A Personal History of Horror Films in 101 Quirky Objects #09- Boris Karloff’s haircut in The Black Cat (1934)
by Vince Stadon
“Are we not both the living dead?” – Hjalmar Poelzig
It’s not Karloff’s real hair, of course; it’s a wig he is wearing for his character, the murderous Satanist Hjalmar Poelzig. But, man, what a wig! It’s a widow’s peak, but not a natural one from slicked back hair, as Lugosi sported as Count Dracula (and indeed sports in this very film): it’s sculpted, architectural, raised up from the head. It looks like the hirsute definition of "Evil Madman.” I’m sure it could be used as a weapon.
Karloff. He has such a great name that you don’t need the Boris. Indeed, he was sometimes credited simply as "Karloff,” or "Karloff the Uncanny!" (for 1932’s The Mummy), or even as a "?" for Frankenstein (1931). The Old Dark House (1932), Karloff’s first credited role for Universal, opens with a title card telling the viewer that the mad horrible butler character in that film is played under heavy makeup and facial hair by “… the same Karloff who created the part of the mechanical monster in "Frankenstein". [sic] We explain this to settle all disputes in advance, even though such disputes are a tribute to his great versatility.” Obviously, "Boris Karloff” is a creation (his real name was William Henry Pratt, which, with the best will in the world, does not exactly inspire terror), and I contend that every villainous character should take that name, especially the ones played by Karloff.
Anyway, Karloff, in his mighty wig, is Hjalmar Poelzig, drifting silently around his amazing house in a silk robe, worshipping Lucifer on the dark of the moon, pumping out "Toccata and Fugue" on his pipe organ. He boasts of possessing dark magical powers and speaks with a lisp, which means he’s basically the notorious British occultist Aliester Crowley—though Crowley was bald and could well have done with a Karloff wig. And Crowley’s house (Boleskine House, near Loch Ness, later bought by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page) was nothing like as awesome as Hjamar Poelzig’s. A modernist masterpiece of glass and steel and angles, it’s part-Bauhaus, part-Art Deco, and completely amazing. It was built on the foundations of a fort in which 10,000 men were killed, the bodies piled 12-deep, and the river underneath “swollen red, a raging torrent of blood.” And it was Karloff himself who caused these men to die, selling them out to the Russian army. What a heel! His new modernist horror house even has a gallery: glass sarcophagi which house the bodies of beautiful women he has murdered. They are suspended upright, somehow, as if they are exquisite corpses floating in water, like John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. What Karloff does with these dead women is left to our imaginations.
Karloff meets his match when none other than Bela Lugosi shows up after spending fifteen years as a prisoner of war because of yet another betrayal by the bewigged villain. Worse, Karloff has murdered Lugosi’s wife, Karen—she’s part of his obscene collection. And now Karloff is sleeping with Lugosi’s daughter! He really is a rotter! Lugosi has revenge on his mind, of course. After a chess game, where the stakes are the life of an innocent woman named Joan who is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some bizarre business with Lugosi’s phobia of a black cat (a phobia so extreme that Lugosi spears the cat with a knife—only for the creature to return from the grave later, presumably with another eight lives left), we reach an especially sadistic climax. Lugosi homoerotically strips Karloff to the waist and ties him to an embalming board, where he slowly flays him alive. Frankly, that’s a scene I’d want to be part of, and I can’t decide who I’d rather be. Maybe Karloff, because of that wig.
Rivals who played up their enmity in the press because it was good publicity, Lugosi and Karloff were in eight films together, starting with this one, the best one (the other good one is 1939’s Son of Frankenstein). Karloff had more range and as Frankenstein’s monster gave the better performance of the two, but Lugosi was the better on-screen movie star, the one who was fun and sexy and compelling. You’d have to call it a draw, which is exactly how it should be. I always wanted them to live together in a sitcom house where, like Morecambe and Wise, they innocently share the same bed, making breakfast together in a perfectly choreographed dance to "The Stripper," and putting on terrible plays with celebrity guests like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
In The Black Cat, Karloff’s amazing horror house has a basement lined with dynamite (because of course he does) and a big lever to pull if you want to blow the house sky-high. Not every horror film ends with a house being blown to smithereens, but I think they all should. Or at least, all the ones with horror houses in them. I have no doubt that the cat survives, and I reckon Karloff’s wig does too. And it’s still out there, somewhere. Maybe it’s in Hungary, or Transylvania, or even in Jimmy Page’s house near Loch Ness. Wherever it is, it’s waiting in the darkness for Hjalmar Poelzig or for Karloff the Uncanny, whichever comes back from the dead first.
More obvious picks for an object to represent this film: the chess set; the glass cases containing dead women; the organ; the bedside book of satanic rituals; the Black Mass altar; the embalming rack
The Black Cat (1934); 66 mins; US
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer; Written by Peter Ruric (“Suggested by Edgar Allen Poe”); Produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. and E. M. Asher; Cinematography by John J. Mescall; Music by Heinz Roemheld
Boris Karloff (Hjalmar Poelzig); Bela Lugosi (Dr. Vitus Werdegast); David Manners (Peter Alison); Jacqueline Wells (Joan Alison); Lucille Lund (Karen); Harry Cording (Thamal)
