Showing posts with label Boris Karloff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boris Karloff. Show all posts
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| Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre |
In this black comedy that seems influenced by the Broadway show Arsenic and Old Lace (which itself was filmed two years later) Boris Karloff plays a crazy scientist in a crumbling old inn and Peter Lorre is the sheriff and just about every other official in the area. Winnie Slade (the oddly named Miss Jeff Donell of Night Editor) is a kooky gal who decides to buy the inn even though it's off the beaten track, an idea which her ex-husband Bill (Larry Parks) thinks is nutty. Professor Billing (Karloff) seems to think he can imbue a man with the ability to fly by putting traveling salesmen into a machine he's invented, but they all wind up dead -- apparently. "Slapsy" Maxie Rosenbloom plays a powderpuff salesman, Maude Eburne is a homicidal housekeeper, Frank Puglia [20 Million Miles to Earth] is "Jo Jo," an escaped lunatic, and Don Beddoe [The Face Behind the Mask] is a choreographer who takes a room at the inn. The cast is interesting, to say the least, with Parks and Puglia coming off best, but the material is far, far below the talents of the actors, and both Karloff and Lorre seem a mite uncomfortable, although everyone tries their best to make this funny and spirited, which it ain't. The movie has only a couple of titters and is mostly tedious.
Verdict: Makes a Bowery Boys film look intellectual. *1/2.
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| Percy Helton flirts with Lou in drag as a maid |
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER, BORIS KARLOFF (1949). Director: Charles Barton.
Running out of monsters to exploit, Abbott and Costello simply decided to star in a comical murder mystery with Boris Karloff chief among the supporting cast. House dick Casey (Bud Abbott) and fired bellboy Freddie (Lou Costello) are up to their necks in intrigue when one of the guests at the hotel where they're employed is murdered. While Inspector Wellman (James Flavin) suspects Freddie because the dead man got him sacked, there are others who may have done the deed, including possible husband-poisoner, Angela (Lenore Aubert), Mike Relia (Vincent Renno), T. Henley Brooks (Roland Winters), desk clerk Jeff (Gar Moore), his sweetie Betty (Donna Martell), her father Crandell (Harry Hayden), and the sinister pseudo-swami, Talpur (Boris Karloff), who is fairly murderous but may not be the main killer of the story. Melton, the hotel manager (Alan Mowbray) is appalled by the whole business: "We don't permit murders at this hotel," he insists. Unfortunately, more dead bodies begin turning up in Freddie's bath tub and closet, and worse, they keep disappearing as well. There's an exciting climax in vast caverns with a bottomless pit, with impressive scenic design and special effects, but the second most memorable sequence has Great Old Movies favorite Percy Helton flirting with Freddie when he's in disguise as a maid! The boys are in fine form, as are Karloff, Helton, Mowbray and Flavin, and the rest of the cast seems to be having fun as well. This is a delightful black comedy and one of the team's best movies. Gar Moore later turned up in Curse of the Faceless Man and Lenore Aubert was in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein which was also directed by Charles Barton.
Verdict: Quite entertaining and often very funny. ***.
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| Laughton vs Karloff in a fight to the finish! |
"Don't think badly of me. Family affection was never my strong point."
"I'm sorry I can't invite you to the wedding, but I fear a man who's been dead for twenty years might cast a gloom over the company."
"The Sire De Maletroit's Door" is not one of Robert Louis Stevenson's more memorable short stories, but it was expanded into this interesting film which teams Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff and turns them into adversaries. Denis de Beaulieu (Richard Stapley/Wyler) is on the run from a murder charge when he happens upon an entrance to De Maletroit's manor house that locks firmly behind him. De Maletroit, sitting calmly in his parlor, informs Denis that he is his nephew -- by marriage -- and a sort of shotgun wedding is in the offer. Seems De Maletroit has a pretty niece, Blanche, (Sally Forrest), who is in love with a man who vanished, but whom her uncle wants married to a mountebank so as to make her life miserable. His motives become clearer as the film progresses, climaxing with a wild scene in a dungeon with a cell whose walls slowly and inexorably come closing together. Laughton is as wonderful as ever, Karloff is fine as a manservant who is loyal to another, and Stapley is okay, although Sally Forrest is more decorative than anything else. The Strange Door is not a great movie, and one might have wished for more interaction between its two famous stars, but Laughton is given some great dialogue and delivers it with his customary aplomb.
Verdict: Anything with these two ... ***.