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.

Battle Royale #4: Battle of the Horror Movie Giants

Welcome to the fourth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

With our fourth edition of the popular Battle Royale, we are going to get a little scary.  I remember first seeing many of these two great actor's films on late night television.  Back when I was growing up - that would be the 1970's and early 1980's if you are keeping score at home - before there was constant 24/7 TV broadcasting, there was a thing called the late show.  These late shows, or sometimes, late late shows, were where I first saw such classic horror movies as Dracula and Frankenstein and The Black Cat and King Kong and The Wolf Man and The Creature From the Black Lagoon and many many more.  These films had stars such as Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Lon Chaney, Sr. and Jr. - not to mention Julie Adams in that white bathing suit in The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  But none of these great stars were a match for the two that are invariably numbers one and two on any self-respecting classic horror movie star list - Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Béla Ferenc Deszo Blascó was born in 1882 in the town of Lugos, in what then was called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is now called Romania.  After changing his name to Bela Lugosi (taking his stage name from his hometown), the great actor became famous for portraying Bram Stoker's legendary Count Dracula on both stage and screen.  Meanwhile, William Henry Pratt, born in 1887 in London England, and going by the name of Boris Karloff, became equally as famous as Mary Shelley's creation, Frankenstein's Monster.  Always rivals (Lugosi was the first choice to play the monster in James Whale's film) but also always friendly and cordial to each other, Karloff and Lugosi were the kings of Universal Horror in the hey days of the 1930's.  When the horror craze began to wear down (it would speed back up again then in the 50's) it was Lugosi's career that would be damaged the most.  He would end said career with a series of films with the notoriously terrible director Ed Wood.  Meanwhile, Karloff's career (and the actor would not get typecast as badly as his rival, able to make some non-horror films as well) would pick back up again, albeit in the most b-picture manner, until one of his final roles as Byron Orlok, a not so thinly disguised version of himself, in Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 debut masterpiece Targets.

So you must ask yourself, is it Lugosi's creepy charm or Karloff's wicked charisma that gets your vote?  Do you go for the guy who was buried in one of his Dracula capes (at his son and widow's bequest, not his own as is commonly believed) or the man who gave voice to that mean one, Mr. Grinch?  The man who gave blood sucking its original debonair style (long before today's glittering fops turned such a thing into a running joke) or the man who bitch slaps a lone gunman into submission at the end of Targets?  The man who scared the bejeezus out of poor Lou Costello or the man that scared the bejeezus out of poor Lou...oh, yeah, they both did that.  Anyway, it is time to pick your favourite of the horror movie giants.  Karloff or Lugosi.  All you need do is go on over to the poll sitting up there at the top of the sidebar, and make your choice.  You can make as many comments as you wish on this post (and please do just that) but for your vote to count, you must vote in the poll in the sidebar.  You will have three weeks to get your vote in, at which time we will announce the scary victor of our fourth Battle Royale.  And also, if you have any ideas for future battles (preferably in the classic cinema mold), please let me know.  And let's try to get into the triple digits in voter turnout this time around.

My 10 Favourite Things About Peter Bogdanovich's Targets

**Spoilers ahead for those who worry about such things**

1) This film helped to make Boris Karloff, playing a not-so-thinly veiled version of himself named Byron Orlok, even cooler than he already was, which was a major feat since he was already one of the coolest people in show business.  I mean c'mon, this is Boris Fucking Karloff.

2) The police vehicle rushing in at the end of the spectacular freeway shooting sequence was an actual police vehicle coming to investigate the illegal film crew shooting a movie where no one is allowed to shoot movies.  Bogdanovich had Laszlo Kovacs shoot the oncoming police vehicle before the director, his D.P. and the rest of the crew headed for the hills so as not to get arrested.

3) Peter Bogdanovich, also playing a not-so-thinly veiled version of himself, shushing Karloff as they watch a scene from Howard Hawks' The Criminal Code, featuring Karloff himself in what the actor (both in the movie as Orlok and in real life as Karloff) calls his first important role.

4) Sam Fuller did a major rewrite of Bogdanovich's script - in one night, while Bogdanovich watched - but refused to take screen credit or a paycheck for it because that would take away from the young filmmaker, who was just starting out.  Bogdanovich states in the commentary, that this is just the kind of guy Sam Fuller was, and then went on to give tribute to his friend and mentor by naming his character Sammy Michaels after Samuel Michael Fuller.

5) The dazzling montage sequence when Tim O'Kelly's Bobby Thompson shoots and kills his wife (the Hitchcockian ubiquitous blonde in her blue bathrobe) and then offs his mother and the "wrong place, wrong time" delivery boy - and the follow-up long shot/tracking shot of the Bobby's post-spree clean-up that turns into a directorial P.O.V. shot that eventually ends on Bobby's death note, in red (Sam Fuller's idea we are told).

6) Boris Karloff, as creepy as creepy can be, telling a scary story for the camera that really has no bearing on anything else in the movie - a scene that was added because Bogdanovich loved Karloff's narration in the then recently released How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

7) Bogdanovich's casting of the actual projectionist (incidentally named Byron) at the drive-in where they shot the finale to play the projectionist at the drive-in where they shot the finale (it seems as if everybody is playing essentially themselves in this movie), and his showing of the inner workings of the projection room from the threading of the film to the now outdated, but still quite quaint little bell that precipitates the change-over.  Of course our intrepid projectionist gets shot and killed by the sniper, but you can't have everything.

8) Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicut of M*A*S*H) fatefully crawling toward the nearest car and futilely grasping for the door handle after being shot in the drive-in phone booth.

9) Bogdanovich proudly boasting on the commentary track that, as far as he can recall (and this is a guy with an encyclopedic mind when it comes to film history) he is the only man to ever share a bed on film, albeit platonically, with Boris Karloff.

10) Karloff putting the smack down on Bobby after his drive-in killing spree and reducing the sniper to a whimpering child-like creature cowering in the corner and the way Karloff is coming at him from one side while the Karloff on the drive-in screen is coming at him from the other.