THE REVEREND’S REVIEW
FT’s resident man of the cloth REVEREND PETER LAWS dons his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot! (www.peterlaws.co.uk)
Karloff at Columbia
Dir Roy William Neil et al, US 1935-1942
Eureka Classics, £39.99 (Blu-ray)
Creepy, charismatic, tender, psychotic... the many faces of icon Boris Karloff are showcased in this handsome six-movie set spanning 1935 to 1942. Five of the films feature weird medical science, but what keeps this from being called the ‘Mad Doctor Collection’ is the first: a nifty period piece set in a forbidding castle. Two brothers (one kind, one deviant) reunite after many years, despite a prophecy that one will kill the other in...
The Black Room .It’salush melodrama, and beautifully shot too, but Karloff’s versatility shines brightest in this dual role, utterly convincing as the equal yet
very opposite siblings.
The scary science kicks in with The Man They Couldn’t Hang, in which Karloff plays a kind-hearted doctor who experiments with raising the dead; not out of greed or desire for Frankenstein-like power, but for the good of science. When his first attempt at reanimation is interrupted, the authorities assume the corpse in his possession is a murder victim. They refuse to let him revive it, and he’s sentenced to hang – but not even his own execution can stop the furious doctor’s quest for revenge. This sci-fi edged horror tale is silly for sure – “Weird! Fascinating! Horrifying!” screamed the poster of the time – but Karloff brings a certain poetry to the schlock.
The Man with Nine Lives finds Karloff as a pioneer of cryogenics (or ‘frozen therapy’ as they call it here). Thawed out after 10 years in a subterranean ice room, he’s on the verge of a worldchanging discovery, but the snooty authorities can’t help screwing it up. Can you see a theme developing here? It’s an impressive chiller, with intense twists and a palpable sense of claustrophobia.
There are distinct Jekyll and Hyde vibes in Before I Hang, where a doctor seeks to halt the ageing process... until a transfusion of murderer’s blood turns him homicidal. It’s a classic trope in horror, this, in which the consciousnesses of a human (usually a criminal) gets passed on through transplants of eyes, heads, limbs or blood. Yet once again Karloff’s sincerity makes this one of the classier entries in what we might call the ‘Terror by Transfusion’ genre.
In The Devil Commands Karloff returns as a scientist desperate to communicate with his dead wife even though “man is not supposed to know these things!” With some dazzling (for the time) effects, a loping assistant and a shady spirit medium, it’s the closest to a straight-ahead horror movie in the set, and includes a striking opening sequence of a rain battered house by the sea.
That Karloff’s Mad Doctor cycle was running out of steam by 1942 is shown in the final entry, where the studio opted for comedy. The Boogie Man Will Get You might be a parody of the previous films, but it still manages to entertain and amuse. In the end, the mad science in these movies isn’t so mad after all. Karloff usually pursues noble aims with amazing success. And yet, as Frankenstein discovered, it’s superstitious resistance to progress that is the real villain here. It certainly seems to be what gets people killed.
Extras include Karloff on Radio episodes, a collectors’ booklet and wonderfully informative commentaries from the likes of Kim Newman and Jonathan Rigby; and the crisp Blu-ray transfers make you forget you’re watching films that are close to (gasp) 100 years old.
It’s silly for sure, but Karloff brings a certain poetry to the schlock