Boris Karloff Collection [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The problem with the Boris Karloff Collection is the false promotion Universal gives it. This "Franchise Collection" says on the box, "The Master of Horror In His Most Frightening Roles!" Far from it. Of the five movies only The Strange Door has a bit of horror and the movie belongs to Charles Laughton, not Karloff. For the others, Karloff mostly plays secondary roles which aren't scary, although Mord in Tower of London is a man to avoid. None of the movies would win any awards. Still, Karloff was an interesting actor and it's hard not to like him even in these secondary films.

--Night Key. This B-movie crime programmer has as much connection to horror as a thin pork chop has to a freshly ripped-out human tongue. Karloff as the well-intentioned, kindly and ingenious inventor does a fine job, but the movie is forgettable. Of interest to some is that the director is Lloyd Corrigan, a writer and director in the late Twenties and throughout the Thirties. He became one of Hollywood's most recognizable character actors when the Forties started. He usually played roly-poly parts, chortling and happy-spirited.

--Tower of London. Here we have a cauldron of a movie bubbling merrily away that spatters as much rancid stew on Richard III almost as vividly as Shakespeare did. Basil Rathbone plays Richard with enthusiastic malice. As a henchman, he has Boris Karloff as Mord, a big, club-footed, bald-headed, muscular torturer, eager to use the executioner's axe or the torturer's rack and whip. "You're more than a duke," Mord tells Richard, "more than a king. You're a god to me!" Mord eagerly and admiringly acts on Richard's plans, from thrusting a dagger into the back of the mad old Henry VI to tipping Clarence, Richard's troublesome brother, into a huge vat of malmsey, then sitting on the lid while waiting for the sound of the bubbles to stop. This is Basil Rathbone's movie, however, and he makes the most of it with icy diction and some good lines. He hands his own dagger to Mord, then sends him to where Henry VI is praying. "A fitting occasion for a blade in the shape of a cross," Richard says. "It will insure the thrust and bless the wound."

-- The Climax would be more aptly named The Anti-Climax. It marked Boris Karloff's return to movies after three years on Broadway and touring in Arsenic and Old Lace. His name alone led many to believe The Climax would be a grand, shivering horror fest, especially as it would be Karloff's first color film. Instead, The Climax is a sad tale of an elderly doctor who has a thing about a singer he strangled ten years previously. For some, it might have promised a delightful Technicolor movie of Viennese operetta and Hollywood soubrettes. Instead, it's a weak re-make of The Phantom of the Opera, without the Phantom, which was released the year before. More than anything else, we get a story of aged obsession, hypnotism and throat spray that is as flavorless and stale as a slice of month-old Sachertorte. Inexplicably, Karloff is under-utilized. When Karloff says in that deep, sincere voice of his, "I've come to help you, my dear," we hope things will pick up. They don't.

--The Strange Door. "They've begun by disliking each other," says Alain de Maletroit (Charles Laughton), smacking his lips, eyes gleaming at the prospect of the forced marriage between his 20-year-old niece and a drunken wastrel he chose for her in a rough French tavern. "Hatred will come later. I'm in the mood for relaxation! Let's visit the dungeons!" As de Maletroit, Laughton sports an amazing comb-over, almost as grotesque as the one he wore in Jamaica Inn. de Maletroit can be charmingly gracious one moment, squinty-eyed suspicious the next, and absolutely jolly as he enjoys his crazed and nefarious plans. The movie is hardly more than an amusing throw-away, but Laughton turns it into a comedy of melodramatic excess. Karloff has a much smaller, but important role, and does a sympathetic job of it. On balance, the movie is fun and worth watching because of Laughton, but it's basically filler.

--The Black Castle. The best thing -- and that's pretty good -- about The Black Castle is that it's a black-and-white Forties' gothic grabber featuring a murderous mad count which was somehow made in 1952. Skulking around in the shadows of the count's castle is a long-gowned Boris Karloff in a decidedly secondary role of an aged doctor who may or may not be the salvation of the hero. Surprisingly, for all the cliches, The Black Castle keeps moving merrily along. The movie takes itself seriously, but it's competently enough made to keep our interest, even if we wind up sitting back with a smile while we watch. It's even reassuring in a way to realize there are strong echoes of The Most Dangerous Game. Hollywood's second creative rule has always been, "If you're going to steal, steal from the best." It's first creative rule, of course, is "If you're going to steal, steal from the best and then turn it into liverwurst." The Black Castle is a nice bite of Austrian braunschweiger.

Please do not buy this box set on the strength of a couple of the reviews as they are referring to the official Universal box set and not this 3DVD collection of poor quality public domain Mr Moto movies. This does not contain any Universal films and the product description is misleadingly vague.

If Peter Lorre (Rosenberg, Austria-Hungary [now Ruzomberok, Slovakia]) can be Mr. Moto "Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)," then Boris Karloff (Camberwell, London, England, UK) can be Mr. Wong. Boris appears in more than 160 films and videos.

Actually these films are quite entertaining. They are also some of his more obscure films but it is worth purchasing as a set.

Night Key (1937) David Mallory
Tower of London (1939) Mord
The Climax (1944) Dr. Friedrich Hohner
The Strange Door (1951) Voltan
The Black Castle (1952) Dr. Meissen

See my individual reviews.

There are larger Karloff collections

The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)