BORIS Karloff, the subject of a 14-film retrospective that opens today at Film Forum, was not only the premier horror film actor in Hollywood’s golden age but one of its most beloved stars.
The black sheep of a large and eccentric British family, the former William Henry Pratt toiled for decades on stage and screen in Canada and the United States before his breakthrough role (at age 43) as an evil prison trusty in Howard Hawks’ “The Criminal Code” (1931).
Later that year, Karloff was playing a crooked politician’s henchman in “Graft” on the Universal backlot when he was hastily recruited to replace Bela Lugosi, who balked at Jack Pierce’s elaborate makeup for the monster in “Frankenstein.”
The Film Forum series is culled from nearly 160 features that the hard-working Karloff appeared in, interspersed with scores of stage, radio and TV appearances.
The retrospective opens with a double feature today and tomorrow of “Frankenstein” – in which Karloff shows off his genius for mime as the stricken monster in his signature role – and “The Mask of Fu Manchu.”
Karloff plays Sax Rohmer’s “Oriental” villain. Myrna Loy, portraying his daughter, recalled years later that the two of them decided at the outset they couldn’t play this outlandish melodrama straight. It’s great, politically incorrect fun with terrific art deco sets.
“The Bride of Frankenstein” follows on Sunday. Karloff’s greatest performance comes in James Whale’s 1935 masterpiece, in which he speaks, is virtually crucified by villagers with pitchforks, smokes with a blind man and gets a woman (Elsa Lanchester) to call his own, however briefly. All this, and a haunting score by Franz Waxman.
“Bride” is on a double feature with Karl Freund’s “The Mummy” (1932). Monday brings a single-admission triple feature: “Graft,” “The Guilty Generation” (Karloff as an Italian gangster in a B-movie “Romeo and Juliet”) and with Lugosi in the wonderfully gruesome “The Raven” (1935).
Boris and Bela are back together again on Tuesday for Edgar G. Ulmer’s stunningly perverse “The Black Cat” from 1934 (Karloff’s devil worshipper has literally turned Lugosi’s ex into a dead trophy wife) and Robert Wise’s “The Body Snatcher” (1945).
The triple feature is rounded out by Karloff’s solo turn in Whale’s rarely seen comic thriller “The Old Dark House” (1932) with Raymond Massey and Melvyn Douglas.
“The Criminal Code” is on a double feature Wednesday with “The Lost Patrol” (1934), the seminal John Ford desert adventure in which Karloff plays a religious fanatic.
The series concludes next Thursday with a double bill of Karloff’s best late films, including the British-made “The Haunted Strangler” (1958).
In “Targets,” released a year before Karloff’s death in 1969, Karloff plays touching as a version of himself: a gentle veteran horror star who is confronted with real-life terror when a sniper opens fire at a drive-in-where he’s appearing.
Peter Bogdanavich’s debut as a director, “Targets” is one of the screen’s great swan songs.