‘Boris Karloff’ illuminates legend of classic horror
Boris Karloff gave arguably the most famous performance in film history as Mary Shelley’s monster in the 1931 James Whale film “Frankenstein,” an early talking picture in which the actor delivered a virtual silent film performance. As someone brilliantly observed, Karloff ’s monster was Death’s clown. As the creature made out of pieces of the dead, Karloff combined fear, brutishness, the innocence of a newborn babe and a tendency to fly into murderous rage. Children who saw him saw themselves in his shambolic attempts to control his body and communicate and fell in love with the creature. To them, he was a misunderstood child, whose father hated him.
But who was Karloff ? (Disclosure: I have been working on a Karloff project for several years.)
The truth is he was an Englishman born William Henry Pratt of Anglo-Indian ancestry at a time when such ethnicity would make you the subject of English racist hatred and prejudice. While Thomas Hamilton (“Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave a Damn”), director of the for the most part enlightening and entertaining documentary “Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster,” makes note of Karloff’s Anglo-Indian ancestry, he does not do much with this definitive information. In her 1975 biography “Dear Boris: The Life of William Henry Pratt aka Boris Karloff,” Cynthia Lindsay tells us that when asked about his dark complexion, Karloff at times claimed to have Slavic blood on his mother’s side, which is not true.
When William Henry Pratt chose the stage name Boris Karloff (he never changed it legally), he was simply slipping on a mask, cloaking himself in the fog of an exoticsounding name, and for the most part it worked. Why would an actor with something so crucial to hide become a founder of the controversial Screen Actors Guild? Another mystery.
Hamilton’s film offers numerous clips of Karloff films, famous and obscure, including the racist, camp classic “The Mask of Fu Manchu” (1932). The documentary begins with Karloff superfan Guillermo del Toro gushing rightly about the 74year-old actor in Mario Bava’s “Black Sabbath,” a 1962 Italian horror film.
Hamilton has assembled an impressive number of Karloff fans and colleagues. These include del Toro, Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich, director of the 1968 Karloff late effort “Targets,” Ron Perlman, Stefanie Powers, Caroline Munro, John Landis, Leonard Maltin, Karloff’s only child Sara Karloff, film historian Kevin Brownlow, Dick Miller, Roger Corman, who realized that Karloff had become famous all over again thanks to television, and more.
Hamilton shows viewers the scope of Karloff ’s accomplishments. He was not only a key figure in Universal’s Golden Age of Horror. Karloff enjoyed a career comeback in the films of producer Val Lewton (“Cat People”). A provincial stage actor in his youth, an older, uncertain Karloff was a smash on Broadway in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” in a role written for him. He played Captain Hook in a Broadway musical “Peter Pan.” He was nominated for a 1956 best actor Tony Award for his performance as a French cleric struggling not to condemn Joan of Arc (a teenage Julie Harris) to the flames.
Karloff joined forces with animator Chuck Jones and author Dr. Seuss aka Theodor Geisel and won a Grammy and the hearts of children everywhere, again, as the voice of the Grinch. Much of Karloff’s power as an actor emanated from that distinctive instrument, which combined a lisp and dark and still captivating woodwind music. Hear it, again.
(“Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster” contains no objectionable material.)