7 - Boris Karloff and the Soundtrack of the Body Snatcher

Summary

Boris Karloff, Movie Star

Val Lewton's final three horror films would all star Boris Karloff. With the advent of a bona fide movie star associated closely with the Universal approach to horror into Lewton's hermetically sealed production unit, the understated approach to horror Lewton had so carefully crafted and the Sound and Music Departments at RKO had so ably adapted to serve was effectively finished. Karloff's presence in an understated depiction of modern America of the sort Lewton cultivated would be absurd. This chapter focuses on how Boris Karloff’s presence transformed the style of the Lewton unit's films. His impact on all facets of the soundtrack receives the lion's share of our concern. Let's begin by examining how Lewton and Karloff came together before digging into the impact on Lewton's sonic style.

Genre film production benefits from cultivating bankable stars associated with the genre. While every genre has its stars, horror's most luminous figure during the 1930s and 1940s was Boris Karloff. From the moment he appeared in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) wearing Jack Pierce's sensational makeup, staring at the camera with his doleful eyes as it approached him in a series of jarring jump cuts, Karloff became Hollywood's most bankable monster. The following year he appeared in featured roles in three more horror vehicles, two for Universal (The Old Dark House and The Mummy) and one for MGM (The Mask of Fu Manchu). By the end of the decade, Karloff had fifteen starring credits in horror films.

In January 1944, as Val Lewton embarked on producing his seventh horror film, Boris Karloff was back in Hollywood following more than a year on Broadway as Jonathan Brewster, the villain in Joseph Kesselring's play Arsenic and Old Lace, followed by sixty-six weeks touring with the play across the country. With no contract pending, Karloff was a free agent.

Universal Pictures wanted Karloff back badly. They signed him to a twopicture deal for US$5,000 per week for twelve weeks of work. The first film was an expensive Technicolor tale about a Svengali-like Karloff who aids, then courts, and finally menaces his operetta-star patient played by the bankable singer, Susanna Foster. The strange hybrid of musical and horror called The Climax (1944) featured too much singing for horror fans, too much menacing for musical fans, and failed to attract either in sufficient numbers.