#Karloff in Media

[karloff-the-uncanny]

Ghastly Phantasms is a self-published fanzine, created by a small international team who make short zines on classic horror icons. This month they made one about Boris Karloff. I found it a really enjoyable read, so I decided to link the file to read it (it's free!).

Be sure to follow them on their social media so you don't miss their other issues!

I am not part of the Ghastly Phantasms team, nor am I advertising for profit, I am merely linking a good piece of Karloff media!

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Mummy (1999, Stephen Sommers)

01/07/2024

[nockingturnal]

modern Baron twins are so silly they’re gonna go home and eat craft Mac and Cheese while watchin CaseOh ,,, also Gregor is so unemployed he does that constantly ((Anton bribes him to leave the house with the camera))

[lizardsfromspace]

Someone found a famous clip of Boris Karloff singing the Monster Mash to Youtube - a clip lost for almost sixty years - and uploaded it to Youtube.

After adding an enormous watermark covering the entire center of the screen

[schlock-luster-video]

On April 27, 2004, Son of Frankenstein was released on DVD in the United States.

[unidentifiedprimate]

The Boogie Man Will Get You, 1942

with Dr. Arthur Lorencz

Prof. Nathaniel Billings

and Schickelinda!

[specialagentartemis]

Genuinely: For people who are angry and frustrated at the limited number of movies and shows available for streaming, at the way streaming services pull or cancel movies and shows at will, at the way every media corporation under the sun is pulling their stuff onto their own streaming service and balkanizing access to things behind a dozen different monthly subscriptions? For people who miss Blockbuster and want to be able to just rent a DVD again?

See if your local library has a DVD collection.

If I want to watch The Mummy (1999) with Brendan Fraser? I can't stream it on Netflix, but I can borrow it from my local library.

If I want to watch The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff? I can't stream that pretty much anywhere, but I can borrow it from my local library.

I want to watch Star Wars or Iron Man or my favorite Disney movie but I refuse to sell my soul to pay for Disney+? I can borrow these from my local library.

Do I want to finish watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 or check out Star Trek: Picard but resent that it's all on yet another streaming service I don't want? I can borrow season box sets of DVDs from my local library!

Obviously, available circulating collections vary a lot between library systems. (My hometown's library has all of Star Trek DS9 on DVD, for example, but my college town's library only has TOS, Picard, and Discovery.) And of course it depends on whether things are released in physical media form at all, and you won't be able to keep up with new episodes of new series - it takes a while for many things to come out on DVD.

But there can be a lot of good stuff there too. For example, I missed Nope in theaters, but I still really want to see it. So I have it on hold from my local library. I'm 73rd in line on 50 copies, so it'll be a while.

So check to see what DVD collections your library does have - it might surprise you what you can get access to, for free, in a manner that no greedy corporation can yank away.

And by checking out DVDs, you are telling the library that you use and want them to maintain and grow their AV media collection. Which is an encouragement we could really use these days.

[vintage1981]

The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee Kickstarts Deluxe Blu-ray Edition

The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee mixes traditional documentary with a dash of fantasy. It is narrated by Christopher Lee himself... in the form of an elaborate marionette, voiced by Peter Serafinowicz. The marionette was custom designed and built by Arch Model Studios, who made all of the puppets for Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs and Asteroid City and Tim Burton's Frankenweenie. 

The film combines new, exclusive interviews with filmmakers, including Peter Jackson, John Landis and Joe Dante, friends and family members with animated flights of fantasy from a wide variety of artists including 2000AD's Simon Coleby, award winning stop-motion animator Astrid Goldsmith and the legendary illustrator Dave McKean who directed, scored and animated a whole chapter of the film himself. 

Spanning eight decades and almost three hundred films, Christopher Lee became famous for his iconic performance as Dracula. But he was so much more than just the Hammer Horror roles he is so fondly remembered for. His career took him from uncredited parts in 1950s swashbucklers with Errol Flynn, through famous performances in 007 and Star Wars films, cult hits like The Wicker Man and The Return of Captain Invincible, right up to a lead role in cinema's biggest event - The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Along the way, he worked with everyone from Orson Welles to Mario Bava, Jess Franco, Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. 

Yet his story is so much richer than just his career. Lee was born into Italian aristocracy, with a military career shrouded in secrecy and kept his private life closely guarded. Some of his ventures and adventures seem highly improbable yet, as the film reveals, he often found himself in unexpected situations - he witnessed the last ever death by guillotine, was cousins with 007 creator Ian Fleming, he met Tolkien, performed with the classic Saturday Night Live line-up, was a friend and neighbour of Boris Karloff, he was the oldest person to ever get on the Billboard music charts (with his own Heavy Metal album), was an expert knife thrower, professional opera singer and a Nazi hunter. And somehow, he also managed to appear in almost 300 films of both the highest and lowest quality imaginable. 

The film is finished and producers Jon Spira and Hank Starrs want to share it with you by producing a top quality Blu-Ray with great extra features and a really amazing LIMITED/NUMBERED EDITION COFFIN-SHAPED BOX SET, full of goodies, which will look killer on the shelf of any discerning cineaste. The jewel in the crown of this box-set will be a 3D 'death mask' of Christopher Lee designed and produced by Arch Model Studio exclusively for this set. They also want to host some screenings - both online and in real cinemas - so we can all experience it together and you can get to meet some of the people behind it.

Making this film has been a fascinating journey - producers excavated the British Film Institute archives where they hold Lee's personal collection of scrapbooks detailing his career in his own hand, been given access to personal photos from the family archive, they met and interviewed his closest friends and family from all over the world and we've worked with some incredible artists, puppeteers, animators, musicians and filmmakers to bring his story to the screen in the most cinematic way. Whether you're a fan of Horror, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or just cinema history in general, we think you'll be delighted by this revealing and eclectic documentary.

Risks and challenges

The film is fully edited and ready to go. This Kickstarter is to fund the final bits of post-production and the production of a fantastic Blu-ray and deluxe collectors edition box set as we're all still committed to physical media. Please note that all illustrations of rewards are designs/prototype images. The final items might differ - we hope they'll actually be better.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Hello friend, I was thinking about the Mina-as-a-reincarnated-love-of-Dracula's plot element from the 90's movie and once more wondering where the hell it came from. Do you have any idea if the germ of that element was present in some other vampire/dracula-related media?

Hello my friend! This is an excellent question that others have sought to answer over the years. This is my best recollection right now without consulting all my sources; if others (@atundratoadstool, @forthegothicheroine, anyone else?) remember something I'm forgetting here, feel free to jump in.

The Coppola film was not, properly speaking, the first Dracula adaptation to include a reincarnated wife plotline; that dubious honor goes to the 1974 Dan Curtis adaptation starring Jack Palance, though there the reincarnated wife is Lucy rather than Mina, and also takes much less of the attention and runtime than it does in the Coppola. Blacula, made around the same time as the Curtis film, also has a reincarnation plotline, though there it's of course not involving the characters of Stoker's novel directly.

Dan Curtis was previously the creator of the long-running vampire soap opera Dark Shadows, which I have not myself seen but which I understand has a prominent 'vampire finds the reincarnation of his love' story, and really popularized it as a trope.

Most people trace the origins of the trope to a different undead narrative - the 1932 The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund (cinematographer on Tod Browning's Dracula) and starring Boris Karloff. The Mummy, which I finally watched for the first time a few years ago, is a strikingly compelling though unambiguously orientalist film, and there's a lot in it from which I think subsequent Dracula adaptations have pulled.

The relationship between the undead Imhotep and Helen, who recovers memories of their tragic past life together, is in many ways persuasive. Like the occult opportunist Kay in Son of Dracula to whom I think Helen is rather akin, Helen seems stifled in the modern world (in her case the impression is exacerbated by the hints we get of racism she experiences as a half-Egyptian woman), and it's a rather direct line from her characterization to Lucy Seward in the Badham Dracula, Mina in the Coppola, and ultimately Vanessa Ives. Helen and Imhotep's love cannot succeed because he has the unfortunate impression that he has to kill her and resurrect her as a mummy so they can be together, but the sense the movie conveys of her connecting with her whole self when she recovers her earlier memories, and especially of her devotion to Isis, is quite moving.

Stepping back from the specificity of Dracula as a story, I actually think the reincarnation plotline makes a lot of sense as something that comes into play when you're dealing with immortality and undeath. One of the things that I think makes the way that the Dracula adaptations use it so weird and awkward, aside from the pure arbitrariness, is that they're divorcing the trope from the spiritualist connotations it clearly has in The Mummy, leaving it flat and metaphysically inexplicable. The Mummy is a text with clear origins in the spiritualist movements of its time, with their attendant orientalism - questions about reincarnation are all over those.

I played once myself with trying to recuperate the reincarnated wife trope in a Dracula fic, though I didn't touch the spiritualism stuff. I've been thinking about it, though, because I'm trying to work on Penny Dreadful fic and it's all over that canon (and also because I've been reading some Dion Fortune). I'll keep thinking about it.

[stickybasementobject]

Misconceptions:

You know it occurs to me that in today's world Boris Karloff would as a quarter Indian biracial actor probably be called woke casting? Not that this is a widely known fact. But in regards to him playing such roles as Jekyll and Hyde, Mycroft Holmes and nearly Cagliostro and Bluebeard. Don't believe me? Look at the reaction to actor Rupert Laight as Isaac Newton in Dr Who. Even in some more left-wing circles. It's coming to something when an ethnic actor gets less grief for such casting in the early twentieth century than one in the modern age?

I've also seen him wrongly described as a white actor doing yellow face as Fu Manchu. Not that such portrayals were ever forgivable of course. But another example of the fact that people are quite ignorant of racially mixed actors having had a presence in the history of media. Just look up the name Acquanetta as another example. See image below.

Just a few short words I wanted to get off my chest on the matter. (-;

[thenightling]

The Universal Monsters were surprisingly diverse

Everyone thinks that Media has "Gone woke" with diversity today but it occurred to me that the original Universal movie monsters were actually extremely diverse. Observe. Phantom of the Opera - French Dracula - Character from Romania / From Transylvania. Only American-made Dracula movie with an authentic Transylvanian. Dracula was played by an immigrant actor actually from Transylvania (which was part of Hungary at the time before reverting back to Romania. The boarders were shifting so often than "just to be safe" when Bela Lugosi became an American citizen he renounced citizenship to both Hungary and Romania. Dracula (Spanish version) - Filmed at night using the same sets as the Bela Lugosi movie in 1931, it is arguably better than the Bela Lugosi movie. Has an all-Spanish cast and better effects than the Bela Lugosi movie. Dracula's daughter (1936) - The character is canonically bisexual despite the era. Frankenstein - The Frankenstein's monster was brought to life (in the novel) in Ingolstadt Bavaria. The 1931 film was directed by James Whale (a gay man). And The Creature was played by Boris Karloff, an Anglo-Indian Man. Bride of Frankenstein - The most compassionate human character was the visually impaired old man who was self-sufficient, a surprisingly progressive portrayal of disability for the era. And the original Frankenstein monster was played by a man who was Anglo-Indian. Ernest Thesiger (who was gay in real life) played Dr. Pretorius. Son of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein - Features Ygor, who has a neck / spinal disability. (Not a hunchback the way the zeitgeist version has you think.) These films also feature a one armed police chief constable. The Wolfman - Welsh (though played by an American.) Bela Lugosi (immigrant) was also in the film. And the film has Roma characters, including the very sympathetic Maleva. Frankenstein meets The Wolfman - One of the main characters is a pro-active older Roma woman instead of a pretty damsel. Unfortunately the movie was badly chopped up for its theatrical release because test audiences didn't like Bela Lugosi's voice as the monster and didn't realize the Frankenstein monster was now Ygor's brain in The Monster's body (obviously most of the test audiences missed Ghost of Frankenstein). Had the film not been tampered with, this would have portrayed The Frankenstein monster as blinded, that's why this movie started the trend of imagining the Frankenstein monster stumbling around with his arms out stretched. Maleva (Roma) was also in this one. The Mummy - North African (Though played by an Anglo-Indian man from the UK, Boris Karloff. It was 1932 so it wasn't the best representation but the character was still North African). The Invisible man - Depicts mental illness (with arguable authenticity). Also directed by James Whale (gay man who directed Frankenstein). House of Frankenstein - The Welsh (Actually American) Wolfman falls in love with a Roma woman. Boris Karloff (who was Anglo-Indian) was in it but not as The Frankenstein monster. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein - The Invisible Man (though his scene is brief) was played by Vincent Price (bisexual in real life). Bela Lugosi (an immigrant from Transylvania (which was part of Hungary at the time) played Dracula. Creature from the black Lagoon - The Creature is from South America. The movie is from 1954 and features a woman scientist. An Immigrant from Eastern Europe, an Anglo-Indian, a gay director, at least one gay actor, at least one bisexual actor, a bisexual woman character, a North African character. Disability representation. Women, including a woman scientist. And more representation. That's more diversity than The Avengers.

[contentabnormal]

Boris Karloff as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932)

Mixed Media: Ink & Watercolors on Paper, 8.5" x 11", 2024

By Josh Ryals

[darchildre]

Do you ever think about what our media landscape would be like if Tod Browning had managed to cast Lon Chaney as Dracula (like he originally wanted) instead of Bela Lugosi?

Like, does the (fucked up and erotic-but-not-sexy) film that would have produced do as well? Does it become the franchise-spawning media juggernaut that our Dracula became, or is it like Freaks - too weird and gross for mainstream success?

If it did catch on, what did the rest of the vampires of the 20th century look like? Was there a Lon Chaney-inspired Dark Shadows equivalent? What about Anne Rice - does she still write about sexy vampires? What is Lon Chaney-esque Twilight like?

And if it didn't catch on, did Universal still make Frankenstein? Or did Laemmle Sr decide "No more horror", James Whale keeps making war pictures, and Boris Karloff spends his whole life playing minor roles in gangster movies?

I don't know, man, this question haunts me sometimes.

[twistedtummies2]

The Price May Be Right - Number 19

Welcome to “The Price May Be Right!” I’m counting down My Top 31 Favorite Vincent Price Performances & Appearances! The countdown will cover movies, TV productions, and many more forms of media. Today’s choice might be a bit confusing. I give you two performances for the price of one, with Number 19: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

The names of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe are practically synonymous, at least in cinematic circles. While Price made many, MANY movies in his long and storied career, arguably the ones for which he became best well-known were the special movies produced by AIP for what is now referred to colloquially as “The Corman-Poe Cycle.” This was a series of eight films, all directed by Roger Corman for the company, which were based – some more loosely than others – on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent was the nominal star for seven of the pictures within the octology. The only one which DIDN’T feature Price was the third film of the bunch, “The Premature Burial.”

Most of the movies in the series were treated as more or less straightforward horror films of the time. However, the one exception was the movie inspired by the great author’s most famous “Poe-m” (I am so sorry), “The Raven.” The original poem is easily one of Poe’s greatest pieces of work, telling in short verse the story of a lonely man, mourning the loss of his beloved wife, Lenore. He receives a visit from a mysterious raven, which turns out to be a supernatural harbinger of doom and despair. It’s a tragic, ambiguous, deeply perturbing poem, and still a classic to this day. Corman’s 1963 movie interpretation, however, eschews much of the pathos, as the film is actually a horror-comedy, with emphasis on the latter half of that equation. In essence, the picture is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of all the others in the eight-part series, which is sort of a clever idea. In the film, Price plays the main protagonist: Dr. Craven, a physician and ex-sorceror who, like the narrator in the poem, has seemingly lost his precious Lenore. Also like in the poem, he is visited by a talking raven…but this is about where all similarities cease, for the raven turns out to be a fellow dark wizard, by the name of Dr. Bedlo. He reveals to Craven that Lenore is apparently still alive, and in the grasp of their shared nemesis, the evil Dr. Scarabus. The two magicians thus set out on a quest to confront Scarabus, so Bedlo can get revenge on him for past humiliations, while Craven ascertains if his wife is, indeed, still breathing…and if so, what she is doing with the evil wizard. Much like “House of the Long Shadows” would do many years later, the film acts as something of a “Who’s Who?” of classic Gothic horror pictures. Not only does Price play the lead role, but the perpetually-drunk Bedlo is played by Peter Lorre, while the redoubtable Boris Karloff tackles the part of the slimy Scarabus. Future Joker and star of “The Shining,” Jack Nicholson, also appears in an early role, playing the part of the romantic interest for Craven’s daughter, who is played by the much-less-famous (but no less talented) Olive Sturgess. It’s more fun than frightening on the whole. Price’s Craven is an interesting protagonist for the story: despite being very gifted in magical arts, and coming from a long line of distinguished warlocks, he’s a very mild-mannered individual, most of the time. The film gives him a story arc of essentially growing more of a spine, as he learns to fight more fiercely against the injustices around him, and accepts his destined place in the world: an atypical hero’s journey.

All this is well and good, and the movie is definitely worth checking out, if only for the novelty of the adventure and its stellar cast. However, this was not the only time Price would tackle Poe’s Raven onscreen. Many years later, Price would get a chance to theatrically perform a reading of the original poem for a Halloween Special during the 1980s. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the name of the special was, nor the exact year it came out: I actually tried to look it up, since I DID learn that information…but I can no longer find the source, and I sadly never wrote it down, dummy that I am. Whoops. Whatever else is in the special in question, however, it’s hard to believe much could top Price performing Poe’s greatest poem the way it was always meant to be performed.

In my opinion, Price’s reading of The Raven is the definitive interpretation of the poem. He brings the right amount of melodrama and emotion to the work, giving the Narrator a sense of both decadence and dismalness befitting the story as it happens. From his tragic nostalgia to his wonder at the appearance of the talking bird and even to his moments of desperation and spooky loss, he runs the whole gamut of the poem’s emotional breadth with marvelous aplomb. Others, such as Christopher Lee and James Earl Jones, have done masterful interpretations and readings of the poem in their own rights…but for me, Price is the eternal voice of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and no single take on the poem has ever matched his reading for me. Bottom line: whether it’s the movie or the poem, when I think of “The Raven,” I think of Vincent Price. End of story. Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 18!

[vvvolfram]

OFFICIAL BLOG OF VENUZA’S SHINING STAR

VVOLFRAM!

Although I, Scheele, the social media staff, has taken over to make the blog less corporate and more familiar. We work to make Venuza shine!

OOC I’ll add more info later.

Pelipper mail is ON. Malice is OFF.

Musharna mail and malice are both OFF.

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Fairy type gym leader in the Coela region!

Wolfram’s gym Pokémon are DANTE (Aromatisse), SPIKE JR (Primarina), MICK (Mawile), and OZ (Toxtricity)

Wolfram’s personal Pokémon are TOXIN (Salazzle) and KARLOFF (Obstagoon)

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And his staff, a gym trainer and Muk show star.

Scheele’s gym Pokémon is BEOWULF (Sylveon)

Scheele’s personal Pokémon are PRINCE (Muk), SUNSHINE (Muk), and GLIMMER (Muk)

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“Posts From Venuza” is the post tag

“Answers From Venuza” is the ask tag

“Venuzan Discussion” is the reblog tag

“Shine On You Challengers” is the Scheele post tag

“Your Shining Star” is the Val post tag

[brokehorrorfan]

Targets will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 16 via The Criterion Collection. Sister Hyde designed the cover art for the 1968 crime thriller.

Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) writes and directs. Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Nancy Hsueh, James Brown, and Sandy Baron star. Roger Corman produces.

Targets has been newly restored in 2K, supervised by Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Audio commentary by writer-director Peter Bogdanovich (2003)

Introduction by writer-director Peter Bogdanovich (2003)

Interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater (new)

Excerpts from an interview with production designer Polly Platt (1983)

Booklet with an essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Peter Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin’s 1969 book The Director’s Event

Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave.

Pre-order Targets.