The Boris Karloff Collection (1939)

The gaunt face, the large eyes and elegant hands, the rich voice with a touch of menace (and more than a touch of lisp): Boris Karloff had the tools of a genuine movie star. He also had a deeply sensitive understanding of flawed creatures, which made his best roles–including the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy–weirdly sympathetic. 

Tower of London is a thoroughly entertaining tale of Richard III’s bloody rise to power, with Basil Rathbone as Richard and Karloff as his bald, beetle-browed executioner (definitely one of Boris’s best looks).

Two early-1950s films are great fun: The Strange Door has Charles Laughton doing one of his modern-Nero roles as a perverse nobleman with a really cool torture dungeon (Karloff is his servant)

 The Black Castle lays on the wolf howls and creaking doors in a tale of revenge. Juicy performances by Richard Greene and Stephen McNally gives this oomph, even if Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr., are peripheral. McNally’s castle is equipped with an excellent secret room with swarming alligators.

Night Key (1937) isn’t horror, but a perfectly OK B-movie about inventor Karloff and his revenge on the businessman who stole his electrically charged idea.

1944’s The Climax was made to capitalize on the lavish sets Universal made for The Phantom of the Opera, and director George Waggner (The Wolf Man) seems far too enamored of costumes and arias. Even when it’s dull, which is frequently, the film has gorgeous Technicolor to look at, and Karloff is suitably obsessed as a doctor messing with a promising soprano.

421 minutes