Karloff Double Bill: The Black Cat & Bride of Frankenstein

THE BLACK CAT (CFF 15)
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer. Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop. USA 1934. 65 mins.

Karloff is the evil architect, luring a young American couple to his modernist mansion in the Hungarian hills, where his arch-enemy Bela Lugosi seeks revenge for the death of his wife. Extraordinary art deco sets and menacing performances from the two horror leads (Karloff’s smooth accent and silky performance the model for subsequent villains) make this one of the most distinctive horror films of the era.


BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (PG)
Director: James Whale. Starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive,
Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester. USA 1935. 75 mins.

Better than the original and the greatest of Universal Studios’ films of the 1930s, Dr Frankenstein is forced by the dangerously eccentric Dr Pretorius to return to the laboratory and create a bride (Elsa Lanchester, the then wife of Charles Laughton). This is a superb black comedy in which Karloff returns to the sympathetic monster role that made him a star, chased through the countryside, befriending a blind musician and learning to speak. But it’s Ernest Thesiger as Dr Pretorius who gets the immortal line: "To a new world of gods and monsters!"