Review: 'Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents: The 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films'

Like horror, science fiction is a genre that can be tricky to define. Frankenstein is certainly a horror movie, but with the pseudo-scientific creation of flat-top Boris, it can also be classified as science-fiction. Bride of Frankenstein, in which Dr. Pretorius creates creatures in a way more in line with "black magic," doesn't bother so much with the pseudo science. Whatever. They both qualify as science fiction in Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents: The 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films even though Douglas Brode goes to some lengths to define the science-fiction film as any that makes some attempt to explain its weirdness scientifically. 

Review: 'Dead Funny: The Humor of American Horror'

Serious horror fans may argue that humor undercuts terror, but the two emotions come from similar places. A laugh and a shriek are both spontaneous reactions often brought on by a surprise and/or a stimulus often (but not always) specifically designed to elicit such a reaction. Horror and humor can enhance each other when dealt out piggyback style. Think of how the hideous Deadites generate wails of horror when they fly up from the fruit cellar in Evil Dead II but then immediately cause wails of laughter when they start behaving more like Moe and Curly. Think of how a humorously foul-mouthed conversation amongst starship crew members suddenly turns terrifying when the titular Alien bursts through one of their chests. 

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #8

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#8. The Black Cat (1934- dir. Edgar Ulmer)

Universal horror did not always rely on supernatural horror. In fact, what may be it’s most horrifying horror of all had no supernatural elements, though its characters deeply believe in the powers of evil. Karloff is no longer the conflicted creature of Frankenstein. He’s all evil as an Alistair Crowley stand-in who matches wits with Bela Lugosi as a psychiatrist out for revenge. Universal tried to pass The Black Cat off as a Poe adaptation, but it has zilch to do with its namesake story. Yet, as many have pointed out, Poe would likely have approved of the film’s perversity and bleakness. Edgar Ulmer’s noir-ish style and the Art Deco sets give The Black Cat a personality distinct from any of the other Universal horrors of its era. However, it is Karloff and Lugosi who make this picture such delicious fun, and they get to wrap their tongues around some of the most memorable dialogue they ever spoke: “Supernatural perhaps, boloney perhaps not.” “The phone is dead; even the phone is dead.” Even when the dialogue isn’t especially clever, the actors’ relish makes it so, as when Karloff makes the line “He has an intense and all-consuming horror of cats” sings like a Stradivarius.

Review: 'Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration'

With the release of Ed Wood in 1994, “Karloff! That Limey cocksucker!” quite nearly replaced “I never drink…wine” and “The children of the night…what music they make” as the go-to phrase when doing a bad Bela Lugosi impression. Tim Burton’s movie hipped the larger film-going public to some of the real-life seething that went on during the filming of such Lugosi/Boris Karloff collaborations as The Black Cat and The Body Snatcher. However, Burton’s superb yet cartoonish film provided little of the complexity behind this classic Hollywood “rivalry.” For that, one would have to take a trip to the local Waldenbooks and pick up a copy of Gregory Mank’s Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration.

Originally published in 1990, the over 350-page book attempted a more nuanced view of a relationship that couldn’t simply be boiled down to a venerated horror star and a jealous, drug-addled also-ran. Swelling with an additional 250-or-so pages in 2009, the now Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration went into even greater depth with additional information and interviews. By Mank’s analysis, Lugosi and Karloff may have enjoyed a rather friendly working relationship while making Son of Frankenstein, and the alleged hatred Lugosi felt for Karloff may have really been directed at a Hollywood system that constantly ground the vampire under its merciless stake.

Karloff is not completely without blame in this mostly one-sided clash of titans. While he never had an explicitly nasty thing to say about Lugosi, his patronizing insistence on referring to his co-star as “poor Bela” in private and public could not have endeared himself to the actor who could be quite proud despite demeaning himself in Poverty Row and Ed Wood pictures.

Mank’s valiant attempt to uncover how Lugosi and Karloff really felt about each other was doomed to go without a definitive answer, but that barely matters when the rest of the story is so fascinating and well told. Mank goes deep into the movies they made together with nearly scene-by-scene analyses without neglecting the most important pictures they made without the other. So we get very satisfying histories of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and other key films, as well as quite a bit of information about other key players in those films such as James Whale and Colin Clive.

Last updated nearly a decade ago, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration is now enjoying a new printing though not another updating. That’s generally fine since there probably haven’t been many new revelations about the Karloff/Lugosi rivalry in recent years since so many of their other collaborators have died. Mank’s incessant leching over Lugosi and Karloff’s female co-stars is more than a little dated and brings nothing but discomfort to the storytelling, but if you can get past that, you will find that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration remains one of the great studies of classic horror films.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 29

The Date: October 29

The Movie: The Black Cat (1934)

What Is It?: The single greatest showdown between Karloff and Lugosi throws Poe out the window and drags in some serious sadism and art deco architecture.

Why Today?: Today is National Cat Day. But don’t tell Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast… he has an intense and all-consuming horror of cats…

November 25, 2009: Karloff vs. Lugosi: A brief look at the careers andrivalries of horrors’ biggest stars

And now, another contribution to Frankensteinia’s Boris Karloff Blogathon…

Karloff and Lugosi. They are the two most iconic actors who played the two most iconic monsters for the most iconic studio of the golden age of horror movies. Today their names and likenesses are just as recognizable as the creatures they helped create. A quick “Google News” search of the name “Bela Lugosi” not only brings up stories from recent Halloween retrospectives, but his name is referenced in articles about former Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy, a Pop Matters piece on ‘80s Goth Rock, and an adopted puppy from Canada named after the Dracula star. A similar search for “Boris Karloff” links to articles about on and off-off-off Broadway shows, parenting, and cosmetic limb lengthening. Lugosi’s heavy Hungarian accent has been appropriated by every hack jokester who ever belched, “I vant to suck your blaad!” His voice and visage inspired a Muppet. Bobby “Boris” Pickett nicked both Karloff’s unmistakably dulcet inflection and his name for the 1962 novelty hit “The Monster Mash”. John Entwistle just settled for the name when he wrote his first song for The Who, “Boris the Spider”. Both actors inspired breakfast cereal mascots.

Tim Burton’s 1994 film Ed Wood suggested that the equally-shared popularity of Karloff and Lugosi is a relatively recent phenomenon, that Lugosi sabotaged his own career by turning down the role of the Frankensetin Monster because it lacked the romantic allure of Dracula, damning him to forever star in Z-grade cheapies like Spooks Run Wild, The Ape Man, and the Wood pictures until his death in 1956. Meanwhile Karloff’s career flourished with prestigious turns in The Mummy, Scarface, and Bride of Frankenstein. This isn’t exactly true. Yes, Karloff was treated with far greater respect by Hollywood. The Powers That Be at Universal christened him “Karloff the Uncanny” and gave him top billing in any film he so much as poked his proboscis into. But with more than 150 films to his credit, he surely starred in his share of stinkers, including the horribly racist The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Island Monster, and Frankenstein 1970.

Critics bear some responsibility for the imbalance between Karloff and Lugosi’s popularity. While no one will argue the memorablility of Lugosi’s performance as Dracula, many have revised their take on his skills, chiding his exaggerated facial expressions, his mannered movements, and his unnatural diction caused by the simple fact that English was not his first language. I contend that these elements bring an otherworldly quality to his performance perfectly appropriate for a supernatural creature, and the sheer iconography of it could never be surpassed or eradicated by another Dracula portrayer. Furthermore, the fresh portion of Lugosi’s resume is certainly not limited to Dracula. He was also excellent in The Black Cat and The Raven (both of which co-starred Karloff), White Zombie, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and Son of Frankenstein, in which he did his finest work and played his second-most hallowed movie monster, Ygor. The back-from-the-grave creep with the broken neck allowed Lugosi unprecedented space to flex his acting muscles. He brings a heady blend of unctuousness, seething evil, and desperation to the character, unequivocally upstaging Karloff, who is merely going through the motions in his final portrayal of the Monster.



Now, I’m certainly not arguing that Lugosi was a more impressive actor than Karloff. Actually, the two were so different in presence and approach that one could not replace the other. Lugosi was icy, exotic, ethereal— qualities that made him the ideal Dracula. Karloff was earthier, more sympathetic, at once childlike and grandfatherly—all key facets of the Frankenstein Monster (well, maybe not “grandfatherly”). Lugosi’s standoffishness made him a more convincing pure-evil villain than Karloff. Karloff’s unshakable warmth made him the better conflicted villain (check out his heartbreaking work in The Devil Commands), although he could still go the full-nasty route when necessary, as he did with great deftness in The Black Cat and The Body Snatcher.

Burton’s Ed Wood presents a crazed, bitter Lugosi who basically hated Karloff for sustaining a respected career while Lugosi was left behind to make trash-o-la pictures for the “worst filmmaker of all time” and wither away in morphine addiction. Descendents of both actors contend that no such rivalry existed. Karloff and Lugosi made eight pictures together, several of them featuring some of the actors’ best work. They play off each other beautifully in their best collaboration, The Black Cat, which was one of the few films in which Lugosi played the ostensible good guy (The Invisible Ray, another Karloff/Lugosi collaboration, was another). The literal and figurative chess games in the film nicely encapsulate their work in this film, in which the two enemies—who masquerade as comrades—try to get the better of the other, leading to a gruesome climax. The truth and vitality in their performances may be a reflection of the real rivalry that may have existed between the actors behind these characters. Regardless of how they actually felt about each other, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi each influenced the other’s career profoundly. Certainly Karloff’s would never have reached such heights had Lugosi not opted out of Frankenstein. Popular culture and the horror film certainly would have been very, very different beasts without them.