Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster

Lore & Background

The project began life in the late 1990s as a passion project for co-producer and co-writer Ron MacCloskey, who travelled internationally to research Karloff over a period of 20 years. During this time several attempts were made to mount the project, but funding and the right collaborator proved elusive. In June 2018, MacCloskey contacted filmmaker Thomas Hamilton, whose 2016 documentary Leslie Howard: The Man who Gave a Damn had its US TV premiere on Turner Classic Movies on 4 June 2018. Hamilton was intrigued by the concept of a documentary on the man whose career essentially covered the history of horror prior to 1970 and agreed to co-produce and direct through his company Voltage Films Ltd.

Desiring to produce the definitive documentary on Karloff, Hamilton and MacCloskey decided the best format would be a four hour documentary, in two parts. Although the final film would run 98 minutes, it was as a result of this initial brief that an unusually large number of interviews were filmed. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in September 2018, Hamilton and MacCloskey filmed 55 interviews and location footage in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Alaska and London over a period of 16 months. Filming concluded in January 2020, by which time over 100 hours of material was in the can.

Reader's Guide

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster was released theatrically on September 17, 2021, to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the release of the 1931 film Frankenstein, in which Karloff portrayed Frankenstein's monster, in November 2021. The film was made available via Streaming service Shudder from January 2022. Although editing and post-production took place entirely in London, as of September 2023, the film has yet to receive a screening in the United Kingdom. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of 23 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads: 'With swift pacing and an engagingly straightforward style, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster offers an impressively rich and entertaining overview of the actor's career.' The film's producers received the Rondo Hatton Award for Best Documentary of 2021 and Best DVD Features in 2022.

Did You Know?

• The documentary features Dick Miller in his last filmed interview.
• A five-minute trailer was uploaded to YouTube in September 2020.
• The Blu-ray and DVD include a bonus documentary, Boris Karloff: The Rest of the Story, running 120 minutes.

From William Pratt to Hollywood Extra

Born William Henry Pratt in England in 1887, the man who would become one of cinema's most recognizable figures began his journey far from the silver screen. As a young man, he emigrated to Canada in 1909, where he joined a touring theatrical company and reinvented himself under the stage name Boris Karloff. By 1919, he had made his way to Hollywood, where he found steady but unglamorous work as an extra at Universal Studios. For over a decade, he appeared in numerous silent films without breaking through to leading roles. His first truly significant parts came in 1931 with Howard Hawks's The Criminal Code and Mervyn LeRoy's Five Star Final. Yet it was while shooting Graft that director James Whale spotted his potential and persuaded him to take on the role of Frankenstein's monster. That single casting decision, arriving on his 82nd film, transformed an obscure journeyman into an overnight global sensation.

The Monster Years and the 1930s Workhorse

After Frankenstein made him a household name, Karloff became one of the most in-demand actors in the industry. He went on to star in The Mummy (1932) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), cementing his association with gothic horror. Throughout the remainder of the 1930s, he worked at an extraordinary pace, filling his schedule with one production after another. However, the quality of the material began to decline, and he found himself increasingly cast in lower-budget pictures. He also took on the recurring role of Detective Wong in the Mister Wong film series, appearing in five installments during that decade. By the 1940s, the industry had effectively typecast him, funneling him into mad scientist parts that played to his gaunt, intense screen presence. Despite this narrowing of opportunities, he found creative satisfaction in a handful of highly acclaimed horror films produced by Val Lewton, which demonstrated that his range extended well beyond the roles the studio system wanted to assign him.

The Television and Radio Renaissance

As the film industry's appetite for his services waned in the postwar years, Karloff discovered a new and remarkably fertile ground in broadcast media. By the mid-1950s, he had become a familiar face and voice on both television and radio, hosting his own anthology series including Starring Boris Karloff, Colonel March of Scotland Yard, Thriller, Out of This World, and The Veil. His television appearances were remarkably diverse: he performed in plays for anthology shows like Suspense, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, played King Arthur in a radio adaptation of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and even appeared in a haunted-house Halloween skit on Paul Whiteman's Goodyear Revue. He guest-starred on programs ranging from The Donald O'Connor Show to I Spy and Route 66, and participated in quiz shows, variety specials, and newsreel features alongside stars like Clark Gable and Bela Lugosi. This prolific output revealed an actor who thrived on variety and refused to be confined to a single genre.

Final Chapters and Lasting Legacy

In his later decades, Karloff continued to work with remarkable tenacity. During the 1960s, he collaborated with producer Roger Corman at American International Pictures, and he also made films in England, Italy, and Spain, demonstrating his willingness to work across borders and budgets. His career spanned an astonishing 174 motion pictures, a testament to a man who never stopped performing. His final American film was Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968), in which he portrayed an aging horror film star confronting the obsolescence of his own image, a role that felt almost autobiographical given his own history. From his origins as a Canadian touring actor to his last screen appearances, Karloff's journey encapsulates the full arc of Hollywood's golden age. His transformation from an anonymous extra to a global icon, and his subsequent reinvention across radio, television, and independent cinema, left an indelible mark on the horror genre and on the craft of screen acting itself.