Sinister Serials

Killer Serials

Sinister Serials
of Boris Karloff,
Bela Lugosi and
Lon Chaney Jr
By Leonard J Kohl
Midnight Marquee Press Inc
ISBN: 9781887664318

You’ve got to hand it to Leonard J Kohl. Researching this book in the ‘VHS age’ must have been quite a challenge, certainly a little less easy than it would be these days but, this man has done as thorough a job as anyone could do and you have to admire the detective work involved in a tome of this nature.

Sinister Serials of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr pretty much does what it says on the tin, by examining the often neglected side of cinema, the serials (probably less books written about this part of the American cinematic legacy than any other aspect of the art, I suspect) and then applying it to three great actors who owe their fame to the Universal monster productions and, at least in the extent of two of these actors, who had their talent fostered by Universal, achieving mostly rewarding careers. So the book covers the serial productions of William Henry Pratt, Bela Blasko and Creighton Tull Chaney, better known as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.

What it doesn’t do is give much more than just a little of the personal history of each of these, instead choosing to focus just on their serial work, which is something a lot of people won’t know much about, I suspect. I didn’t realise until I read this that these three had made so few serials between them, truth be told. Karloff made twelve, Lugosi made five and Chaney Jr made seven. The book does, however, fill you in on where each actor was in his career at the time they came to make these serials. For Karloff the acting was sometimes his second job, for example... and it also looks at how Karloff and Lugosi both approached Hollywood by treading the boards on stage first. Which is interesting because it wasn’t until Lon Chaney Jr, coming out from his father’s shadow and working in films soon after his dad’s death, starred as Lennie in his well received stage production (and the subsequent movie version) of Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, that the studios realised he could handle more interesting acting roles.

Of the three actors in question, it was Karloff who was the only one of the three to star in a few fair silent film serials before he made the transition into the talkies but many of the serials he was in didn’t survive and there is no documentation left either... but the author has tried to work out which ones he was in from evidence like a few surviving film stills. I suspect Karloff may have made more but Kohl has given his best educated guesses, so to speak... and there does seem to be some evidence to back up all of the included claims.

One particular serial in which Karloff had a minor role is certainly one which I would have loved to have seen but, alas, it is among the missing presumed destroyed list (the silver nitrate stock possibly melted down to extract the silver). I found it most interesting that he was included in an American chapter play remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1913 film serial adaptation of Fantômas. I had no idea the Americans were making stuff like this at the time and I have to wonder if the title character has the edge to him he did in both the original novels and the French film serial.

The book only runs for six big chapters (roughly half the length of a talkie serial) but Kohl manages to say a lot within them, even going so far as to give notes on the music used (and reused) in some of them... as well as getting first hand accounts from the sons and daughters of the actors in question, not to mention the heirs of various actors and directors who used to work with them... including the likes of Ford Beebe Jr, which is a name I’m sure a lot of serial enthusiasts would have time for. I also now know why there’s no first serial before Lugosi’s star turn in The Return Of Chandu... it was a sequel to a movie in which Lugosi played a different role entirely, it turns out.

And I think I’ve said most of what needs to be said here. Sinister Serials of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr is a fun tome and loving homage to the serial phenomenom itself, not to mention the three ‘horror’ personalities of the title. A well researched and enlightening book which every fan of the format will likely embrace. So if you’re a lover of such serials as The Hope Diamond Mystery, King Of The Kongo (technically the first talking serial), Shadow Over Chinatown, SOS Coastguard, The Phantom Creeps, The Three Musketeers (reviewed by me here) and Undersea Kingdom, then I reckon you will want to dip in between the covers of this particular tome sometime soon.