Boris Karloff boxset Maniacal Mayhem
WILLIAM Henry Pratt, better known under his stage name Boris Karloff, may have become a superhero of the supernatural when he played Frankenstein's monster for director James Whale in 1931, but the urbane Englishman had already appeared in more than 80 feature films by that time.
His desire to remain a fixture on the silver screen meant he kept on working right up until just before his passing at the age of 81 in 1969.
Maniacal Mayhem is a new boxset from Eureka Entertainment that raids the Universal vaults to gather together a trio of the actor's less well known work for that studio – and, frankly, it's a bit of a mixed bag.
The best of the three genre offerings salvaged from obscurity here is The Strange Door. It's also the latest, arriving as it did in 1951 when Karloff's star had dramatically waned. It really only allows for the man himself to claim second billing to the great Charles Laughton, who plays an evil 18th century aristocrat who plots revenge on his brother by marrying off his niece to the biggest scoundrel he can find.
A moody adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, the film plays up to the grand Gothic traditions of Universal's glory days with all manner of creepy moments and dusty old torture chamber sets.
Karloff's part in this murky old mystery thriller may amount to little more than playing a thinly drawn servant while Laughton walks away with every scene but it's still a cut above the average B-movie chiller of the time and well worth catching.
Slightly less impressive are the two other Universal curios dredged up to complete the set. The Invisible Ray is a bog standard 'mad scientist' tale that involves Karloff playing the part of an insane doctor who invents a telescope that can see back in time and that thus allows him to bump off any rivals he sees fit.
Karloff relishes the hammy role of Dr Janos Rukh and it's good to see his old horror mate Bela Lugosi along for the ride as a competitor who challenges him for his powers, but a miserable budget and mundane direction from Lambert Hillyer means this 1936 sci-fi pot boiler is really one for completists only.
Black Friday (1940) provides more cliched mad scientist guff as Karloff utilises that hangdog face to good effect as Dr Sovac, an unscrupulous medic who tries to locate some missing loot by transplanting part of a gangster's brain into the body of his mild mannered best friend.
Once again Lugosi is cast alongside Karloff but sadly this little more than a basic underworld thriller with the odd touch of Jekyll and Hyde thrown in for good measure.
All three films are making their Blu-ray debut in the UK with this release and there's plenty of fun to be had with them all despite the varying quality. Well packaged and boasting nifty looking 2K scans, they offer a fascinating insight into the working world of one of the greatest actors ever to grace a fantasy film even if his finest productions are to be found elsewhere.
