THE BORIS KARLOFF COLLECTION (1937-1952). I can accept the fact this five-film set is being called The Boris Karloff Collection even though the screen legend plays supporting roles in the majority of the featured titles. I can even deal with the reality that the selected pictures hardly showcase the great actor at his most memorable. But the proclamation on the back cover that this contains “5 Chilling Horror Classics” is going too far, since not one of these titles would logically fall under the genre label of “horror.”
Night Key (1937) is an interesting yarn about a kindly scientist (Karloff) who creates a state-of-the-art security system and is subsequently cheated out of his invention by a heartless businessman (Samuel S. Hinds). The scientist exacts his revenge in an ideal manner but soon finds himself strong-armed by criminals who can use his creation for their own schemes.
The flawed but worthwhile Tower of London (1939) won’t be confused with Shakespeare, but it’s a fairly diverting historical epic focusing on Richard III (Basil Rathbone) and how he murders his way to the top with the help of the executioner Mord (Karloff). Another horror icon, Vincent Price, appears in one of his earliest roles as the whimpering Duke of Clarence.
The Climax (1944) is an uninspired rip-off of The Phantom of the Opera, with Karloff cast as an opera house physician still obsessed with the soprano he adored and murdered a decade earlier. When the company’s latest singing sensation (Susanna Foster) stirs memories of his earlier love, he uses hypnosis to keep her under his thumb. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction, an amusing fact since the exact same set had been used the previous year for The Phantom of the Opera (it won the award for its use in that film).
The Strange Door (1951) and The Black Castle (1952) are two sides of the same tale: In both, Karloff portrays a castle servant who tries to help young lovers escape from the tyrant who rules the estate. The Strange Door, adapted from a Robert Louis Stevenson story, casts Charles Laughton as a twisted aristocrat who has his reasons for forcing his niece (Sally Forrest) to marry a dashing rogue (Richard Stapley). Karloff appears as a kindhearted servant named Voltan; his painfully protracted death scene is almost as amusing as Laughton’s ability to overact even when merely called upon to raise an eyebrow. The Black Castle, meanwhile, finds Karloff wasted in the small role of Dr. Meissen, the resident healer who serves the castle’s cruel Count (Stephen McNally) but whose loyalty really rests with the Count’s long-suffering wife (Rita Corday) and the visiting nobleman (Richard Greene) who catches her eye. Laughton’s hamminess is missed, but the film tries to compensate by throwing in Lon Chaney Jr. as a murderous henchman (he’s even more wasted than Karloff) and a dungeon pit populated with crocodiles.
The only extras are a couple of theatrical trailers.
Night Key: **1/2
Tower of London: **1/2
The Climax: **
The Strange Door: **
The Black Castle: **
Extras: *
THE DEAD ZONE (1983) / PET SEMATARY (1989). Paramount’s home entertainment division has re-released two popular Stephen King adaptations in what it’s calling Special Collector’s Editions.
The Dead Zone is clearly the more “special” of the two, as David Cronenberg takes the director’s seat for what remains one of the best Kings placed on film. Christopher Walken plays Johnny Smith, a school teacher whose horrific auto accident leaves him in a coma for five years. When he finally awakens, he discovers he’s acquired psychic powers, a development which proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Martin Sheen, Tom Skerritt and Herbert Lom provide sturdy support in one of Cronenberg’s most mainstream — but no less memorable — pictures to date.
Pet Sematary, with a script penned by King himself, casts Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby as two of the most irresponsible parents ever to make their way onto a movie screen. Their young children would be just as well off living on their own, a point made clear once tragedy strikes the family and the adjacent pet cemetery, a former Indian burial ground with supernatural powers, provides Dad with a way to make everything OK again (or so he thinks). Director Mary Lambert initially provides some effective atmospherics until King’s inane screenplay overpowers her, while Fred Gwynne (as a kindly neighbor) provides the only creative acting.
Extras on both DVDs consist of short pieces on the making of each film; the Pet Sematary disc also includes audio commentary by Lambert.
The Dead Zone: ***
Pet Sematary: *1/2
Extras: **
FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY (1973). Belying its made-for-television roots, this ambitious take on the Mary Shelley classic is one of the most literate Frankenstein productions ever made, as writers Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy touch upon all manner of subtext on their way to crafting an intelligent and elegant interpretation of the classic horror standby. Not as faithful to its source material as its title would indicate (although it does retain many literary elements usually dropped in other adaptations), the film presents its Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting) as an inquisitive young doctor whose tutelage under Dr. Henry Clerval (David McCallum) and, later, Dr. Polidori (James Mason) leads to the “births” of, respectively, the Creature (Michael Sarrazin) and his potential mate (Jane Seymour). But this Creature starts life as a handsome young man, only turning into a physical ogre as time passes; this angle allows Isherwood and Bachardy the opportunity to explore the homoerotic bond between Victor and his boy-toy as well as offer a searing indictment of humankind’s cruelty to those it deems physically imperfect. Strong performances abound, particularly by Mason as the scheming Polidori, Seymour as the casually cruel Prima, Nicola Pagett as Victor’s resourceful bride Elizabeth, and especially Sarrazin as the childlike Creature, whose innocence is corrupted by the actions of those around him. Frankenstein: The True Story has long been available on video in a butchered, 120-minute cut that played overseas theatrically; Universal Studios Home Entertainment claims that the 183-minute version presented on this DVD is the “unedited” one that aired on NBC as a two-part motion picture back in 1973. However, given that various sources (including Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and The Time Out Film Guide) over the years have cited the original running time as 200 minutes, I’m not so sure that this is the complete version. The only extras are promos for various TV shows available on DVD.
Movie: ***
Extras: *
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2006.
