KARLOFF AT COLUMBIA (1935-1942)
2-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray
Label: Eureka Entertainment
Region Code: B
Duration: 400 Minute
Rating: Cert. 12
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Directors: Roy William Neil, Nick Grinde, Edward Dmytryk, Lew Landers
Cast: Boris Karloff
The limited edition two-disc Blu-ray set Karloff at Columbia (1935-1942) from UK distributor Eureka Entertainment collects all six films comprising the entirety of the horror icon’s filmic output for Columbia Pictures, a period that saw the icon more often than not playing a mad scientist in a run of films that are not among my favorites from his canon, but there are a few gems among the cannon, here, including the sumptuous Gothic thriller The Black Room (1935) and the mad-scientist parody The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942), which are fantastic end caps to his Columbia period.
THE BLACK ROOM (1935)
Rating: Unrated
Region Code: Cert. 12
Duration: 68 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Roy William Neil
Cast: Boris Karloff, Thurston Hall, Katherine DeMille
In The Black Room Karloff takes on a delicious dual role as twin brothers in 19th century Europe. One of the twins inherits the family castle and suddenly the local women start disappearing… A tasty tale of duplicitous evil with Karloff playing both the older being wicked sibling and the younger, kinder sibling. A prophecy foretells that the younger sibling will one day kill the oldest, which leads to the evil brother hatching a diabilical scheme to thwart the prophecy and usurp power, but the family dog has other plans in mind for the treacherous older brother. This is a wonderful Karloff entry with a terrific, nuanced performance, plus its gorgeously shot and staged, and delivers plenty of thrills and suspense throughout. A true gem in the Karloff filmography.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939)
Rating: Cert. 12
Region Code: B
Duration: 64 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Nick Grinde
Cast: Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox
The first of a handful of uninspired "mad scientist" entries Karloff made for Columbia, appearing here as well-meaning scientist Dr. Henryk Savaard, who is altruistocally working on a process of saving lives by stopping the human heart and replacing it with an artificial device of his own design. When his first surgery is interupted by the cops the volunteer patient dies and he is charged with murder. Savaard is hanged for his crimes but benefits from his own invention, thanks to his lab assistant, and is ressurected. The scientist is less than benevolent upon his return from the grave, setting about exacting his revenge of the judge and jury who sentenced him to death. Karloff amps up this with his presence immeasurably but it's a shabby production and struggled to maintain my interest.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940)
Rating: Cert. 22
Region Code: B
Duration: 74 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Nick Grinde
Cast: Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers, Ernie Adams, Stanley Brown. Hawthorne
Even among the worst of Karloff's mad scientist flicks The Man with Nine Lives stands out as straining patience and credulity, with Karloff starring as scientist Dr. Kravaal, who is experimenting with prolonging life through cryogenic "frozen therapy". His unethical experimentation has not gone unnoticed by the authorities, but Kravaal disappears along with the five men who were sent to apprehend him. Ten years later a scientist and his wife who are treating cancer successfully with their own cryogenic procedures explore the abandoned Kravaal estate looking to uncover his research and are surprised to find Kravall, and the five other missing men, in a state of suspended animation in his subterranean lair's ice chamber. They managr to revive foce of the six men, and revived mad scientist wastes little time resuming his experiments on less than willing participants, after one of the revived me destroys the only remaining sample of his life's work.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
- Karloff on the Road: The Corridor of Doom (29 min), The Wailing Wall (29 min)
BEFORE I HANG (1940)
Rating: Cert. 12
Region Code: B
Duration: 62 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Nick Grinde
Cast: Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes. Edward Van Sloan, Bruce Bennett, Ben Taggart, Pedro De Cordoba, Don Beddoe
Before I Hang is more if the same mad-science shenanigans with Karloff starring as Dr. Garth, a scientist who is looking to discover the secrets to eternal life via a blood plasma derived serum. His work is temporarily interupted after he is convicted of a mercy killing, having helped his terminally ill friend die a dignified death. In prison and on death row he is weirdly allowed to carry-on with his experiments in the prison infirmary thanks to a sympathetic prison doc, using the blood of death row inmates who have been executed to perfect his serum. As his day of execution nears he injects himself the serum, only to find that his sentence has been reduced to life. The side effects of the serum have a startling rejuvenating effect on him, but as the serum was derived from the blood of a murderer he is also overcome with the occasional urge to kill by strangling. A fun if a bit bland entry, but Karloff classes up the picture considerably.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941)
Rating: Cert. 12
Region Code: B
Duration: 64 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Boris Karloff, Richard Fiske. Amanda Duff, Anne Revere, Ralph Penney, Dorothy Adams, Shirley Warde
The Devil Commands (1941) stars Karloff as, you guessed it, yet another ethically challenged scientist, Dr. Julian Blair, who after the tragic death of his wife Helen (Shirley Warde) becomes obsessed with recording her brainwaves with a device of his own creation. To that ends he sets up a mad-doc lab in the seaside villa. Recruits a shady spiritual medium named Mrs. Walters (Anne Revere) and begins to steal bodies from the local cemetery to create some weird cadaver-robot seance circle. Blair's daughter Anne (Amanda Duff) attitude to dissuade him from his pursuit butbhe's too far gone to listen to reason.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (1942)
Rating: Cert. 12
Region Code: B
Duration: 67 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Director: Lew Landers
Cast: Boris Karloff. Peter Lorre. Maxie Rosenbloom, Jeff Donnell, Larry Parks, Maude Eburne
The Karloff/Columbia years came to a close on a Highpoint with the mad scientist send-up The Boogeyman Will Get you, clearly inspired by Arsenic and Old Lace. A black-comedy about a troubled couple who buy a decaying house from Karloff's mad-scientist. Unbeknownst to them he is working on creating a race of super-humans to aid the war effort. When the new owners catch onto this, after discovering a basement full of corpses, they call the sheriff, played by Peter Lorre, who turns a blind eye to the bodies when he sees that there's potential for profit in the super-human concept, which much hilarity ensuing.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
- Stills Gallery: Production Stills
- Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera
- Karloff on the Radio: Birdsong for a Murderer (22 min), Death For Sale (25 min)
Audio/Video: Eureka Classics present all six films, making their worldwide debut, spread ove a pair of region B locked Blu-rays in 1080p HD and presented in the original full frame 1.37:1 aspect ration. The transfers are quite nice, each film sporting lush grain and exporting fine detail. Overall contrast is solid. This is quite a step up from the stadard-definition DVD editions I have of each film.
Audio comes by way of English LPCM 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The tracks are nicely cleaned-up for their Blu-ray debut, its certainly vintage sounding and not overly-dynamic but they sound great.
All six films benefit from brand new audio commentaries, The Black Room, Before I Hang, and The Boogie Man Will Get You get commentaries from Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby, while The Man They Could Not Hang, The Man With Nine Lives, and The Devil Commands are serviced by author Stephen Jones and author/critic Kim Newman. All six commentaries are fantastic lyrics knowledgeable and informed, filed to the brim with fact, anecdotes and production notes,, as well as having some humor to them.
Additionally we get four approximately half-hour radio broadcasts split into two grouping, we have Karloff on the Radio with Birdsong for a Murderer and Death For Sale, and then Karloff on the Road with The Corridor of Doom and The Wailing Wall. I've loved radio theatre since I was a kid when I found a radio station that rebroadcast Mercury Theatre presentations and The Shadow. Karloff has one of the great voices of film, and it's translated beautifully here.
The prestigious are buttoned-up with a selection of Still Galleries of production stills, artwork and ephemera for each film. Packaging extras include a collector’s booklet featuring writing on all six films by Karloff expert Stephen Jacobs (author of Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster); film critic and author Jon Towlson; and film scholar Craig Ian Mann
Special Features:
- Limited Edition O-Card Slipcase
- Brand new audio commentaries on The Black Room, Before I Hang, and The Boogie Man Will Get You with Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
- Brand new audio commentaries on The Man They Could Not Hang, The Man With Nine Lives, and The Devil Commands with author Stephen Jones and author / critic Kim Newman
Stills Gallery - Production Stills
- Stills Gallery - Artwork and Ephemera
- Karloff on the Radio: Birdsong for a Murderer (22 min), Death For Sale (25 min)
- Karloff on the Road: The Corridor of Doom (29 min), The Wailing Wall (29 min)
- PLUS: Collector’s booklet featuring writing on all six films by Karloff expert Stephen Jacobs (author of Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster); film critic and author Jon Towlson; and film scholar Craig Ian Mann
Eureka Entertainment have done outstanding work bringing these Columbie era Karloff films to Blu-ray with technically strong transfers and a solid set of extras and packaging.if you're a die-hard Karloff collector this set is a must-own. I watched these over the course of a weekend, with all six films barely running a hour and change it was a breezey marathon, and even though the mad scientist flicks can be a bit of a slog it totally reminded me of marathoning horror films on broadcast TV during the monster movie matinees on WPIX that were so much a part of my childhood, good times.
