Wednesday, February 2, 2022

I Saw Another Shudder Documentary

This time it was 2021's Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster: 

Very good, especially for a documentary I only heard of when it dropped on Shudder a few days ago. As I've seen a decent amount of films in my lifetime featuring Boris Karloff yet only knew a small amount of his life story, a 99 minute piece about his life was exactly what I needed.

It's for the most part standard fare. Many clips of him are shown, whether it's in cinema or on television, augmented by many photographs. Various experts discuss his career, typically a famous person in the industry. This included the likes of: Bogdanovich, Dick Miller (which reveals that this has been in the works for the past several years), Corman, del Toro, Perlman, Joe Dante, the controversial John Landis, and the one child of Boris, his daughter Sara. The backdrops of these interviews are sometimes greenscreened and they always had cheesy backdrops but otherwise it was definitely informative.

For those that wish to know more about a famous star from the past that had a resurgence of popularity later in life, this is well worth seeing. After all-while it at first discusses his early 30's success before circling back to his early life; otherwise this is told chronologically-such topics as his mixed heritage is broached. Many people probably don't realize that via both his parents, he has some Indian blood in him. Rarely if ever do I hear talk of him having South Asian roots, which is why he always had a dark complexion. What a life he led, and it's not a surprise he is still rather famous in 2022. Anyhow, this is another nice documentary that is available on Shudder-along with other platforms if you're not subscribed to that.

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