Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster Illuminates a Horror Legend

“I had a religious conversion… I saw my messiah,” Guillermo del Toro says early in Thomas Hamilton’s new documentary Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster. The second that so moved the Oscar-winning filmmaker? The first time he noticed Karloff’s iconic monster face the digital camera in 1931’s Frankenstein.

That reverent tone runs all through The Man Behind the Monster, which pays tribute to the display screen legend by way of speaking heads (moreover del Toro, we additionally hear from Karloff’s daughter, Sara, in addition to Joe Dante, Leonard Maltin, Ron Perlman, Dick Miller, Roger Corman, John Landis, Peter Bogdanovich, and others) and clips spanning Karloff’s total profession; there are additionally snippets of audio interviews with the person himself, in addition to footage from his activate This Is Your Life.

While the documentary devotes loads of time to Karloff’s best-known roles—the tragic lakeside scene in Frankenstein, and Karloff’s conflict with director James Whale over the way it needs to be introduced, is abundantly mentioned—it additionally examines his distinctive place in cinema historical past. Born in England in 1887 (enjoyable truth: his delivery identify was William Henry Pratt) to oldsters who each had Indian ancestry, he later moved to Canada, the place he first pursued his performing desires on the stage, after which discovered his option to Hollywood. There, he went from an additional to a personality actor who landed “tasty supporting roles,” as one interviewee places it. He managed to bridge the hole between silent and sound movies and ultimately turned an necessary a part of the trade’s rising fascination with horror films. (He additionally starred in The Mummy, The Old Dark House, and reverse fellow Universal Monster Bela Lugosi in The Black Cat, to call just some of his standout titles.) He was an early supporter of the Screen Actors Guild; he weathered the introduction of Hollywood’s Hays Code, which clamped down on provocative film content material for many years; and he loved a profession resurgence when a complete new era of followers found his creature options after they turned late-night TV staples.

As any look again at Karloff’s profession can attest, he was fairly often typecast as sinister, malevolent characters—and as The Man Behind the Monster overtly addresses, he appeared in some movies that at the moment are horribly dated, like The Mask of Fu Manchu. But the documentary takes care to level out that even when Karloff was usually seen taking part in the identical form of revenge-seeking ghoul, he may at all times be counted on to show in a magnetic efficiency that transcended the typically less-than-inspiring materials he was given. Special consideration can also be reserved for the memorable roles he landed later in his life, together with his Broadway debut in Arsenic and Old Lace, his much-loved voice-over work in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and his poignant flip as an getting old horror star in Targets.

As you would possibly suspect, watching Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster will encourage a really sturdy urge to observe as many Karloff movies as doable, and Shudder—which begins streaming the doc on January 27—has you coated. Starting February 1, you’ll be able to watch Karloff’s star turns in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and House of Frankenstein (during which Karloff performs the mad scientist for a change), in addition to The Mummy and The Black Cat. The Old Dark House and Mario Bava’s important anthology Black Sabbath are already streaming on Shudder.

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