Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff’s first talkie. His contribution comes via a bit part as lead Warner Baxter’s vaguely Arabian manservant. Though billed as a mystery, the film plays as a melodrama. Baxter and Lois Moran play would-be lovers kept apart by Moran’s murderous, philandering husband and the script’s insistence that Moran behave like an impetuous child.

A thick fog envelops London. A mysterious killer strangles several men in the shadowy streets. We learn the killer is targeting officers in a particular WWI unit. The setting shifts to a manor house. Roland Young delivers a charming, wry performance as the story settles into a closed-circle mystery. Then Dorothy Sebastian and Boris Karloff burst in. Sebastian over-emotes and struggles to maintain her ludicrous accent. Karloff struggles with his own invented accent and looks lost. The tonal shift proves fatal as the film limps along to an elaborate climax with a cheat ending. Great title, poor execution. The archive.org print—sourced from TCM—is passable.

Escaped convict Bickford arrives in a small Caribbean village posing as a priest and gets tangled up with local vamp Torres who’s promised herself to any man who can slay the giant manta ray that killed her brother. Great production and Bickford’s entertaining performance can’t overcome Torres’s incessant emoting. Boris Karloff plays a lecherous sailor with a couple of lines in a forgettable part.

I watched The Utah Kid because it features an early performance from Boris Karloff. As a solid B-oater with competent leads and above-average photography and stunts, it surprised me. Cringe-worthy dialogue may litter the clunky script, which has the titular outlaw Kid fall for a woman kidnapped by his outlaw gang, but the barroom brawl’s choreography proved a standout, as did the Kid’s bloody bullet wound. For his part, Karloff proves forgettable as an evil henchman.

Howard Hawks’s second sound picture. A competent prison-reform drama that nevertheless feels like a work-for-hire job. Walter Huston’s electric as a former district attorney turned prison warden, and Boris Karloff maximizes his role as a grudge-bearing convict. But Phillips Holmes doesn’t register as the hard-luck protagonist. Ditto Constance Cummings as his love interest.

I came to this film having never heard of Wheeler and Woolsey. Reading up, I learned they were a top-grossing comedy duo in the early 1930s. This explains the surprising number of sets and why the script proves little more than a setup for Woolsey’s one-liners.

Little Caesar lite. Robinson plays a small-time gambler (instead of a gangster) who claws his way atop the big city game, only for a woman to prove his undoing. Cagney plays his longtime friend and heavy. I liked the gambling scenes, and Robinson and Cagney’s chemistry, but the lower narrative stakes render this less resonant than the pair’s more iconic films. Boris Karloff makes a forgettable appearance as a pimp in an early dice game.

Not about a lawyer. Richard Dix plays an intelligence officer returned home from the war to his playboy lifestyle. But unbeknownst to all, he’s adopted the secret vigilante persona of “The Reckoner.“ Along with his able assistants Doc and The Professor (played by Boris Karloff in the biggest part thus far in his career), The Reckoner works to expose a cabal of corrupt businessmen. The meager budget precludes any big action scenes or stunt sequences, but I love these sort of pulp vigilante stories. Even if—like this one—they’re quite nonsensical.

A would-be social outrage drama that sees Edward G. Robinson editing a New York scandal sheet. Caving to ownership pressure, he assigns amoral reporter Boris Karloff to dredge up a scandalous, twenty-year-old murder story.

In a banana republic, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays an arrogant, entitled American who sets his sights on a snobbish, entitled American played by Loretta Young. The script proffers ample plot involving Young’s corrupt step-father, her aging fiancée, and a farcical kidnapping plot. But my distaste for both characters overrode my interest. Boris Karloff has a forgettable part as Young’s stepfather’s aide.

John Barrymore plays a crippled Russian dancer turned puppeteer, who raises a young boy to achieve the success that escaped him.

In Tsarist Russia, a young Jewish woman desperate to visit her ailing father acquires a special travel pass that allows her to move freely through the country, but forever brands her as a prostitute.

Like Dracula, I’ve seen this movie countless times. Boris Karloff still shines as the monster, but this latest viewing gave me a new appreciation for Jack Pierce’s makeup work. Even in the harsh daylight scenes blown up to 4k, it looks seamless. I always forget how those daylight scenes open up the picture. The lack of echo during the mountain chase finale betrays the soundstage artifice, but the genuine outdoor scenes are fantastic.

Constance Cummings and Robert Young play lovers caught between their warring mobster fathers, played by Leo Carrillo and Boris Karloff.

A romantic comedy starring Gloria Swanson as a prima donna criticized for her passionless performances because she’s never made time for a man. To remedy this, she falls for convenient handsome stranger Melvyn Douglas, but an idiot plot causes her to believe him a gigolo. Putting aside the plot’s overt sexism, I struggled with Swanson’s petulant, egomaniacal character. Boris Karloff appears in a single scene as a hotel waiter.

Boris Karloff plays a low-level goon working for Mr. X, a mysterious drug smuggling kingpin. The G-Men have been trying to unmask Mr. X but have only dead agents to show for their efforts.

Will Rogers plays a struggling razor blade manufacturer sailing with his family to the Mediterranean to close a deal to acquire Damascus steel. His boisterous manner offends an upper-crust playwright played by Joel McCrea. Onboard ship, Rogers becomes entangled with a vamp played by Jetta Goudal, while McCrea romances Rogers’s daughter.

Paul Muni plays Tony Camonte, a low-level mafia hood who explains, “In this business there’s only one law you gotta follow to keep out of trouble: Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doing it.” The “it” in question is murder, and Tony does plenty as he shoots his way to the top of Chicago’s underworld.

Assorted travelers find themselves stranded in a gloomy old house during a flood.

English archeologists race the fiendish Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) and his evil daughter (Myrna Loy) to find lost crypt of Genghis Kahn and recover its mystical artifacts.

Even the most ardent Boris Karloff fan can skip The Ghoul.

During World War I, a group of British cavalrymen, lost in the Mesopotamian desert, falls prey to unseen Arab snipers.

In post-war Hungary, vengeful veteran Lugosi returns from a Russian prison camp to confront traitorous Satanist Karloff, with a honeymooning American couple caught in the middle.

The Black Room underwhelms, but not for obvious reasons.

The discovery of a radioactive meteor by a pair of scientists (Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) leads to deadly consequences.

A scientist (Edmund Gwenn) revives a man (Boris Karloff) framed and executed by a group of racketeers for a crime he didn’t commit.

West of Shanghai doesn’t start well, but stick with it.

Boris Karloff headlines an ensemble cast in this tepid whodunit set on an island military research base.

Boris Karloff delivers a thoughtfully restrained performance in this first Mr. Wong film, though it sees him once again playing an East-Asian character.

After being found guilty of treason, a renowned brain surgeon (Boris Karloff) is sentenced to hard labor on the Devil’s Island penal colony.

Sleuth Wong (Boris Karloff) solves blowgun murders in San Francisco.

Fair warning, I’m going to spoil the entire plot of British Intelligence. How else to review this espionage drama? Plot is all it offers.

Richard III (Basil Rathbone) murders his way to the throne of England with the help of his executioner, Mord (Boris Karloff).

Despite Boris Karloff playing a doctor with a secret underground laboratory where he holds six people hostage as unwilling test subjects, The Man with Nine Lives isn’t a mad scientist picture. It’s a drama centered on an ethical dilemma: Would you risk the deaths of six people to save millions?

Things go wrong when a doctor (Boris Karloff), condemned to death for mercy killing, is allowed to carry on his experiments using a criminal’s blood.

A scientist (Boris Karloff) becomes obsessed with the idea of communicating with his dead wife.

Not even the terrific pairing of Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre can save this mess.

Boris Karloff plays a ruthless cabman who supplies cadavers for a cold hearted doctor and his promising protégé in this well-produced thriller that, unfortunately, lacks any real edge.

Isle of the Dead is an above average thriller thanks in large part to a great performance by Boris Karloff.

A headstrong woman (Anna Lee) runs afoul of the corrupt master (Boris Karloff) of an insane asylum.

A daydreaming pulp writer (Danny Kaye) finds himself mixed up with a mysterious woman (Virginia Mayo) and a sinister doctor (Boris Karloff).

Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) tries to foil a criminal (Boris Karloff) who robs banks with a paralyzing gas.

Recently turned into a raven, a magician (Peter Lorre) talks a fellow magician (Vincent Price) into helping him exact revenge on the magician (Boris Karloff) responsible.

A young French soldier (Jack Nicholson) pursues a mysterious woman to a Baron’s (Boris Karloff) castle.

A spectacular disappointment given the talent involved, this would-be comedy can barely generate the occasional chuckle, let alone a full-blown laugh.

While visiting his girlfriend in England, a young American (Nick Adams) discovers her father’s (Boris Karloff) obsession with a radioactive meteorite.

The premise of The Sorcerers (that of an elderly couple taking over the body of a young man) has great potential, not only as a thriller, but also as a social commentary. Unfortunately, the execution of that premise by director Michael Reeves is marred by a weak script and plot holes too large to be ignored.

A young man’s shooting spree coincides with an aging film star’s (Boris Karloff) retirement.

Searching for his brother, a young man travels to Christopher Lee’s remote lodge where he meets witchcraft expert Boris Karloff and dreams of green-skinned witch Barbara Steele.