evolved into an elaborate excuse to paste as many recognizable faces into a single film as possible. The trend began in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but really blossomed into a cornucopia of creatures with House of Frankenstein. Boris Karloff triumphantly returns to the series that made his name, albeit in a vastly different role. He plays Dr. Niemann with a kind of gentleman malevolence, turning to the sinister at all the right moments. We’ve come to expect great performances from Karloff, and he gives us no less.’ — Classic-horror.com
Trailer
The best of ‘House of Frankenstein’
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Arthur Lubin Black Friday (1940)
‘Told in flashback as Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff) is marched into the gas chamber, Black Friday concerns kindly college professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), who is seriously injured when he is caught in the middle of a gangster shootout. Kingsley’s best friend Sovac performs an emergency “brain-ectomy”, replacing Kingsley’s gray matter with that of dying gangster Red Cannon. Though the operation is successful, the mild-mannered Kingsley occasionally lapses into Cannon’s more brutal personality, and it is during one of these spells that he reveals the existence of a cache of stolen money.’ — Allrovi
the entire film
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Michael Curtiz The Walking Dead (1936)
‘The Walking Dead is a unique blend of cinematic horror and the classic Warner Bros. gangster stylings. This long-admired cult favorite stars Boris Karloff, who gives an outstanding performance as John Ellman, an ex-con framed for murder who’s sentenced to the electric chair. When Ellman is brought back to life through the miracles of science, his only task is to seek revenge against those responsible for his death. Karloff’s innocent, cruelly victimized character of John Ellman was initially meant to be dramatically transforemed into a huge, hairy, mindless killing machine in the wake of his execution by electric chair. This vengeance-crazed creature was then supposed to wander around the city by cover of nightfall, scale the outsides of towering highrise buildings, corner its intended victims, and physically hoisted them off their feet to break their backs in a murderous rage. Karloff scoffed at the level of senseless violence, and lobbied strongly to have the Ellman character presented as more of a tragically sympathitic man caught up in extraordinary circumstances.’ — DVDBeaver
Trailer
Excerpt
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Lew Landers The Raven (1935)
‘The film only utilises Poe’s The Raven as a creepy minor narrative device at most, or as it says during the credits “Suggested by Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal classic.” It could well have not mentioned Poe at all and you’d never have known differently. With all due respect to Karloff, the unequalled highlight of this is without doubt Bela Lugosi’s performance as Dr. Vollin. He gives a performance straight out of the Creepy Bastard School of Acting with his stares and his pauses and his Count Dracula voice. And the stares… oh how he stares! The looks he gives people. Hell, the looks he gives the walls, the doors, anything which falls in site of his gaze was the unwilling recipient of his Lugosi Brand “Stare of Ultimate Doom”.’ — DVD.au.net
Trailer
the entire film w/ audio commentary by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff
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James Whale Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
‘Frankenstein (1931) was a huge success, one that resonates and casts a huge shadow over the horror film even today. A sequel was fairly much mandated and so Universal returned to Frankenstein director James Whale who went away and cooked up Bride of Frankenstein. The result has been called by some the greatest of all horror films and is agreed on by most as being superior to the first outing. It is certainly one of the most oddball of all Frankenstein films. Whale has a far greater sense of mise en scene here than in the original. His treatment of the monster is a strange blend of pathos and humour. Out of Boris Karloff’s primitive mime there comes a genuine, albeit simplistic, emotion – it is quite something to watch the tear roll down his face when the bride rejects him, or the dull grave-stone voiced intonation “I love dead, hate living.”’ — Moria
Trailer
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Edgar G. Ulmer The Black Cat (1934)
‘Economical in its telling, and fairly typical in its depiction of bitter and evil men, Lugosi and Karloff once again team up and compete in a contest of stares. Karloff stares at the woman, Lugosi stares at the door, Karloff stares at the man, Lugosi stares at Karloff, Karloff stares at Lugosi, the man stares at the woman, the woman stares at a tree. There’s a cat. Lugosi flings a knife at it for a three point killshot. That’s the Poe reference taken care of. If anything, this movie is just more fodder to prove that the two stars were deadset nuts. It didn’t make a lick of difference what the lines were, they look so damn menacing most of the time, they could have been reciting their addresses and it would have sounded evil.’ — DVD.net.au
Trailer
Excerpt
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Karl Freund The Mummy (1932)
‘Make-up artist Jack Pierce began transforming Karloff at 11:00 am, applying cotton, collodion and spirit gum to his face; clay to his hair; and wrapping him in linen bandages treated with acid and burnt in an oven, finishing the job at 7:00 pm. Karloff finished his scenes at 2:00 am, and another two hours were spent removing the make-up. Karloff found the removal of gum from his face painful, and overall found the day “the most trying ordeal I [had] ever endured”.’ — Allrovi
Trailer
the entire film w/ audio commentary by Boris Karloff
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James Whale The Old Dark House (1932)
‘Like other obscure films, The Old Dark House didn’t do well at the box office… in fact, this one bombed so badly both on its initial release and re-release that it left craters. The film was considered so worthless that it was believed to have been destroyed until it was rediscovered and restored in the late 1960s. At that time, Boris Karloff is reported to have seemed bemused when the man who saved the film from oblivion told him of the restoration effort; I imagine Karloff couldn’t conceive of why anyone would spend money and time to preserve a failed movie. Truth is, The Dark Old House was only a failure in a commercial sense. Anyone with a taste for classic movies who watches it now will recognize it as a film that should be held in equal regard to the other landmark Karloff features like Frankenstein and The Mummy.’ — The Boris Karloff Collection
Trailer
the entire film
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Howard Hawks Scarface (1932)
‘The Boris-Karloff-bowling scene in Scarface is a masterpiece of storytelling, just in terms of the shots chosen for this short scene. There are about 15 shots all told. That’s all you need. You don’t need to do too much else as a director – at least not if you are confident of the EVENT you are trying to portray. It’s a wonderful sequence, spare and violent, ominous and yet elegant – not one shot too many, a perfect mix of mess (the sound of the bowling alley mixed with the crowd with the strange eerie whistling going on over it – the whistle that we now know means some bad shit is going to go down) and clarity. You don’t need to say too much or do too much to create an entire event.’ — The Sheila Variations
Trailer
Excerpt
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James Whale Frankenstein (1931)
‘The most well-known image of Frankenstein’s monster in popular culture derives from Boris Karloff’s portrayal in the 1931 movie Frankenstein, with makeup created by Jack Pierce from possibly crucial sketched suggestions by director James Whale (credit for Karloff’s look remains controversial). Karloff played the monster in two more Universal films, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. Lon Chaney, Jr. took over the part from Karloff in The Ghost of Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi portrayed the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange played the monster in the last three Universal Studios films to feature the character (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein); but their makeup replicated the iconic look first worn by Karloff. To this day, the image of Karloff’s face is owned by his daughter’s company, Karloff Enterprises, which is the reason Universal replaced Karloff’s features with Glenn Strange’s in most of their marketing.’ — Frankensteinfilms.com
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Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. Warning: I’m still quite jet lagged but slightly better. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks! My jet lag usually takes four or five days to die off. I have an unfortunately fascist body clock. At the moment I have the habit of starting to read something then realising I’ve been asleep for ten minutes, but the new SCAB is my functioning brain’s #1 future target. LA was good, nice, and it was great to see the film projected with a ton of strangers. Our films are kind of made to be seen projected, which is unfortunate since most people will watch them in their homes, alas. No, I don’t know that O’Brien, but I just noted it, thanks! You sound good! Love’s butt is memorizable, G. ** scunnard, Hey, J. Haha, yes, you’ve been through many jet lags with me over the years, and you’re the soul of patience. Amazing about the project/space. Where are you seeking funding? Are there grants for such a thing, or do you need private investors, or both, or … ? Yeah, that’s a fantastic goal. You have a space picked out? ** Steeqhen, Hi. Yeah, the response to RT has been really great so far. We’re hoping that means the powers that be (distributors, etc.) feel that way too. Glad you got the extension and that you’re near the finish line. You sound confident. We’d love to show RT in Cork, of course. Let’s talk once we have a better sense of the big picture, i.e. very soon. Thank you, pal. ** _Black_Acrylic, A warmest welcome back to you too, Ben. Yeah, I think I mentioned that one of my teeth broke/fell out, and my tongue still really likes to stick itself in the resulting gap and poke around. What a fucking world in which the badness of your MS has a positive side. Jesus. xo. ** PL, Hey, hey. LA was good, no complaints. I wouldn’t say Bruce LaBruce and I are friends. We kind of were a long time ago. I’ve been known to tear up at movies. Not often. For some reason, Dads and sons expressing affection/love for each other usually makes me teary, which is weird because I had no interest in my Dad and me doing anything like that. ‘The House of the Fortunate Buddhas’: noted. The Supremes. I think ‘Stop In the Name of Love’ is one of the best songs ever. Wow, the drawing is really great! Whoa, kudos, sir. Are you on Instagram? I finally joined Instagram about a month ago. Thank you! ** jay, It’s a great pleasure to have you back too. 12 days, so close yet so far, or whatever. All the transmitted luck from across the channel that you need. And then what? You do make that yaoi game seem pretty enticing. Granted, I am jet lagged and thus with questionable judgement, but … Have you reached the amazing ending and was it? ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I was shocked by the news. I’m so sorry. We’ll talk more about it, if you want, when I’m awake. Really sad, really fucking weird too. How’s everything for you otherwise? Any trauma-destroying joys? ** kier, Hi, k! It’s nice to be back in Europe, I must say. It is way fucked up over there in the US to put it mildly. Of course we’d love to how RT in Oslo. It was so fun to show PGL there, and I think this one is even much better. LA was a lot about getting ready for the premiere and then doing it and then following up on that, but I did see friends a bunch and look at art and so on. Apart from my friends who lost everything in the fires, and three very close friends of mine did, it was kind of a non-issue, but I didn’t drive over to look at the incinerated parts. I’m happy your show went well, of course! Nice about Oslo Open and the curator. When is that? Anyway things sound pretty much solidly good on your end. Yay! Here we have a lot of film stuff to do (festival submissions, seeking distribution, and stuff) and some art to catch up on (Rammelzee retrospective, Mark Leckey retrospective, show about the history of shopping centres at the Architecture museum, etc.). Like that. Here and I missed you too! ** James, Hard to imagine you feeling flat, but I believe you, and you did a real good soldier’s try at giving the escorts their due, for which I thank you. Ace about the new story. What’s your substack address again? I don’t seem to have it? I’m happy to have American politics back in my newsfeed and not in my ears and mouth. Thanks for reading my books, buddy. Curious to hear what you think Edinburgh and the university. Very happy to see you and blab with you whenever your time suits. ** Charalampos, Hi! Thanks! Yes, I had a good time all in all. Um, I think the best parts apart from the film stuff were just seeing friends and eating tons of actual Mexican food and deep dish pizza. But my jet lag is probably erasing other highlights for the moment. ** Steve, Hang tough, my friend. I’m taken back to when my parents died, and it’s a hard, complicated thing to even re-experience. No, I didn’t know ‘The Shrouds’ had opened. I don’t think it has over here? Baffling: that’s a promising word, seemingly. ** HaRpEr, Hi! Like minds, cool. I do strongly suggest you see Sparks live if you can. You will not be sorry, I guarantee. Awesome about the post! Thank you so much! Format-wise, the best is if you kind of make a template in a Word doc or Google doc or something with the text/order in place and indicators where any videos and photos and links go, and I can recreate your template in a post build. If you send it by, say, a Word doc, good if you can send any images also as attachments. But I can probably work with however you send/assemble it. Great! Best luck as needed on the novel, but you sound very into it and confident. Yeah, about ‘IJ’. Like I’ve said, I think his sentences are really insane. I don’t think he’s like Franzen at all. Not at all. Franzen is just an overblown conventional fiction writer, and David really wanted to make something completely unique and great. I just saw that there’s a new Pynchon novel coming out! Wow, I really didn’t expect to get another one from him. ** Justin D, Hi, Justin. That was a helluva sentence, wasn’t it? I think I might actually have seen ‘Henry Danger’, but only once if so, which I recall being plenty, so … yikes. What plans do you have for the landscaper/ gardener? I’m still lagged, for sure, but my stamina is improving. I ate as much Mexican food as I could. And deep dish pizza, since that’s not a thing here. And good sushi because veggie sushi is sorely lacking here for unknown reasons. But no Dairy Queen, which was very disappointing. All the Dairy Queens are only way out in the suburbs of LA now, and I just never made the trip, or rather convinced anyone to go there with me since my driver’s licence is expired. And I did get my longterm French visitor visa! That was pretty nice. ** Malik, Hey! Happy to be back, and happy to get to talk with you. LA treated me in a friendly manner. ‘Baby Invasion’ is already available? How exciting. You’re the first person I know who’s actually seen it, and what you say is very comforting. As soon as my brain cells are functioning correctly, I’m so there. Excellent that the theater work is in high gear. Writing a play overnight sounds scary, but I’m a nitpicker. You were happy with yours? Did it go over successfully to your mind? ** Okay. I think the imminent opening of the Famous Monsters Land at the imminently opening Epic Universe is what inspired me to make today’s post, but of course one can never be sure. See you tomorrow.
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