Although Boris Karloff is a highly celebrated horror film legend--and deservedly so--some of his films aren't so celebrated--and deservedly so.  In fact, a few have been almost forgotten until relatively recently, with the advent of DVD.  Two of these overlooked Karloff horrors, at least, didn't deserve such neglact from fans and critics.  We're just about to turn the spooky spotlight on the first of these two films, one that offers fans of dear Boris...

By JOE WINTERS

The Fifties were typically active years for the ever-busy Boris Karloff.

Dividing his time between movies, stage, television and radio kept the sixty-something actor hopping. Kicking off the decade with a Broadway smash (as Captain Hook in Peter Pan), he still made time for supporting roles in such movie mystery thrillers as Universal-International’s The Strange Door (1951) and The Black Castle (1952), and co-starring in Abbott And Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1953).

From the U.S. to the U.K. (to play TV’s Colonel March). And to Italy (to co-star in the non-horror misfire, Monster Of The Island); back to New York and another stage success in The Lark; on to Hawaii (to star in Voodoo Island) and then Alaska (for a reprise of his earlier stage hit Arsenic And Old Lace). In the meantime and in between time, he could be seen and heard singing on a Kate Smith television special or dancing with Dinah Shore. No doubt about it; he was one busy Boris! And entering his seventies, he showed no signs of slowing down when he returned to England for his big screen horror comeback.

Along with producer/screenwriter John Croydon (using the pseudonym John C. Cooper), Jan Read expanded her story outline for Stranglehold into a screenplay which became Grip Of The Strangler in England and would be known Stateside as The Haunted Strangler (1958). Also behind the scenes was executive producer Richard Gordon, whom Karloff had first met about ten years earlier. At Karloff’s request, Mr. Gordon helped set up the deal, and the newly-formed Producers Associates Ltd. would produce the black-and-white film at Britain’s oldest movie studio, Walton.

The film’s preview trailer declared "Karloff, King of Horrors, in his New Picture of 1,000 Chills!" and "The Big Screams are on the Big Screen, as Karloff Creates a New Monster!"

The story opens at Newgate Prison in 1860, where one-armed convicted murderer Edward Styles, labeled the Haymarket Strangler, is hanged to the delight of a cheering crowd who found entertainment value in public executions, just as people today will tune in to be transfixed by the morbid "realities" of television. Shortly after, as the body is stuffed into a casket and treated with quick lime, a shadowy figure slips an unseen object into the box just before it is sealed.

Twenty years later, novelist and social reformer James Rankin (Karloff) seeks to prove that if Styles had had proper legal representation, the man would have been acquitted. Rankin suspects a Doctor Richard Tennant who disappeared, along with a nurse, shortly after the crimes were committed. It was Tennant who performed the victims’ autopsies.

Tennant patronized The Judas Hole, the dance hall where one of the victims performed. It was Tennant who then vanished from a hospital following a breakdown at Styles’ funeral. Also missing was a surgical knife from Tennant’s medical bag. Soon Rankin deduces that the scalpel must be in Styles’ coffin.

An interview at The Judas Hole with singer Cora (Jean Kent) who had identified Styles as the murderer years ago proves unsatisfactory. Rankin’s own wife, Barbara (Elizabeth Allan), pleads with him to leave the case alone, but his obsession only increases. A visit to the uncooperative Newgate Prison Governor (Leslie Perrins) is further aggravated by the sight of a prisoner being whipped, which causes Rankin to pass out. Even the discovery of his stepdaughter Lily (Diane Aubrey) being kissed by his young assistant Ken (Tim Turner) sets Rankin off.

That night a prison turnkey (Max Brimmell) directs Rankin, for a fee, to the grave of Edward Styles. Rankin, alone now, digs for his proof, and, sure enough, the knife is there! But upon clutching it, a strange thing happens. Rankin’s left arm and hand twist, the right side of his face contorts, his breathing becomes heavy and his behavior is clearly changed. Has Rankin become possessed?

He returns to The Judas Hole and partially strangles young singer Pearl (Vera Day) and, with the crisscross slashing style of the Haymarket Strangler, finishes her off with the blade. The unrecognized Rankin escapes and later reverts to normal with no memory of the crime. When he confronts Barbara with the belief that he himself is Dr. Tennant, she confirms his suspicion and reveals that it was she who was the nurse that helped him escape all those years ago.

As a young widow with a child, she saw in Tennant a troubled man who needed her help and who could help her build a new life. She knew nothing of his murderous lapses, but now she learns as her husband transforms before her eyes, chokes her and follows through with the knife, which he then hides on a nearby bookshelf, and departs.

Returning as his normal self to his home and the sight of investigating police headed by Superintendent Burk (Anthony Dawson), Rankin confesses but is not believed. The turnkey denies having helped Rankin into the cemetery. Finally, the grave’s headstone has been switched, so Rankin has no proof at all. Now raving, Rankin is committed to an asylum where, in the privacy of his cell, the sight of a gas lamp’s flickering flame resembling a knife triggers another transformation.

Rankin tears out of his straight jacket and escapes from the cell. He slashes a guard’s face with glass and kills a prison maid for an encore. But home is where his favored weapon is, so Rankin/Tennant returns for it. There he lunges toward Lily, but the faces of his past victims begin to haunt him, he regains his sanity and lets her go. He knows he must return the knife to the grave. He does, with Burk and others in pursuit. As Rankin pleads with Burk to see that the knife is buried, the corrupt turnkey orders the guards to fire. With his dying breath, Rankin urges Burk to bury the blade, stating "It belongs here, with me."

The Haunted Strangler was directed by Robert Day, whose approach to the material was similar in ways to that of the late Val Lewton, much to the delight of Karloff, who had great success working with producer Lewton in the mid 1940s at RKO. Indeed, not since The Body Snatcher (1945), Isle Of The Dead (1945), and Bedlam (1946) had Karloff enjoyed as good a starring role in a big screen scare picture. And as in the Lewton films, the more grisly sights are kept off camera and left to the imagination of the viewers.

Brutal prison conditions and the cruel treatment of the mentally ill, the latter prevalent in Bedlam, are on hand in The Haunted Strangler with Boris on the receiving end this time. And he’s quite up to the task, running the gamut from gentleman and energetic investigator to lunatic and murderer, all with conviction.

The transformation is in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only psychological instead of chemical. To achieve the effect, Karloff removes some false teeth. One hand curls, stiffens and raises toward his chest while an eye squeezes shut and some remaining teeth protrude from one side and clamp down on his lower lip. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it pays off much the same way as the initial stages of John Barrymore’s Mr. Hyde conversion back in 1920.

John Elphick’s set designs give Karloff and Company an authentic looking array of areas to move around in, complimented by Lionel Banes’ cinematography.

The cast supports Karloff well. As Inspector Burk, Anthony Dawson (the actor, not the pseudonym for Italian horror and sci-fi director Antonio Margheriti) is a familiar face as the would-be killer from Hitchcock’s Dial ‘M’ For Murder (1954). Dawson also played the lecherous old Marquis in Hammer’s Curse Of The Werewolf (1961) and the traitorous Professor Dent in Dr. No (1962). Elizabeth Allan was menaced by Bela Lugosi back in 1935’s Mark Of The Vampire.

Lovely Vera Day, whose cleavage is splashed with champagne in a close-up, was also on view in two other shockers (Hammer’s Quatermass 2 and producer Richard Gordon’s The Woman Eater) one the year previous to the Karloff film and the other the year after. The Haunted Strangler was distributed in the U.S. by MGM on a double bill with another entertaining item from executive producer Richard Gordon, the sci-fi thriller Fiend Without A Face. In both films Gordon went without credit on screen.

While The Haunted Strangler is not without flaws (for example, the box containing evidence in the Jack the Ripper case, when Jack didn’t make the scene for another eight years), its still a ripping good yarn on its own. Part detective mystery, part horror, part psychological drama, part social commentary, and with even a dash of musical thrown in, it came at a time during the sci-fi boom of the Fifties when gothic terror was just making a comeback, courtesy of Hammer’s Curse Of Frankenstein (1957). But while Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and for that matter, Vincent Price were just beginning to sew their seeds in the field of horror, The Haunted Strangler proved once again that nobody did it better than Boris.

In fact, Boris would do it again within less than a year, along with some of the same great team responsible for The Haunted Strangler and a few new teammates as well, as we’ll see next time when we take a stroll down the Corridors Of Blood!

Thanks, Joe.  The Haunted Strangler, although it was a financial success when it came out, seemed to become a "forgotten" fright film in the decades following its release.  The reason for this, of course, is that it was quickly overshadowed by the brilliant success of the initial Hammer gothic horrors, filmed in garish color and splashed with bright red blood.   But now we can again appreciate what a well-made little chiller The Haunted Strangler is, one that makes the most of its moody black-and-white photography and showcases an energetic performance by Boris Karloff near the end of his career.

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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