While Boris Karloff is best known for his role as Frankenstein’s Monster in Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein, Karloff has over 200 credits to his name. In the years after Frankenstein, he was in-demand from every studio looking to add a star to cheap horror thrillers. These movies often lasted barely over an hour and would be plugged into programs as B-movies.
This month, Mill Creek Entertainment put together a set of six films Karloff made at Columbia, licensed through Sony, between 1935 and 1942. While none of these films are actual classics, they do provide audiences with a fascinating look at Karloff’s skills as an actor. He never plays a monster and is usually cast as a misunderstood scientist hoping to transform the world. It’s a formula that works well. You just tweak a couple of the character traits, change the discovery Karloff is trying to make and viola! You have a different movie.
There are six films included in the two-disc set, with three films crammed onto each disc. Here’s what you get:
The Black Room (1935, 69 minutes): The earliest film in the set is the most interesting because it’s unlike anything else here. It doesn’t feature the scientist formula, but instead is an entirely unique story set in the early 1800s. Karloff plays twins, with the older one being an evil Baron and the younger one is a friendly man. The evil one decides to kill the younger one and then masquerades as his younger brother to get everyone to like him, including Marian Marsh’s character, whom he hopes to marry. This was directed by Roy William Neill, who would gain fame for directing some of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes movies.
The Man They Could Not Hang (1939, 64 minutes); The Man With Nine Lives (1940, 75 minutes); Before I Hang (1940, 63 minutes): These three films are the only ones Karloff made with director Nick Grinde and they all lean heavily on the scientist formula I mentioned earlier. In each film, Karloff is trying to prove different methods of keeping humans alive forever.
In The Man They Could Not Hang, he’s trying to prove that a mechanical heart works, but is hampered by police because he has to kill a student to test his method. The Man With Nine Lives features Karloff trying to freeze people in order to kill cancer cells, but is hampered by police because he has to freeze someone to test his method. And in Before I Hang, he comes up with a serum to reverse ageing, but he accidentally injected himself with a criminal’s blood, so he has the urge to kill people.
Each film is actually kind of fascinating and their individual tweaks to the formula almost make you forget that they are pretty much the same stories.
The Devil Commands (1941, 65 minutes): Despite a change in directors, this one also follows the scientist formula. In this one, Karloff is trying to communicate with the dead, but only winds up killing more people in the process. This one is notable for two reasons. First, it was directed by Edward Dmytryk, who would go on to helm several important films noir, including Murder, My Sweet, as well as The Caine Mutiny. Second, it features an early performance from Evelyn Keyes, who would also make a mark in films noir.
The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942, 67 minutes): Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff in the same movie? What could go wrong? This one is a total parody of the scientist formula, with Karloff enlisting Lorre to help with his attempts to create a Superman. A young divorced couple also gets intertwined in the plot. The film does make up a bit for the fact that Karloff didn’t end up being in the film version of Arsenic and Old Lace (although Lorre did make it into that film), but it’s nowhere near as funny as that classic. Director Lew Landers struggles to keep the film moving at a manic pace, even if it is only 67 minutes.
With a retail price of $15 (and easily available at cheaper prices), this new Mill Creek set is surprisingly worth it. Yes, if you watch these movies back-to-back, they get repetitive, but it’s fun to see Karloff act without excessive make-up.