Wednesday, October 31, 2018

THE BORIS KARLOFF COLLECTION: COMPLETISTS ONLY



As part of that generation who were exposed to the Universal horror icons via shock cinema styled shows on late night television I was always well aware of the names of the stars of those features. For those among us as well as audiences who thrilled to those same films when they were originally released the name of Boris Karloff meant gold. If the movie starred Karloff the odds of it being great were pretty good.

That all changed late in his career. Whether due to a desire to continue working or perhaps financial reasons Karloff ended his career making some movies that ranged between terrible and so so. It was a sad end to a legacy that has dwindled in recent years. Today’s youth have no idea who the man was but then they don’t know the names Cagney or Bogart either. They’re too caught up in their own world, their own time period, to recognize what was great that came before. One can only hope that a collection like this is not their introduction to the name Karloff.

This package brought to us by VCI attempts to provide those last movies to fans of Karloff in spite of how they turned out. And for those who are anxious to have every single film available on disc at their disposal I would say by all means pick this one up. For the rest this isn’t one I can suggest picking up let alone watching.

The set collects 4 of the last 5 movies Karloff made before passing away in 1969, two of which were released after his death. Shot in Mexico on near non-existent budgets they are pretty bad. The first film in the set is DANCE OF DEATH AKA HOUSE OF EVIL. The film features Karloff as the patriarch of a family whose members are all in need of money. When he dies after their arrival the rest begin being killed off by a number of deadly toys.

Next up is TORTURE ZONE AKA FEAR CHAMBER. This time around Karloff spends most of his onscreen time sitting behind a desk. As the head of an institute investigating a volcano they discover a rock that is a living being. Unfortunately the rock lives on the hormones secreted by humans when they become afraid.

Third on the menu is CULT OF THE DEAD AKA ISLE OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE. Here Karloff stars as the evil priest Damballah the head of a voodoo cult on a small island. A sinister snake dancer named Kalea transforms beautiful native girls into zombies and then leads them to attack and devour anyone who gets in their way.

The fourth and final film in the set is ALIEN TERROR. In 1890 Gudenberg Professor John Mayer (Karloff) has invented a ray gun that runs on nuclear power. Shooting the ray into space it attracts a group of aliens who decide that the people of Earth are too primitive to possess such a weapon and set out to destroy it.

All of the films here look pretty bad and the budgets that were this low show in the production value of the film. I’m not sure that any sort of restoration of these movies would have made them look any better and my guess is that it will never happen. I wouldn’t place them in the category of Ed Wood style bad movies but they are indeed lacking. But fans of Karloff who want to make certain they have as many of his movies as are out there will want to make a point of picking this one up. 

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