Boris Karloff
Of course no roster of villains is complete without the classic horror star Boris Karloff.
- Actor: Boris Karloff (1887-1969)
- Real name: William Pratt
- Classic villain roles: Frankenstein's monster, Fu Manchu, the Mummy/Im-ho-tep, Hjalmar Poelzig, the Grinch (among others)
- Special talent: dead intone of a voice
- Best quotes: "Are we not both the living dead?" and "We belong dead!"
The Monster
Karloff played Frankenstein's monster in 3 films: Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). (He made other Frankenstein-related appearances but these are the major film roles). Bride of Frankenstein is universally recognized as the best of the three, and a classic movie of the 1930's era of film-making. It features the lovely Elsa Lanchester and a great soundtrack
Karloff's Monster is both pitiable and murderous. In some ways, Der Golem seems like the Monster's cinematic predecessor, but Karloff injects a real pathos into the role.
The Monster's first entrance in the first film. Notice how dead Karloff looks here!
Climactic ending of the Bride of Frankenstein
Rare color clip of Karloff clowing on the set of the Son of Frankenstein
The Mummy
Nice through-the-numbers rendition of the ancient mummy curse. (Or is this the original that all subsequent movies copy?) Karloff only wears the famous mummy makeup at the beginning of the film; for the rest of the time he glowers in human form. A subtle, menacing performance.
Cheesy trailer for The Mummy
Hjalmar Poelzig in the Black Cat
The Black Cat (1934) is a wonderful psychological thriller with excellent writing, acting and set design. Karloff is Poelzig, an architect and Satanic cult leader living in a fantastically modern house with sideways-moving "elevators", intercoms, "digital" clocks. Not to mention, a basement full of preserved dead women. For once, Bela Lugosi plays a semi-good character, Dr. Verdegast, who has been released from a POW camp. He's come seeking revenge against Poelzig who betrayed Verdegast during the war (I was never clear on which one -- WWI?) and made away with his wife and young daughter. Incidentally this movie has nothing to do with the story by Edgar Allan Poe of the same name, and only briefly features a black cat. Also, Lugosi's character was originally designed to be a baddie also, but the film was cut so as to portray him in a better light.
My favorite scene in the film is the one in which Karloff and Lugosi descend from the house into the depths of the fortress beneath, passing down stairs and through rooms to the lilt of Karloff's voice.
You say your soul was killed, that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmorus 15 years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead? And now you come to me, playing at being an avenging angel, childishly thirsting for my blood. We understand each other too well. We know too much of life.
Other good scenes include Karloff at the Satanic ritual scene and near the very end where Lugosi begins flaying him alive. Karloff's scream there is really one of the best male screams in filmdom. And finally, the unintentionally hilarious line from Lugosi: "Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not."
Do you dare play chess, with me, for her?
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) is a classic, well-known bit of Christmas TV that plays faithfully every year. Karloff played both the narrator and the Grinch in this Dr. Seuss adaptation, a half-hour film by Chuck Jones. Getting close to his death at this time, Karloff sounds grandfatherly in the narrator voice but agelessly nasty as the (unreformed) Grinch.
