7 Boris Karloff Films To Watch That Aren’t FRANKENSTEIN

We’ve got to start with the obvious: Karloff’s other contribution to the canon of classic Universal Monsters, and another creature that persists in pop culture to this day. Arriving only a year after Frankenstein, The Mummy stars Karloff as reincarnated Egyptian high priest Imhotep, brought back to life accidentally by a team of archaeologists, who disguises himself as a normal man in an attempt to find the reincarnated version of his lost lover, played by Zita Johann. 

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong: Karloff’s The Mummy was the basis for the ever popular 1999 remake of the same name, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, which reused many of the same character names, including Imhotep and Ardeth Bay, the moniker of the Mummy’s human alter ego. Without Karloff, the mummy wouldn’t exist as a modern horror trope — or at least, wouldn’t be remembered for its shuffling, stumbling gait similar to Frankenstein’s.

Loosely based (as was the tradition in pre-Code Hollywood) on a 1928 novel by Frank King, this 1933 film stars Karloff as Egyptologist and professor Henry Morlant, a dying man who believes an ancient jewel will revive him if offered up to the god Anubis. But when he dies and the jewel is stolen, a gaggle of criminals descend on his manor to take the jewel for themselves, only for Morlant to rise from the dead and vow revenge on everyone who has betrayed him. 

Co-written by John Hastings Turner and Roland Pertwee (father of future Doctor Who Jon Pertwee, and grandfather to Event Horizon star Sean Pertwee), the film was considered to be lost until 1969, when a murky, barely usable subtitled copy was located in Europe. Subsequently, a perfect copy of the nitrate camera negative was discovered in the 1980s, leading to a reemergence of one of Karloff’s earliest horror roles. 

The only other name in Universal Monsters history that could possibly stack up to Karloff’s is that of Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian actor best known for playing Dracula. While Lugosi struggled to escape being typecast as a villain the way Karloff managed to, both actors quickly became a part of cinema history — a history that includes eight films made together, most produced by the same studio that made them iconic in the first place. 

The Raven was the second of those films, based loosely (and I mean very loosely) on the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name. Also starring Irene Ware, the 1935 film features Lugosi as a crazed neurosurgeon with a torture chamber in his basement, and Karloff as the escaped convict he manipulates into doing his dirty work. Widely available now, the film was initially banned in countries like China, the Netherlands, and parts of Canada for portraying scenes of a “low morbid interest.”

No, I’m not talking about the popular television series. I’m talking about the 1936 film of the same name, Karloff’s first to be made with Warner Bros. Also starring Ricardo Cortez and Marguerite Churchill, this horror film turned morality parable features Karloff as a wrongly executed man brought back to life by a mad scientist, only to seek revenge on those who sentenced him to death in the first place. 

While it was banned in countries like Finland and Switzerland for “gruesome” content and bears numerous similarities to Frankenstein, the film was years ahead of its time in its fictional science, depicting a mechanical heart used to revive Karloff’s character in a manner that eerily reflects real technology used today to keep patients alive during cardiac surgery. And people say horror is useless!

Karloff wasn’t just known for playing monsters who rise from the grave: he also played the mad scientists who created them. In 1939’s The Man They Could Not Hang, he stars as Dr. Henryk Savaard, a madman who develops a procedure not dissimilar to Herbert West’s in Re-Animator to bring the dead back to life, only to be arrested for the murder of a young test subject, for which he vows revenge. (Sound familiar?)

Also starring Lorna Gray and Robert Wilcox, The Man They Could Not Hang was one of four films produced by Columbia Pictures in which Karloff plays some kind of crazed scientist. Dubbed the “Mad Doctor Cycle,” the group also includes The Man with Nine Lives, Before I Hang, and The Devil Commands, and Karloff even finished out his contract with Columbia by parodying them in a fifth film titled The Boogie Man Will Get You.

Yeah, I know exactly what you’re thinking — didn’t she just write about this one like, three paragraphs ago? That’s where you’d be wrong, dear reader, because somehow, Karloff managed to be in two movies with the exact same title, nearly thirty years apart. I’ve gotta give the guy credit, honestly; over 170 film credits to his name and he somehow managed only one repeat.

This film, like the 1935 one of the same name, is only loosely based on elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, but this time, Karloff stars alongside fellow horror icons Vincent Price and Peter Lorre as a trio of rival wizards. (Ironically, almost 20 years before, Lorre also starred in Arsenic and Old Lace, a film based on the play Karloff starred in on Broadway.) Released in the last decade of Karloff’s career, the horror comedy pits three of the greatest stars of 20th century genre cinema against each other, in one of eight films directed by Roger Corman that he based on Poe’s work. 

For a comedy duo, Abbott and Costello sure were well-versed in dealing with some of the biggest horror icons of their time! The popular comedians met everyone from Frankenstein to the Wolf Man and back again, though Karloff was the only horror icon to ever get his name in the title along with the stars themselves. While they’d previously gone up against his most famous character in 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein — there played by Glenn Strange — it wasn’t until the next year that they faced off with Karloff in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. 

While there’s some contention on whether Karloff’s name was actually meant to be in the film’s title, or just immediately below it on posters as a starring credit, his impact on the film is undoubtable. Set in a hotel where the comedy duo end up framed for murder, Karloff stars as the evil Swami Talpur, one of several hotel guests attempting to disguise their own guilt related to the murder, who will attempt to do anything to ensure he gets off scott-free.