(1933)
Dir - T. Hayes Hunter
Overall: MEH
Lost for decades and then only circulating in an edited version that was missing eight minutes of footage, in the early 80s the full negative was found of The Ghoul, Boris Karloff's sole film released in 1933. It is very sad then that the movie in fact is rather poor. An excellent opening scene sets up the events to follow in an incredibly moody way, but the film becomes loaded with mishandled issues after that. The scenery looks fantastic when you can actually see it, but the cinematography by Günther Krampf, (1926's The Student of Prague), is annoyingly rather dark. Too many characters and too many conveniences murk up the plot which gets more and more messy as it goes on. Karloff is all but wasted, only appearing in perhaps ten to fifteen minutes and in his place, failed attempts at comic relief are made as a bunch of people we hardly care about just paddle around arguing, getting scared at nothing, and looking for an ancient Egyptian artifact whose only supernatural value seems to be in providing the film with plot holes. The Ghoul is largely boring by the end of it and the climax is just as lame as the bulk of its scenes.
(1935)
Dir - Roy William Neill
Overall: GOOD
One of Boris Karloff's best, most dynamic performances was in 1935's historical melodrama The Black Room. At this early, be-it post-Frankenstein part of his career, Karloff was still primarily given limited speaking roles so to see him in something he could sink his thespian claws into is quite a treat. The Black Room features the ole "good twin/evil twin" setup and as both, Karloff really gets to shine, adjusting his body language as well as his entire persona to fit each. Other common motifs as angry villagers, a young, pretty maiden forced into a marriage against her will, and as the title would suggest, a Gothic dungeon all play such horror and historical drama elements as well as can be expected off of each other. Director Roy William Neill, (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman), and cinematographer Allen G. Siegler stage everything genuinely macabre like, even if all of the appalling moments are sparse and primarily happen off-screen. Predictable plot aside, any Karloff fan would be unwise to skip it.
(1939)
Dir - Rowland V. Lee
Overall: GOOD
Released the same year as Son of Frankenstein, (and featuring the same director as well as Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone), Universal's Tower of London was their 1939 cinematic interpretation of the infamous legend of King Richard III. Karloff here has a much smaller though still striking part as the limping, executioner Mord; a sort of brutish, right hand torture man for Rathbone's Duke turned King Richard. Being released passed the production code enforcement, the film shies away from showing any actual torture or really anything gruesome at all, cutting away or simply implying the nasty deeds at play instead. Tower of London is mostly just a straight-ahead, medieval melodrama then with a familiar, dramatized historical context. The battle scenes are decent though and Rathbone excels as the methodically evil Richard III. As a plus, Vincent Price in only his third feature film briefly appears as the Duke of Clarence, coincidental as he would play Richard III himself twenty-three years later under Roger Corman in their unofficial remake. He does get drunk on Coca-Cola in this version though.
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