This is just a heads-up for anyone whos interested I wrote a liner-notes essay for the upcoming Criterion Collection two-DVD boxed set Monsters and Madmen which features the Karloff features The Haunted Strangler 1958 and Corridors of Blood 1962 as well as The Atomic Submarine 1960 and First Man into Space 1959 I included in the essay praise of Karloff and of these two underappreciated pictures he made in his native England in the late 1950s This is how my essay starts Forget the Beatles vs Elvis For me the world is divided into Karloff people and Lugosi people and Im in the Karloff clique Bela Lugosis oversized mannerisms and thickly accented drawl have always seemed camp to me while Boris Karloffs reserve and faint lisp carry an irresistible air of melancholy mystery an English gentleman with a touch of the exoticBorn in 1887 Karloff was nearing 70 when he made The Haunted Strangler and Corridors of Blood a matched pair of black-and-white historical th
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