boris karloff

Bride of Frankenstein

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The Bride and her famous hair

Modern film-makers could learn a lot from Bride of Frankenstein and its illustrious predecessor, 1931’s original Frankenstein, not least how to tell a story at speed. And the amazing thing is that director James Whale took the finished cut of his sequel, a tight 90 minutes, and took a further 15 minutes out of it after a few test screenings. The result is a brilliant and furiously paced 75 minutes of entertainment. Whale hadn’t wanted to make this sequel at all, but Universal persuaded him with a promise of total artistic control. And so he set to work, opening his film with an introductory sequence set in Switzerland, where a ridiculously la-di-dah Lord … Read more

The Black Cat

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Lugosi and a shirtless Karloff

If you’re looking for a slightly leftfield scary movie for Halloween, you could do a lot worse than 1934’s The Black Cat, which not only stars horror titans (veterans division) Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the first of a run of movies they’d do together but is directed by Edgar Ulmer, a largely wasted talent who could put on a real show when he wanted to, and he does here. Freud lurks in the undergrowth of the story of a man back from the Great War facing down the man who stole his wife while he was away. But first let’s meet the teams, as they say. In the vanilla corner, a … Read more

The Raven

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Artwork for the original poster of The Raven

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 November Boris Karloff born, 1887 On this day in 1887, the great horror actor Boris Karloff was born. Disappointingly, his birth name was William Henry Pratt and he wasn’t born in some Carpathian cave but in the inner suburb of Lewisham, South London. A well educated young man with a lisp and a stutter, he dropped out while training to become a functionary of the British Empire and instead took to farm labouring before becoming an actor. He took the name Boris Karloff while in travelling repertory theatre in Canada, and after arriving in Hollywood he played a number of … Read more