Friday, August 31, 2012

Battle Royale #4: Battle of the Horror Movie Giants (The Results)

We have finally come to the end of our fourth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World, and the final results this time around give us the biggest margin of victory yet - but it still wasn't as big a runaway as I thought it might end up being.  But who oh who was that winner?  Well, I suppose it is kind of obvious once you look at the picture included at the bottom of this post, but hey, let me play the dramatic drumroll just a bit longer, and drag this out to a respectably chunky paragraph or two.  Now you were asked to choose between those two classic Horror stalwarts of Universal's golden age of monster movies - Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff - and do this you did.  Granted, the voter turnout, at just 41 votes cast, may not have been as great as I was hoping for (we were aiming for triple digits people), but it was still a good and steady race as they say.  But again, to rattle the bones once more, who did win this fourth edition of Battle Royale?  Well, hold on, I'm getting there.   

Most known for the roles of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster respectively, both Lugosi and Karloff, both friends and rivals, had a long and interesting career (not to mention a roller coaster version of said career in both cases - one a bit more than the other) in and around Hollywood.  And in the end (not of there careers, but of our voting) it was a surprisingly close race.  I must admit that unlike the first three Battle Royales (two won by a two vote margin and one ending in a tie) I truly believed Karloff was going to run away with this one.  But I suppose the great Austro-Hungarian soothsayer had more fans that I gave him credit for - and deserving fans at that, as I do not wish to diss Sir Lugosi.  But even with these fans, it was just not enough to best his old-time rival - the man known as Karloff.  With a 5 vote difference, William Henry Pratt, aka Karloff beat his old friend and rival Béla Ferenc Deszo Blascó by a score of 23 to 18, or 56% to 43% if you wish.  Not sure where that final 1% got to (maybe Ron Paul or something), but anyway, there you go.  Be sure to stop by again as participants for the fifth Battle Royale will be announced right here in just a few days, and this one is bound to be a funny one - and perhaps a silent one as well.


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