Join us as we celebrate him…

But theyre all mere princes, all pretenders to the throne when compared with Boris Karloff.

No other name is more universally recognized as the undisputed king of horror, Boris Karloff.

Karloff was an intelligent, extremely cultured, well-read, kindly, funny English gentleman of the highest order.

From the silent era until three years after his 1969 death (and is that really a surprise?

But things started turning around in 31 with Howard HawksThe Criminal Code.

Of all his 1931 films though, my personal favorite remainsFive Star Final.

Hes also a man for whom the terms too low and too sleazy have no meaning.

Now, whats really left to say about 31sFrankenstein?

The stories are endless.

The latter was a sly marketing gimmick that worked in Karloffs favor.

It wasnt like a huge star was hidden under all that makeup.

not before the film, anyway.

Do people even go back and watch the whole thing anymore?

Its fast, its smart, and for viewers at the time it really was quite shocking.

Plus its got the great Dwight Frye.

A lot had changed in the interim.

Me, Im still trying to figure out the little people in the bottles.

Plus theres Dwight Frye again, this time doing what sounds like a deliberate Karloff impression.

But they would all be considered anomalies, with Karloff forever remaining the one true monster.

Poelzig lives in a strange and ultramodernist Deco mansion built atop the graves of thousands.

Oh, things get complicated, but very slowly and very quietly.

Theres a chess game involved.

It was not a popular film, and did not lead to any sequels.

HisBlack Cat, though, will always be at the top of my list.

An enthusiastic young woman wants to buy it and turn it into a charming, rustic hotel.

Karloff agrees on the condition that he be allowed to finish his experiments first.

Unfortunately his efforts to use a secret ray to create a race of super-supermen havent been going too swell.

This would mean a great leap forward for surgery.

Same with working on an ostensibly dead patient.

Ten years later they are all revived by a curious doctor from New York.

This time while in prison hes allowed to continue his experiments.

The clear and obvious benefits it offered all of mankind lead the state to parole him.

Grind was never known for his horror films, which is why its difficult to call these horror pictures.

More accurately, theyre mystery thrillers with a pseudoscientific backdrop.

The evil that Karloff undertakes is always made clear and understandable and sympathetic.

And lets face itthey deserve to be killed for what they destroyed.

Karloff didnt stop with Grind, however.

In the end its Karloff who gets the chair for putting a stop to all the madness.

One has to think that Karloff himself must have found the roles a bit of a relief.

Its really something, and a wonderfully quiet bit of acting.

But every once in awhile he dipped back into more traditional features, and the results were usually interesting.

AS time went on he seemed to glance back at earlier roles more and more often.

Here, however, the circumstances are much more pressing and the results are not nearly so tidy.

Enter a pair of Burke and Hare doppelgangers and well, things just get complicated.

Its a real tour-de-force performance for Karloff.

Better still, he didnt even have to murder all those short-sighted hospital administrators first.

Hed warned his family this sort of thing might happen, and sure enough.

Now they dont know what to do about it.

But Ill leave it at that.

During the production, Karloff contracted a bad case of pneumonia which seriously damaged his lungs.

But he continued working as much as ever.

In 1965 he starred together with Nick Adams in what was probably the best of AIPs H.P.

The following year broughtHow The Grinch Stole Christmas, and likeFrankenstein, what more need be said?

Its impossible to imagine now the Grinch being voiced by anyone else.

There simply is no other Grinch.

When his guests (Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, Phyllis Diller, etc.)

learn he plans to announce his successor, well, the vicious backbiting begins.

), a finger-poppin jazzy score, even a bit of sly and nasty sexual innuendo.

Karloff was clearly having fun winking at his reputation, but at the time things around him were changing.

After making the simply awfulThe Terrorwith Jack Nicholson for AIP, Karloff still owed Roger Corman two days work.

So, Corman offered his assistant Peter Bogdanovich a chance to direct his first picture.

It was a tricky business, but Bogdanovichs solution was pretty ingenius.

After watchingThe Terrorin a screening room with a bunch of AIP executives, Orlock announces his retirement.

Meanwhile a seemingly normal middle-class All-American kid is buying an awful lot of guns.

Then everything comes together at the drive-in.

Plus it has a great and telling last line.

Although it was an AIP film, it was picked up by Columbia for distribution.

Then the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy gave the studio cold feet.

WhatTargetshad to say was true, though.

He died in 1969 after making three quick Mexican cheapies that were released after his death.

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