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The Boris Karloff Collection (Tower of London / The Black Castle / The Climax / The Strange Door / Night Key) |
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Home: You are here: DVD : The Boris Karloff Collection (Tower of London / The Black Castle / The Climax / The Strange Door / Night Key) |
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The Boris Karloff Collection (Tower of London / The Black Castle / The Climax / The Strange Door / Night Key)  Rating: Rating:  - Karloff fans will love it!I'm an "old" movie fan. I enjoyed watching all these movies with the exception of one (plot was a tad slow). It's great to see how far the film industry has come since the early days of movies. Boris Karloff was a consummate character actor - a true craftsman. Rating:  - Not horror nor horribleThe Boris Karloff Collection (The Franchise Collection from Universal) is an interesting collection of eclectic films that happen to have Boris Karloff in them as he plays supporting characters in several. Much is made of the phrase "The Master of Horror in His Most Frightening Roles" (rightfully so) because it is a misnomer as several of these films are not horror like Night Key and Tower of London while the rest only have horror elements to them. Once you get past these mistakes in marketing you can then start enjoying the films. Night Key (1937): I do not know why, but I enjoy watching semi-obscure older films with Boris Karloff. In the Night Key, Boris Karloff plays an aging bespectacled inventor of security devices named Mr. Mallory who is conned (a second time) by a businessman who was once his friend. In order to get even he breaks in, without stealing anything, and leaves a calling card "What I create, I can destroy" and does something silly like open all of the umbrellas in the store. A crime boss, of course, known as The Kid (really played deadpan by Alan Baxter) ends up hearing about this and kidnaps the professor's daughter to make Karloff do "real" robberies. Karloff convincingly plays a much older character than he actually is in another good performance. However, there is not much more to the film. It is low budget; many of the other actors perform in that annoying stiff 30s acting style and the plot moves rather slow. Tower of London (1939): Probably the last type of movie you would expect with Boris Karloff and Vincent Price as characters in a historical epic of Shakespeare's Richard III. Basil Rathbone (from many Sherlock Holmes films) stars as the infamous lead character whom conspires for the throne. A bit pedantic, the fight scenes are tepid and uninteresting, but good characterization from Karloff as Mord the faithful crippled killer servant to Richard, Price as the foppish (even more than usual) Duke of Clarence and Rathbone as Richard of Gloucester (it did not help recently seeing Laurence Olivier perform this role though). The Climax (1944): a beautifully shot Technicolor film with gorgeous sets but a vacuously performed movie with tepid script. It had an Oscar nomination for "Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color" and had much in common with "Phantom of the Opera (1943)" including the sets, director George Waggner (who producted Phantom and horror classic "The Wolf Man" amongst others), Jane Farrar and script. I was not convinced with Turhan Bey as the lead, though Boris does a good (not great) job as the Doctor who possessiveness of a past Opera singer borders on insanity. Not a great name for the film either. The Strange Door (1951): Once you realize that Boris Karloff only has a supporting role in this film, it makes it easier to like this and its sister movie (many of the same sets/actors were used) The Black Castle (1952). I found this an enjoyable film because of the over-the-top maniacal performance by Charles Laughton (The Paradine Case, Island of Lost Souls) whose secretly destroy the life of his niece because of the hatred of his brother. He coerces a supposed rogue (Richard Stapley) and forces him to marry his niece to make her life miserable. The weakness of the film lies in the two leads of the niece and her savior: Sally Forrest and Richard Stapley whose performances are lukewarm at best. The strength is Laughton, Boris, the sets and many of the secondary actors. The Black Castle (1952): A decent but sometimes lackluster movie that has both Boris Karloff (as a doctor) and Lon Chaney Jr. (as Gargon) in small thankless roles. The lead Richard Greene (who was known for playing Robin Hood on TV in the late 50s, though Blue Underground collectors may recognize him from two of the Fu Manchu films) has came back from Africa to take revenge on Count Karl von Bruno who has possible murdered two of his friends. He later falls in love with the Count's wife. Beautiful sets that were leftover from "The Strange Door" are used well here. The film has elements of "The Most Dangerous Game". Boris fans might be let down because of his lack of screen time though his presence is felt well at the end. Unfortunately, like far too many of these sets, there are no extras except for a few trailers. Rating: - Enjoy Karloff...but don't expect much from these far-from-horror programmersThe problem with the Boris Karloff Collection is the false promotion Universal gives it. This "Franchise Collection" says on the box, "The Master of Horror In His Most Frightening Roles!" Far from it. Of the five movies only The Strange Door has a bit of horror and the movie belongs to Charles Laughton, not Karloff. For the others, Karloff mostly plays secondary roles which aren't scary, although Mord in Tower of London is a man to avoid. None of the movies would win any awards. Still, Karloff was an interesting actor and it's hard not to like him even in these secondary films. --Night Key. This B-movie crime programmer has as much connection to horror as a thin pork chop has to a freshly ripped-out human tongue. Karloff as the well-intentioned, kindly and ingenious inventor does a fine job, but the movie is forgettable. Of interest to some is that the director is Lloyd Corrigan, a writer and director in the late Twenties and throughout the Thirties. He became one of Hollywood's most recognizable character actors when the Forties started. He usually played roly-poly parts, chortling and happy-spirited. --Tower of London. Here we have a cauldron of a movie bubbling merrily away that spatters as much rancid stew on Richard III almost as vividly as Shakespeare did. Basil Rathbone plays Richard with enthusiastic malice. As a henchman, he has Boris Karloff as Mord, a big, club-footed, bald-headed, muscular torturer, eager to use the executioner's axe or the torturer's rack and whip. "You're more than a duke," Mord tells Richard, "more than a king. You're a god to me!" Mord eagerly and admiringly acts on Richard's plans, from thrusting a dagger into the back of the mad old Henry VI to tipping Clarence, Richard's troublesome brother, into a huge vat of malmsey, then sitting on the lid while waiting for the sound of the bubbles to stop. This is Basil Rathbone's movie, however, and he makes the most of it with icy diction and some good lines. He hands his own dagger to Mord, then sends him to where Henry VI is praying. "A fitting occasion for a blade in the shape of a cross," Richard says. "It will insure the thrust and bless the wound." -- The Climax would be more aptly named The Anti-Climax. It marked Boris Karloff's return to movies after three years on Broadway and touring in Arsenic and Old Lace. His name alone led many to believe The Climax would be a grand, shivering horror fest, especially as it would be Karloff's first color film. Instead, The Climax is a sad tale of an elderly doctor who has a thing about a singer he strangled ten years previously. For some, it might have promised a delightful Technicolor movie of Viennese operetta and Hollywood soubrettes. Instead, it's a weak re-make of The Phantom of the Opera, without the Phantom, which was released the year before. More than anything else, we get a story of aged obsession, hypnotism and throat spray that is as flavorless and stale as a slice of month-old Sachertorte. Inexplicably, Karloff is under-utilized. When Karloff says in that deep, sincere voice of his, "I've come to help you, my dear," we hope things will pick up. They don't. --The Strange Door. "They've begun by disliking each other," says Alain de Maletroit (Charles Laughton), smacking his lips, eyes gleaming at the prospect of the forced marriage between his 20-year-old niece and a drunken wastrel he chose for her in a rough French tavern. "Hatred will come later. I'm in the mood for relaxation! Let's visit the dungeons!" As de Maletroit, Laughton sports an amazing comb-over, almost as grotesque as the one he wore in Jamaica Inn. de Maletroit can be charmingly gracious one moment, squinty-eyed suspicious the next, and absolutely jolly as he enjoys his crazed and nefarious plans. The movie is hardly more than an amusing throw-away, but Laughton turns it into a comedy of melodramatic excess. Karloff has a much smaller, but important role, and does a sympathetic job of it. On balance, the movie is fun and worth watching because of Laughton, but it's basically filler. --The Black Castle. The best thing -- and that's pretty good -- about The Black Castle is that it's a black-and-white Forties' gothic grabber featuring a murderous mad count which was somehow made in 1952. Skulking around in the shadows of the count's castle is a long-gowned Boris Karloff in a decidedly secondary role of an aged doctor who may or may not be the salvation of the hero. Surprisingly, for all the cliches, The Black Castle keeps moving merrily along. The movie takes itself seriously, but it's competently enough made to keep our interest, even if we wind up sitting back with a smile while we watch. It's even reassuring in a way to realize there are strong echoes of The Most Dangerous Game. Hollywood's second creative rule has always been, "If you're going to steal, steal from the best." It's first creative rule, of course, is "If you're going to steal, steal from the best and then turn it into liverwurst." The Black Castle is a nice bite of Austrian braunschweiger. Rating: - Karloff's other great films. Best known for Frankenstein and The Mummy plus several notable films with Bela Lugosi this collection features five classic forgotten gems. Tower of London is a big budget historical epic with Karlof as the kings brutal exicutioner.Notable also for an early Vincent Price cameo! Night Key is a crime drama as Karloff plays an inventor of a security system kidnapped to aid gansters on a series of robberies. The Climax was originally to be a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera but the idea was changed, although it features several Phantom cast members.Karloff is a doctor obsessed by a young singer who's voice resembles his dead lovers. Based on a R.L.Stevenson story The Strange Door features Charles Laughton co-starring as an evil nobleman who's prisoners have only Karloff as his servent to help them escape. The Black Castle is a similar film to The Strange Door only this time Karloff is a doctor who uses drugs to help young captured lovers escape. Each film is unique and worth investigation as many are lost classics.The only fault is the extras, a couple of trailers is all there is.A documentery on his long and varied career would have good.A nice addition to the Lugosi collection in the same series. |
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