A Boris Karloff Christmas?

I was watching a Boris Karloff movie as I was eating breakfast this morning, a 1967 film called "The Sorcerers."  Not one of his more well-known movies, but it is one of the last he appeared in at the age of 79, and it got me pondering all sorts of things - about Christmas of all things, about late starts, about the ebb and flow of careers and lives, about the winters we endure, and the resiliency of people in general.  

Films often prompt this in me ...

Karloff, "The Sorcerers"
(image courtesy of The Spooky Isles)

Since I was a child, I've been fascinated with Karloff (who was most famous for playing the original Frankenstein Monster), and the other legendary classic horror actors, especially Bela Lugosi (to me, the most famous Dracula), Lon Chaney, Jr., the British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (who, at 90+ years of age, has just appeared in the latest Hobbit movie).  They are not household names to many; but they have left their mark and they feel like old friends to me.



"The Sorcerers," in all honesty, wasn't a great film, a little slow-moving and talky, but it wasn't purely awful, and it was fascinating for the intimate glimpse it gave of the clubbing scene, the music, the cars, and everything else of late 60's London.  I always tend to gravitate toward films from this time period and the early 70's.  It was a turbulent period in history, as Vietnam raged, and as societal turmoil spilled out daily onto the streets, and these films often catch hold of this Zeitgeist. I am, technically, a child of the 1960's, born a year before "The Sorcerers" hit the screens.

Briefly, this particular film focuses on Karloff (and his wife's) attempt to hypnotise and control a younger man through mind control.  Eventually, they succeed, get him to steal a fur, and then things quickly spiral downward into more violent territory.  It is a horror/science fiction film, after all.  There are shades of generational conflict here (old vs. young) and of disconnect in general (the clubs are filled with people dancing, drinking, and smoking the night away).

All of this may not seem very "Christmasy," but Karloff (his voice specifically) makes me appreciate the oncoming holiday, since he serves as the narrator for the iconic holiday cartoon "The Grinch that Stole Christmas."   He gave voice to the Grinch in 1966 (most people forget that it goes back that far, but it does), and his character, and the story's message of redemption echoes on through the years.  The Grinch is a late-bloomer in attitude, a hater-turned-lover with a reformed heart (really another variant on the Christmas Carol if you think about it).

Grinch-wear! ( bought in 2013)

As I head toward my older years, I grow more and more appreciative of the people who have made it later in life, after a long struggle through ups and downs.  I often find myself searching for these reminders that life, like a baseball game, often isn't decided in the early going, and that it's really best to play all nine innings. 

Both of these horror actor icons are shining examples of that.  Karloff landed his iconic role of the Frankenstein Monster (probably the single most recognisable image in horror) in 1931 at the "advanced" age of 43, while Lugosi hit the big time in the same year with Dracula at the age of 48.  And then they kept on working to the end.

Karloff died only two years after appearing in this film, but he worked steadily to the last, even apparently while having to use an oxygen tank between scenes.  The man suffered during his whole career from various physical ailments (a bad back amongst other things) that he had picked up from his years as a labourer (pre-Hollywood).  

One IMDB search led to another, and I found myself compelled to glance over Lugosi's biography (even though he didn't appear in the film).  This other horror actor had an even more difficult end to his days, as most people know from the movie "Ed Wood," suffering from morphine addiction and money problems, and forced into playing roles in some truly terrible movies.  But in the brave spirit of resiliency, he also tried to cure himself.  On Youtube, I discovered a fascinating, very honest and genial interview that Lugosi had with a reporter as he checked himself out of a sanatorium in 1955.

These ideas of resilience and "bouncing back" seem like especially good things to hold onto during this darkest time of the year, as I shiver through this cold Korean winter, on the cusp of Christmas's twinkly lights, as I work diligently and hopefully, in and out of the classroom, on toward the oncoming days of spring and the promises of success that lay just over the horizon.

I promise to fight on, Boris.  

I will endure, Bela.

Merry Christmas.

Life is tiring.  Boris and Bela on the set of the "Raven," courtesy of Vampire over London: the Bela Lugosi Blog