Le Fantôme vivant

Boris Karloff plays a crazy old guy who worships the Egyptian god, Anubis. On his death bed, he swears that if anyone should steal a sacred jewel from his Anubis statue he will return from the dead to exact revenge. Not surprisingly, several very greedy people come along and try stealing the jewel--only to incur the wrath of the zombie Karloff. Despite the whole Egyptian aspect of the film, though, he was not a mummy nor was this just a rehash of THE MUMMY (also from 1933). Overall, it's a rather standard but well-produced zombie murdering the idiots film--not great, but certainly worth seeing.

By the way, in a funny inside joke, there is a parody of the "desert savage" style of film. THE SHEIK, THE SON OF THE SKEIK and THE BARBARIAN were among several films like this and in THE GHOUL, there is a supposed sheik and a lady who is infatuated with this clichéd image of a macho and sexist Middle Eastern lover.

After Boris Karloff starred in The Mummy, he went back to England to film this eerie followup. In this film, he looks like a combination Frankenstein monster and the mummy I'm-Ho-Tep - and as grotesque as possible.

The tomb-robbing Ernest Thesiger gets the action going. Karloff stalking through the moldy mansion is as eerie as you can imagine. The end in which Karloff goes back to his tomb has some scenes that are the most hair-raising as you can imagine.

NOTE: Avoid copies that are incomplete or cut. The version that I have is 76 minutes long and some of the others seem to be abridged.

Watch it with your B-movie buddies.

Boris Karloff was already a horror mainstay at this point in his career, having played Frankenstein's monster, The Mummy, and Fu Manchu, and now playing the titular Ghoul. This film has a deceased Karloff coming back to life after an Egyptian jewel he was buried with is stolen. The film really does, pun intended, come to life after Karloff's resurrection, but the build up to that point for the film's short 79-minute runtime is a bit of a slog. Overall, this British horror film isn't exactly a Universal Pictures Horror classic, but it is solid entertainment. FUN FACT! "The Ghoul" is one of many films to have fallen into the public domain, so it is freely available for download on the internet.

Most of the other commenters seem to have seen a truncated, blurry version of this movie. The new DVD certainly kept me entertained! It's true that the movie is very dark, but the shadowy photography is beautiful and Germanic -- prime '30s look, fog, candlelight, and all. I just checked, and I see that cinematographer Gunther Krampf also shot NOSFERATU, THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, and PANDORA'S BOX. Pretty good resume!

Hoaky old dark house cliches and humor, for sure, but funny if you know the genre. The woman who wants to be the "sheikh's" love slave is a real hoot. Karloff, Thesiger, Hardwick, and Richardson are all very good, as are the romantic couple who spar and then decide they like each other (surprise!). Karloff's self-mutilation scene is brilliantly disturbing. And wait a second, is that a patch of bamboo he stumbles into just in front of the Yorkshire moors? This is all great fun, perhaps best if you check any high expectations at the door.

The sets, cinematography and overall atmosphere is excellent. The music is effective in some spots only. Karloff, mostly speechless, plays the title character superbly and in well-designed horrific makeup. He looks like he's rotting and loosing control of his limbs from the start--but from what? He is not a ghoul in the classic sense (too gruesome for 1933) and while the story would seem to depict him as the walking dead, he may not be. Thesiger, Richardson and Sir Cedric are fine. Dorothy Hyson is a gorgeous, leggy damsel in distress. The film only wakes up during Karloff's intensely creepy scenes that just total less than 20 minutes. This is an example of a once lost film with a reputation that was overblown by the tantalizing stills in the monster magazines. The elements for greatness were there except for the lack of a good script and the bad histrionics of several supporting players. The ending is especially weak.