Boris Karloff

100 Years of Horror: Boris Karloff (1996)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another fun entry in the series with this one taking a look at the career of Boris Karloff. We learn, from his daughter, that Boris ran away from home to become an actor and struggled for many years before catching a break with FRANKENSTEIN. This here would lead to countless horror roles including THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE RAY, THE BODY SNATCHER and others but unlike Lugosi, Karloff had the good fortune to branch out into other genres and work with people like Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford.

Ralph Bellamy, Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Dick Miller, Hugh Hefner, Sara Karloff, Richard Matheson, Robert Wise and host Christopher Lee all add their feelings on the legendary star who pretty much worked every genre and succeeded in each genre. Once again die-hard fans aren't going to learn anything new but it's still good hearing from so many people that worked with him. Jack Hill's brief story about the four Mexican pictures Karloff made to end his career was nice to hear about and Matheson talks about Karloff switching roles with Basil Rathbone in THE COMEDY OF TERRORS. We also get some brief talk about what should have been his final film, TARGETS.