More Boris

The Walking Dead/Frankenstein: 1970 (1936/1958) are a pair of Karloff horrors. One of them is pretty good.

That is, The Walking Dead. Karloff plays a recently released convict - convicted for what isn’t  mentioned, I think. He is a gentle, humble man, and an accomplished pianist. But a bunch of gangsters, lead by Ricardo Cortez, frame him for the murder of the judge that originally convicted him. As he is being lead to the chair, another prisoner plays a melody on a violin - and in another part of town, a group is working to get him pardoned. At the last minute, the governor calls for a stay of execution, but it’s too late.

Scientist Edmund Gwenn convinces them to let him have the body for dissection, but instead revives it with an artificial heart. So he comes back to life, bent on revenge. And he gets it, too, mostly by giving the crooks his Boris Karloff glare, and letting them throw themselves out the window.

Directed by Michael Curtiz, this has all the little touches you look for in a B-movie, like Eddie Acuff as Betcha, the gambling henchman comic relief. Karloff is as charismatic as you would expect, both before and after his demise.

Frankenstein: 1970, made 20 years later by Red Barry, isn’t so great. It has a typical monster movie start, and that’s because we’re watching a movie company making a monster movie. The current Baron Frankenstein (Karloff) is renting his German castle to them to get the money to buy an atomic reactor. Which is an interesting premise, at least. He was tortured by the Nazis and has horrible facial scars, which also adds something. There’s quite a bit of gore, as the good doctor starts killing the actors and crew for parts. But it doesn’t add up to much more than the trashy movie they are making.

It also doesn’t seem to take place in 1970 (the Future!), although TV movies may have been a little futuristic.

Feel free to skip this one, but catch Walking Dead.