Boris Karloff – 1000 Films Blog

Posted on January 24, 2021 by 1000filmsblog · 1 Comment

#289 Mad Monster Party?

Watched: January 19 2021

Director: Jules Bass

Starring: Boris Karloff, Allen Swift, Gale Garnett, Phyllis Diller

Year: 1967

Runtime: 1h 34min

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Baron Boris von Frankenstein (Karloff) has made the discovery of a lifetime – the means to utterly destroy matter. As is tradition, he decides to celebrate his destructive invention with a party, and everyone’s invited.

“Death and destruction always goes best with dinner and dancing. Time to party!”

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And by everone, we mean everyone. Sure, there are the usual suspects. Dracula, a werewolf, a mummy, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the creature from the Black Lagoon, the invisible man, a certain French hunchback, and of course the Baron’s own famous creation and his fabulous wife.

“Sorry about the outfit, Baron. I’ve been an understudy in a live stage production about Sinbad the Sailor”

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In addition to these famous monsters though, a clumsy but well meaning young pharmacist named Felix also gets an invitation to the party. Because the Baron has another objective for the weekend. He wants to name his successor as head of the worldwide organization of monsters.

Even monsters are able to unionize. Why can’t employees of major international companies? Come on, people!

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While his close assistant Francesca (Garnett) sees herself as her boss’s natural heiress, she soon learns that Felix is Frankenstein’s nephew and thus nepotism demands that he will be the one to inherit his uncle’s assets. Which seems like a very bad idea given Felix’s nature. Francesca teams up with Dracula to get rid of the competition…

How long can a mere mortal be expected to survive on an island inhabited by monsters..? He won’t be in the running for long.

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We didn’t grow up with this movie (what gives, Norway in the 80s and 90s?), but you had us at “stop-motion animation with a horror theme and Poe references”. Mad Monster Party? is silly, funny, sweet, and filled with puns and gags.

It also has a very well trained zombie horde. And one who tends to lose his head a lot. Especially around women he feels are owed to him…

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Allen Swift does pretty much all the voices and he does a marvellous job, riddled with impressions. In addition, you have musical numbers, a wonderful tap dancing Dracula, an Incel zombie and an unlikely love affair. This is an animation movie for kids and adults alike, and thoroughly entertaining. Loved it!

Did we mention that there’s a skeleton rock band? ‘Cause there’s a skeleton rock band.

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By the way, this movie brought to mind Toonsylvania, more specifically “Igor’s Science Minute” where he sings the names of the natural elements, and now we can’t get it out of our heads. If anyone is sitting on a copy of that video, please get in touch. We NEED to rewatch it.

“Hydrogen, heeeelium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluoooorine, neeeeon…”
This is what we’re talking about. If you know it you know it.

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What we learned: If you’re going to leave your evil empire to someone, perhaps vet them a bit first? Also, the trick to defeating monsters is not to fear them. And powerful explosives. That works too.

Next time: Playtime (1967)

Posted on March 31, 2019October 21, 2019 by 1000filmsblog · 1 Comment

#223 Black Sabbath/I tre volti della paura/The Three Faces of Terror

Watched: February 12 2019

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Michèle Mercier, Boris Karloff, Lidia Alfonsi, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen, Massimo Righi, Rika Dialyna, Glauco Onorato, Jacqueline Pierreux, Milly

Year: 1963

Runtime: 1h 32min

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After a two week hiatus (been busy being fabulous in New York!), we’re finally back with Mario Bava’s fantastic horror anthology Black Sabbath.

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Black Sabbath consists of three separate stories, all tied together by host Boris Karloff, which are freely adapted from classic tales by Tolstoy, Maupassant and Chekhov. The order they appear in depends on which version of the movie you watch (there are at least two), so we will present them according to the version we watched.

black3 — We’re currently working on a plan on how to manage to live in all houses featured in this gorgeous movie

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The first story, “The Drop of Water,” is by Anton Chekhov. An elderly medium has died while in a trance during a seance, and when preparing her body for burial, nurse Helen Chester (Pierreux) steals a ring from the deceased. Big mistake.

black4 — Given the scepticism with which she views the dead woman, we suspect she knew she would be haunted anyway so she just went for it.

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Guy de Maupassant’s contribution is “The Telephone” (or is it? There is some debate as to whether Maupassant ever wrote anything like this). Rosy (Mercier) is at home in her apartment (another place we’re moving into as soon as the payment goes through) when she starts receiving strange phone calls from her former pimp. Instead of calling the police (who she probably doesn’t trust given her profession), she calls old friend Mary (Alfonsi) for help. Big mistake.

Black5 — “Darling! Calm your nerves with this drink I mixed you with my gloved hands, leave the phone off the hook and let’s pretend we never had a falling out in the past.”

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The third and final story, “The Wurdulak,” is credited to Aleksei Tolstoy (not Leo, mind you). In 19th century Russia, rider Vladimir D’Urfe (Damon) finds a backstabbed body on a horse. He brings him to the nearest house to find that the body belongs to a Turkish bandit believed to be a Wurdulak. A Wurdulak, the farmers explain, is a vampire who feeds on his or her loved ones.

Black6 — Farmer or not, Sdenka takes the time to put on a full face of make-up every day. You know, just in case a single nobleman happens to stop by the house with a body he found on the way, only to fall madly in love with her.

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The father of the family, Gorca (Karloff), has been in pursuit of the Wurdulak and has given strict orders not to let him in the house if he is gone for too long as he will have been turned. When he returns too late, with a significant personality change, the family naturally lock him out and take every precaution to stay safe while plotting how to kill him.

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Just kidding! They let him in, let him play with his grandchild, follow his commands, go to bed without locking any doors and are then flabbergasted when it turns out he tries to drink their blood. Then again, this is a family who implicitly trusts an unknown Eastern European Count called Vlad while in the middle of a vampire crisis.

Black8 — Not to victim blame, but is it really a good idea to drink yourself to sleep in the living room when you suspect your dad, roaming the same house, is a vampire..?

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We’re suckers for horror anthologies and Mario Bava, so there’s really nothing here we didn’t love. The humour between segments is silly and fun, and the entire film is very aesthetically pleasing, as giallo movies tend to be. A lot of this also feels oddly modern, as if it could have been made today but by someone trying to make it look older (think Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace or “The Devil of Christmas” episode of Inside No. 9). We loved all the apartments (as stated, we’re moving into all of them), the colours, the creepy child and the ghost. Love, love, love this!

Black9 — Boris Karloff wants YOU to join us in celebrating *Black Sabbath*

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What we learned: Don’t steal from the dead. And don’t let your emotions make your decisions for you when you intellectually know better.

Next time: Charade (1963)

Posted on October 1, 2016October 18, 2016 by 1000filmsblog · 2 Comments

#39 Bride of Frankenstein

Watched: September 10 2016

Director: James Whale

Starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Valerie Hobson, Una O’Connor

Year: 1935

Runtime: 1h 15min

Liquids consumed: inordinate amounts of wine…

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Dr. Frankenstein learned absolutely nothing from the events of the first film and is back to repeat his past mistakes.

a284069bb4db579399060391e0ab77be — “I nearly died myself, therefore no one can criticize me!”

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Both the good(?) doctor and his creation survived the burning windmill at the end of Frankenstein and they are back. The creation (KARLOFF! KARLOFF! KARLOFF!) doesn’t exactly redeem himself in the beginning, by killing both parents of the girl he inadvertently drowned in the first film.

1931_frankenstein_img42 — In his defense, he was probably still slightly agitated from all the burning people had been doing to him lately

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Again, the creature is captured, but no chains can bind him! He escapes into the woods where he eventually meets up with a lonely old blind man who takes care of him and treats his injuries.

brideofranknstn_083pyxurz — Pictured: one of the most beautiful meetings in cinema history

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The old hermit treats him like a person and teaches him humanity and compassion, something his creator failed to do. Of course, eventually angry villagers destroy his peace and he must once again go into hiding.

Meanwhile, Henry Frankenstein (Clive) is nursed back to health by Elizabeth (Hobson). When he recovers, he swears off playing God for the foreseeable future. That is, until his old mentor Dr. Pretorius (Thesiger) comes calling and lures him back in.

543a260dfbee68f20157afff7738dd18 — “Behold: the fruit of my loins; the tiny results of my seed!” “Wow! How did you do this?” “Ehm… Let’s not get into the details, shall we…”

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Pretorius befriends the creature and promises him a spouse. They convince (read: force) Frankenstein to assist them, and together the two scientists create a cultural icon (Lanchester).

bride-of-frankestein — The inspiration for many a Halloween costume and gothic wet dream

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If you haven’t seen this one, we have no idea what you are waiting for. The cast is brilliant; the effects are very impressive (such as the tiny seed-people), the sets are wonderfully stylistic and the film is beautifully lit. Like the first installation in the Frankenstein series, the story is loosely based on Mary Shelley’s novel, but a lot of liberties are taken with the story and the characters. They try to pay tribute to the author though, by introducing Shelley with her trophy husband Percy Bysshe and their mutual friend Lord Byron in the beginning of the film, but here Mary sort of comes off as a silly little girl which doesn’t do her justice. Still, it’s a nice nod to the creator of it all (although it gave Sister the Oldest flashbacks to certain scenes in Gothic [1986]).

Frankie — “I still love her… But we belong dead…”

What we learned: Dr. Pretorius must have won some sort of masturbation championship to create so much life from his seeds.

Next time: Top Hat (1935)

Posted on September 5, 2016September 16, 2016 by 1000filmsblog · 5 Comments

#26 The Old Dark House

Watched: August 27 2016

Director: James Whale

Starring: Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger

Year: 1932

Runtime: 1h 12min

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Sometimes titles are just a perfect summary of the plot. A bickering couple in a car are caught in a storm and soon the road is undrivable. Luckily(?) for them and their hoot-and-a-half passenger (Douglas, who’s amazingly sarcastic and funny) they spot an old (dark) house and make their way there to take shelter from the storm. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

film_olddarkhouse — Seems a perfectly charming and not at all sinister place to spend the night.

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Upon knocking on the door, they are greeted by The Karloff who mumbles something incoherent to which Douglas comments “Even Welsh ought not sound like that!” Karloff turns out to be the dumb servant to house owners Rebecca and Horace Femm (Thesiger, who looks strangely like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera), an old creepy sister and brother duo who are less than thrilled about their unexpected visitors. It’s almost as if they’re hiding something in the house they do not want outsiders to see… Still, they reluctantly invite the guests to stay the night and offer them dinner.

The Old Dark House 20 — Not even a creepy manservant and a flimsy dress can relieve the tension

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Soon, another couple join them as they too are caught in the storm. This does very little to raise the spirit of Ms. Rebecca Femm (no one can have beds!) but romance blossoms and drinks are had.

the-old-dark-house-1932-ernest-thesiger-eva-moore — The hosts are thrilled about the whole affair!

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This film was awesome! It’s one of the ones we’ve heard of several times but have never actually seen before. While we expected suspense and horror, we were not at all prepared for how hilarious this film truly is. The dialogue, the gags and the characters, not to mention the use of wonky mirrors and shadows to create the eerie atmosphere, all make this another new favourite to play at parties (which might explain why no one comes to our parties). We’ll definitely watch it again at some point.

What we learned: This is a local house for local people – there’s nothing for us here!

Next time: 42nd Street (1933)

Posted on September 4, 2016September 16, 2016 by 1000filmsblog · 2 Comments

#25 The Mummy

Watched: August 23 2016

Director: Karl Freund

Starring: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners

Year: 1932

Runtime: 1h 10min

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One of our favourite horror classics, The Mummy is another great example of why Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (sadly not appearing in this movie) were the go-to actors for horror films in the 1930s. In 1921 the mummy of Imhotep (Karloff) is discovered in Egypt along with the Scroll of Thoth; an incantation to raise the dead. Naturally, the junior expedition member decides it’s a good idea to follow these instructions and the mummy awakens.

mummy_1929_07 — To paraphrase Giles: don’t speak ancient Egyptian in front of the mummy!

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Flash forward ten years and Imhotep, looking slightly more human, goes by the name of Ardath Bey and has a cunning plan. He directs a new expedition towards the grave of his long lost love Ankh-es-en-amon (long lost because she’s been dead for 3700 years) in order to be reunited with her. However, since her body has not been preserved in the same way as his, her soul must possess another’s body – that of half-Egyptian Helen Grosvenor (Johann).

Mummy — “Do you like my new hat? Don’t you find it…feztive?” “Yes, dear, this is exactly the kind of humour I have missed for 3700 years. Now, who designed *this* underboob extravaganza?”

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Enter our hero! No, not Brendan Fraser, David Manners. He has fallen in love with Helen and teams up with the very jumping-to-conclusiony Dr Muller (seriously – whose first idea is it that perhaps the native guy is a mummy come back to life? I mean, even when it’s a correct guess, it’s not what most people would first assume) to save her. In the end though, Helen is perfectly capable of saving herself (with some help from an ancient Egyptian deity, that is).

Isis 2 — “Ovaries before brovaries, sister!”

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Another must-watch (so far, most of them are) that anyone can enjoy. Even if horror isn’t your thing, there are some great performances in this one, most notably Karloff himself. The scene when the mummy awakens is worth the ticket price alone – it’s so gradual that it’s hard to tell if it’s really happening at all.

mummy1 — We swear this is a gif. Just wait for it.

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There’s romance, beautiful costumes, a great flashback scene, ancient Egyptian deities and Boris Karloff fantastically lit. Enjoy!

mummykarloff — “Enjoy, or I’ll steal your soul”

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What we learned: We cannot fail to make a conquest if we faint in a man’s arm in the moonlight.

Next time: The Old Dark House (1932)

Posted on August 20, 2016September 16, 2016 by 1000filmsblog · 5 Comments

#16 Frankenstein

Watched: August 14 2016

Director: James Whale

Starring: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff

Year: 1931

Runtime: 1h 10min

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Another classic horror film (and old favourite of ours), Frankenstein probably needs no further introduction. But we’ll give you one anyway. Somewhere in Germany (we assume), the “astonishingly sane” Henry (not Victor for some reason) Frankenstein and his hunchback assistant Fritz (not Igor) are building a man from human cadavers. Frankenstein believes he has the knowledge and technology to reanimate the dead, and he succeeds in his efforts only to regret his decision almost immediately. They then go on to lock up and torture the poor creature (wonderfully portrayed by Boris Karloff) before leaving it to fend for itself while its creator gets married. Excellent parenting there.

frankenstein-1931-crop-1 — A face only a father could love. But didn’t.

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The film is basically about a bunch of horrible people doing horrible things to a (more or less) defenceless innocent newborn and who are subsequently surprised when said newborn tries to defend himself and turns on them. Seriously, they all had it coming.

frankenstein1931_1-1600x900-c-default — Except Maria. She was adorable and sweet.

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Frankenstein_main — Fritz, however, was a cunt.

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Angry mobs and fire abound, as do pretty dresses. The ending is heartbreaking, although we suspect it would have been hard for the Creature to attempt a normal life.

The film takes its concept and some of the story from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, but it differs in many respects. However, this film is possibly even more iconic than the book, so much so that many of the things people believe about Frankenstein come from Whale’s film rather than Shelley’s original (such as the character of Igor, the use of electricity to awaken the monster and the bolts on his neck).

We recommend both reading the book and watching the film, as you cannot have enough Frankenstein in your life. Then watch other film versions (especially Young Frankenstein [1974]). Then reread the novel.

In conclusion: you need to watch this film. But if you do not feel for the Creature you are a coldhearted bastard and we will have nothing more to do with you.

Things we learned: there’s not enough Bavarian folk dancing in our lives.

Next time: Little Caesar (1931)