Boris Karloff is best remembered for playing the Frankenstein Monster and the original Mummy--but he also played memorable fiends in un-memorable films, such as the flick where...
By Renfield There’s an immense body of work associated with the late horror icon Boris Karloff. The lean and saturnine actor, the former William Henry Pratt, is best known for the true horror film classics such as Frankenstein, The Invisible Ray, The Body Snatchers—and rightly so. However, enough words have been written about Karloff’s greatest horror hits to fill the sulfur pit he tumbled into (as the Frankenstein Monster) at the conclusion of Son Of Frankenstein. There’s no need to add to them. Besides, there’s plenty of wheat amongst the chaff of Karloff’s lesser film forays to appreciate. Just for fun, let’s take a "lesser" Karloff film…a film from the "B" schedule of a studio that seemed destined to compete with Columbia Pictures for the dubious honor of last place among the majors. That studio is, or was, RKO Radio Pictures, before Howard Hughes bought the franchise. And the Karloff film is 1947’s Dick Tracy Meet Gruesome.
Well, boils and ghouls, we did say a "lesser" Karloff film…and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome is one Karloff film most Karloff buffs would never pick for an appreciation of Dear Boris' talents. They likely wouldn’t even add it to a list (no matter how long) of Karloff films to relish. But that’s the point. It’s easy to enjoy that unmistakable Karloff profile, that cultured yet chilling voice, that kindly yet sinister manner, in one of the actor’s critically acclaimed efforts. But in a relatively undistinguished film, Karloff’s contributions really stand out, and consequently make the film worth viewing. A quick bit of background. In 1947, RKO produced four B-films featuring Chester Gould’s comic-strip copper to fill the bottom half of their double-bill film releases. The first two starred Morgan Conway as Tracy. Those programmers did disappointing business; the plots were just routine crime melodramas with little of the unique—not to say grotesque—Gould master criminals. While Conway was okay as a cop, he just didn’t resemble Dick Tracy in the filmgoers’ minds. So, the studio decided to up the ante, a little. They hired Ralph Bird, who had been a very successful Dick Tracy in Republic Studio serials (he possessed the sharp-edged profile, at least). Then they pitted him against a Gould-like repulsive criminal, called Gruesome…and they hired Boris Karloff to portray Gruesome.
Good move, RKO. Karloff, with a modicum of makeup, was Gruesome, with a craggy, homely visage, an absolutely cold-blooded dedication to self aggandizement and self preservation, no matter the cost in human life, and enough of a "dem, dese, and dose" speech pattern to almost disguise his mellow British-accented lisp. Karloff was a superb actor who knew how to make small things hugely significant in portraying a character. As Gruesome, he kept a toothpick between his lips, which is in itself a visible signal of his low-caste criminal standing. By utilizing the movement of that toothpick in his mobile mouth and adding a frozen glare, Karloff projected a perfectly chilling air of menace. No scenery chewing and no broad gestures, in the Lugosi manner...just quiet, but intense, facile facial movements that coveyed the barely bottled-up beast within. As Pat Patton (Lyle Latell), Tracy’s bumbling partner remarked in the film, "That guy looks like Boris Karloff!" In the film, a scientist’s formula for a paralyzing gas is stolen, the scientist is murdered, and the gas used to freeze customers, employees, and guards in a bank so Gruesome and his sidekick, the piano-playing Melody (played by Tony Barrett; too bad RKO contract player Robert "Sun Demon" Clarke, wasn’t tapped for the role--he was, instead, given the tiny part of the police chemist, Fred), can just waltz in and steal a bundle. When the amateurs running the scheme get cold feet, Gruesome starts bumping them off—he dumps the scientist in an incinerator, coolly shoots a woman to death just as she enters his car, and does the same for the man who put the plunderous plan together. However, Gruesome is no psycho, but a coldly calculating killer. When Melody kills a bank guard whilst fleeing the scene of the aforementioned bank robbery, Gruesome berates his partner. "Useless killing is dangerous," he cautions. He eventually becomes the victim of a useful killing, courtesy of Tracy’s revolver.
If these proceedings some singularly uninspired, they are. The direction by working-stiff director John Rawlings is strictly by the numbers, the sets look like they were rented from Monogram, and the production is depressingly studio-bound. If the film's production values were modest, RKO expended even fewer resources in providing the supporting players. Aside from the effervescent Anne Gwynne as Tess Trueheart (got to love those Gould names!) and a few suitably odd-looking character actors (most notably the owlish, Coke bottle glasses-affecting Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray), the remaining cast make no better than a one-dimensional impression. (Future "Tarzan" Lex Barker has a cameo role as an ambulance driver who gets slugged by Gruesome.)
It’s Karloff who makes this film worth the 64 minutes of viewing. His creepily homicidal Gruesome makes this film fun to watch—and even makes it memorable. This is no mean feat when you consider that this film was destined for instant obscurity once it originally flickered on neighborhood theater screens. No wonder another release title for this flick is Dick Tracy Meets Karloff. To us, Karloff's classics aside, it’s films like Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome that really highlight Dear Boris’ great and enduring talent: that uncanny ability to rise above any material and carry the rest of the film with him. For a person as dedicated to his craft as Boris Karloff was, that’s a fine tribute, if a left-handed one. It's too bad Universal Studios didn't use Karloff as a villian in its "Sherlock Holmes" series--the idea seems quite "elementary" to us! Cheers! Article copyright Joe "Renfield" Meadows. A version of this article appears in the current issue of Scary Monsters magazine. |
